gitimacy, and that welfare programs, to the extent
they were to be retained, should have stronger work
requirements. Even sympathetic welfare reformers
such as Ellwood sought to turn the Aid to Families
with Dependent Children program (AFDC, a fed-
eral financial assistance program started in 1935 to
provide cash assistance to those whose household in-
come fell below official federal poverty thresholds,
depending on family size) into a transitional sup-
port program designed to promote short-term fi-
nancial, educational, and social support, such that
AFDC would be more like a stepping-stone into the
labor market.
Workfare over Welfare The Omnibus Budget Rec-
onciliation Act of 1981 provided for community
work experience programs (CWEP), making it pos-
sible for the first time for states to choose to make
workfare, or job-training and community-service ac-
tivities, mandatory for AFDC recipients. It autho-
rized states to fund on-the-job training programs by
using (diverting) a recipient’s welfare grant as a
wage subsidy for private employers. States were also
permitted to develop their own work incentive (WIN)
demonstration programs. According to the U.S. Gen-
eral Accounting Office 1987 studyWork and Welfare,
roughly 22 percent (714,448) of all AFDC recipients
participated in these programs nationwide.
The 1980’s also witnessed increased federal and
state efforts to obtain child support payments from
noncustodial parents, particularly from fathers of
AFDC mothers, in the light of enactment of the
Child Support Enforcement (CSE) program in 1975
and in the light of a high profile the Reagan adminis-
tration gave to promoting family values. In 1980,
only 5.2 percent of AFDC payments were recovered
through child support collections, and this percent-
age increased to 8.6 in 1986 when Reagan called for
more extensive welfare reform in his state of the
union address. On September 2, 1987, Reagan is-
sued Executive Order 12606 requiring government
agencies to assess all measures that might have a sig-
nificant impact on family formation, maintenance,
and general well-being in the light of how an action
by government strengthens or erodes the stability of
the family and particularly the marital commitment.
Between 1986 and 1988, a congressional consen-
sus emerged regarding welfare reform. The one
hundredth session of Congress focused on three ma-
jor bills: the Family Security Act of 1987, introduced
by Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan;
the Family Welfare Reform Act of 1987, introduced
by Democratic representative Harold Ford; and the
Welfare Independence Act of 1987, the Republican
alternative for welfare reform, introduced by Re-
publican senator Bob Dole and by Republican rep-
resentative Robert Michel. Despite differences in
some specifics, each bill linked welfare reform to
work.
Despite political consensus over workfare, there
was some public opposition. Writing in the Novem-
ber, 1987, issue ofMs., political essayist and social
critic Barbara Ehrenreich, for example, viewed the
consensus for workfare as a throwback to the seven-
teenth century workhouse or worse, slavery. Writing
in the September 26, 1988, issue ofThe Nation, social
welfare policy scholar and activist Mimi Abramovitz
called such welfare reform efforts a sham, whose
work requirements would cheapen the costs of wom-
en’s labor force participation and weaken the basic
principles on which modern welfare states rested.The Family Support Act of 1988 As welfare ex-
penses approached $16.7 billion in 1988, Reagan
signed the Family Support Act (FSA) on October 13.
Titles I and II of the FSA specifically addressed child
support enforcement and welfare-to-work programs.
Title I amended part D of Title IV of the Social Se-
curity Act of 1935 to require withholding of child
support payments from noncustodial parents’ wages
upon issuance or modification of a child support
order for families receiving part D services. It re-
quired immediate wage withholding for all new child
support orders issued on or after January 1, 1994.
Parties in a contested paternity case had to submit to
genetic tests upon the request of a party in such
cases. States that did not have automated data pro-
cessing and information retrieval systems in effect
had to have such systems operational by October 1,
1995.
Title II required states to establish a job opportu-
nities and basic skills training program (JOBS). It
also authorized states to institute a work supple-
mentation program under which state reserves sums
that would otherwise be payable to JOBS partici-
pants as AFDC benefits would be used instead to sub-
sidize jobs for such participation. Title II authorized
any state to establish CWEPs.
Other provisions of the FSA directed states to
guarantee child-care services to AFDC families toThe Eighties in America Welfare 1039