Welfare reform has been given a high priority by the Republican Congress. Welfare is administered differently in the different states, but reform is being directed at giving even more control to the individual states. The Republican program would first of all send many programs back to the states and allow local control. The legislation would end the 60-year federal guarantee of providing welfare checks to eligible low-income mothers. Representative E. Clay Shaw Jr. from Florida, chairman of the House Ways and Means Human Resources Subcommittee, sees this change as "the first step in getting rid of poverty and the programs that have so corrupted this country" (Katz, 1995, 3544). Welfare policy evolved slowly over the last fifty years or so. It is manifested in different ways in different parts of the country already, though it is determined and controlled based on federal policy and court decisions.
Murray (1984) considers the question of welfare in the larger context of American social policy over a thirty year period. He has more in mind than welfare policy, though welfare is at the heart of what American social policy during this era wanted to achieve and also at the heart of how the system has failed to achieve those goals. Murray settles on the term "social policy" to describe what he is talking about and defines this as a loosely defined conglomeration of government programs, laws, regulations, and court decisions touching on almost every dimension of life:
Welfare programs are part of any social policy toward the poor, obviously. Jobs programs are part of social policy. So also are the Miranda decision and Affirmative Action and the Department of Education's regulations about bilingual education (Murray, 1984, 13).
Murray also gives a clear indication of the goal of these programs, noting that each has a worthy objective that is being addressed by a transfer of resources from the haves to the have-nots. ...