Child care a key to welfare reform

Economic terms:

Labor market -  the available supply of labor considered with reference to the demand for it.
 
Welfare - financial or other assistance to an individual or family from a city, state, or national government: Thousands of jobless people in this city would starve if it weren't for welfare.

Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 -  a United States federal law considered to be a fundamental shift in both the method and goal of federal cash assistance to the poor. 
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This article emphasizes the financial and physical necessity of child care for working mothers' as parents receiving welfare are being coerced back into the labor market by July of this year. Under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, 25 percent of all single parents in welfare families must be working or in job training by July of this year, and 50 percent by 2002. As a result, many subsidized child care slots are full with lengthy waiting lists. Also, those providers in low income neighborhoods have proven to provide higher quality care versus those in middle to high class neighborhoods and there is a dearth of child care arrangements disabling them to return to work. This is causing the deadline for single and dual parent households to return to work hard to meet. Therefore, not only will these parents be ineligible to continue receiving wellfare, they will be out of work still and unable to provide for their children at home with no or very limited sources of income. Additionally, these program are false advertising the availability of child care for all working mothers. The only good part about this welfare reform is the fact that it is gaining more and more awareness for child care and it's great necessity and importance, although it still lacks adequate resources.

This economic activity is occurig because as our government is falling further and further into recession, the funding of more and more programs are being cut, such as those for child care for working mothers. In San Francisco's Tenderloin district especially, this has became a huge epidemic and problem that many do not envision change for. In order for the budget deficit to dwindle, the governor, as well as other governmental figures concluded that the best possiible solution to achieve their goal in a relatively short amount of time is to take away family necessity to gain an economic edge for economic benefit rather than individual benefit.

The reason this event is occuring is because welfare program recipients are becoming increasing dole and lazy, finding comfort in getting a check and/ or unemployment every month without having to work for it. So, this welfare reform is attempting to coerce these parents into the labor market and diminish the ease welfare and unemployment checks provide. However, as a result, the government is implementing a policy that will cut funding for programs, such as child care for working mothers, to aid in getting more tax revenue and money from higher consumer spending due to employment and hopefully lower the economic budget deficit. What they are failing to realize is the complications this goal is proposing by limiting adequate resources to enable mothers to return to work and fulfill the governments goals.

As an economic commentator, I thunk next, the government will foreshadow the detrimental affect the welfare reform will have on working and unemployed mothers alike and be forced to find a remedy to this problem. Therefore, all of the resources for child care availinility may not be restored, but I believe there will be more implemented to see this governmental goal to success and welfare reform to completion. It may be hard and take some time to get organized, I do not believe it to be impossible.