SOCIAL WELFARE POLICY has always been a controversial subject in the United States because of the difference between its perceived and real benefits. Usually public is unable to decide who are social welfare programs designed for and whether they actually benefit the target population. The government on its part fails to convince the public of the benefits and advantages of having various social welfare programs running in the country. Some historians and analysts have attacked the social welfare policy and termed it government's weapon against the able-bodied poor. Katz (1989) contends that the "the core of most welfare reform in America since the early nineteenth-century," has been the assault against the "able-bodied poor" -- a crusade to "define, locate and purge them from the roles of relief." (Katz, 18) Thus social welfare policy becomes an unlikely target of controversy and public uproar. The problem is grounded in vaguely defined and...
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