document: President Bill Clinton 's pledge to ` end welfare as we know it ' was one of the most popular lines in last year 's election campaign . His idea of a strict two-year time limit on welfare cheques appealed to voters -LRB- especially ` Reagan democrats ' -RRB- not just as a way of cutting government spending and thus reducing taxes , but as a solution to the nation 's most pressing social problems . In the American mind , welfare has become synonymous with such evils as urban decay , fatherless children , drug abuse and violent crime . By promising radical welfare reform , Mr Clinton was sending a powerful subliminal message : he would wage war on all the diseases that are ravaging urban society . Since becoming president , Mr Clinton has barely mentioned the word welfare , raising fears that his grandiose promise will prove as cynical as former President George Bush 's ` read my lips : no new taxes ' pledge . The White House insists that welfare reform is not forgotten but has just had to take its turn behind two even more urgent priorities : the deficit reduction plan finally approved this month and the healthcare reform scheduled for September . It claims both measures will help shift people off welfare by ` making work pay . ' The budget advanced this cause by expanding the earned income tax credit -LRB- a kind of negative income tax -RRB- . This gives poor working families a cash bonus of up to Dollars 2,500 a year , increasing the incentive to take low paid jobs . If healthcare reform guarantees health insurance for all workers , welfare recipients will no longer be able to reject jobs on the grounds that they stand to lose their health care benefits . In addition , the administration promises to bolster the economic position of welfare mothers by strictly enforcing laws requiring absent fathers to support their children financially . Such measures should help . But they are hardly going to solve America 's welfare problem , which differs substantially from that in Europe . In keeping with Franklin Roosevelt 's dictum that a permanent dole is ' a narcotic , a subtle destroyer of the human spirit ' , the US has never provided permanent welfare support for single , able-bodied adults . When pundits talk of a ` culture of welfare ' they are referring mainly to the Dollars 20bn spent on Aid for Families with Dependent Children , a benefit received by 5m single-parent families . The objection is not that some families in straitened circumstances need AFDC as a short-term prop , but that half of those on welfare behave as though they have a meal ticket for life . So what should Mr Clinton do ? Many conservatives favour the concept of a strict time limit . Once people accept that benefits are not going to be paid indefinitely , they argue , behaviour will change . Teenagers will stop having babies and start recognising the economic advantages of marriage . Those whose welfare benefits expire will face a stark choice : accept low-paid employment or hand over children for adoption . At first the adjustment will be horribly painful but in the longer term society will gain enormously because destructive lifestyles will no longer be underwritten . With its economic life support system -LRB- welfare -RRB- ripped away , the underclass will shrivel . But no modern president would contemplate so brutal a social experiment . If welfare stops , something has to take its place . One suggestion is that Mr Clinton should follow the example of Roosevelt 's Works Progress Administration , an agency that at its peak created over 3m public sector jobs . After two years , welfare cheques would thus be replaced by the offer of a government job at slightly below the private sector minimum wage . Mothers with young children would also be offered state child care facilities . According to one advocate , this would amount to replacing the welfare state by the ` work ethic state ' . This solution is more appealing than a mere cessation of benefits . But it would involve a huge expansion of public sector employment and cost perhaps Dollars 50-60bn a year , far more than the Clinton administration is willing to spend on welfare reform . Fortunately there is a fall back position for Mr Clinton : the bipartisan Family Support Act of 1988 , which he helped steer through Congress . This recognised the impossibility of ending welfare overnight and instead set targets for the gradual introduction of ` workfare ' . Next year states will receive federal assistance only if they ensure that at least 15 per cent of the 'em ployable ' welfare case load is working or in training programmes ; by 1995 the required ratio rises to 20 per cent . These seemingly undemanding targets require a much larger fraction of the welfare population to take jobs at some point during the year . Mr Clinton could tighten the definition of 'em ployable ' , so as to include mothers with children under the age of three , and set more demanding workfare participation targets , for example that 50 per cent of welfare recipients should be working or in training by the year 2000 . Such a gradualist approach would be both humane and cost effective . The only trouble is that it falls far short of the presidential promise to ` end welfare as we know it ' . Like Mr Bush , Mr Clinton may have raised expecta-tions that simply can not be met .
extractive_keyphrases: welfare reform president bill clinton federal assistance welfare benefits healthcare reform deficit reduction
abstractive_keyphrases: welfare problems