Lesson Plan: Welfare and the Politics of Poverty
Grades 9-12
The federal government’s public assistance programs began during the Great Depression in the 1930s; over time, they have become the subject of much political debate. By the mid-1990s, with record numbers of Americans receiving federal assistance, public resentment reached a tipping point. Recipients were stigmatized by some politicians as lazy ne’er-do-wells feeding at the public trough. Politicians railed against so-called “welfare queens,” women thought to be gaming the system by having more babies to be eligible for more benefits. Republicans’ decadeslong efforts to overhaul welfare had met with little success. But in 1996, in a move that outraged liberals, Bill Clinton, a Democrat who had campaigned on a promise to “end welfare as we know it,” signed legislation that did just that.
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