The Vanishing Act
Seldom in the last half-century has the U.S. been so poorly prepared to assist individuals and families struggling with the effects of a recession. Example: the unemployment insurance system, which was established to ease the pain of temporary joblessness, covers less than 40 percent of the people who are out of work. Example: the food stamp program, which was supposed to slam the door on hunger in the world's greatest nation (and which once served 90 percent of eligible families), now serves just 60 percent of the poverty- stricken folks who qualify for help.

And then there's welfare. In the summer of 1996 Bill Clinton signed the so-called reform bill ending "welfare as we know it." Among other things, it imposed a five-year lifetime limit on welfare assistance to needy families.

The potentially tragic consequences of that legislation were concealed for a while by the extraordinary economic boom in the last half of the decade. But Daniel Patrick Moynihan and others had warned all along of the dire implications of ending the guarantee of federal help to the nation's poorest families. Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund noted that supporters of the welfare bill assumed there would be "no recession in the next decade, which is unprecedented."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/opinion/19HERB.html?todaysheadlines