While states are generally free to set their own criteria for food aid, they should impose a work test on working-age beneficiaries between the ages of 18 and 62 who are not caring for children or a family member with a disability. The law would require these beneficiaries to work at least 32 hours in the month preceding receiving assistance. The current maximum benefit of food stamps is $115 for a single person. Thus, recipients who would receive so much food aid (and many would not receive it) would actually be paid at a rate of $3.59 per hour, which is significantly lower than the minimum wage. They should complete the work a month before receiving food aid. Under these rules, a 30-year-old woman with a 13-year-old child born out of wedlock could never receive social assistance for the child if she lost her job, even if she had never received social assistance and had worked full-time since the child was born. States would also have the possibility to deny public housing assistance to all families headed by a person who “gave birth to an illegitimate child after the age of 18 but before the age of 21”. The exclusion would be permanent and would prohibit such a woman from living in subsidized housing under one of the 14 federal programs. For example, subsidized housing for the elderly would not be available for a 72-year-old woman who had given birth to an illegitimate child 52 years earlier. The biggest losers in the Republican plan would be illegitimate children, many of whom would no longer be entitled to public support. Supporters of the bill say the changes would reduce extramarital births, which they blame for both poverty and crime in a “congressional statement” to the legislature. However, studies comparing states with different levels of social benefits are crucial to show that benefits have little or no impact on out-of-wedlock birth rates. So there are clearly other motives at work in these proposals: the search for scapegoats who can be blamed for the nation`s social problems, the expression of the moral disapproval of unmarried teenage parents, the need to target the less sympathetic groups, even if an unpopular program is cut.

Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the signing of this treaty on the steps of the United States Capitol. A few weeks later, the Republicans won the House of Representatives, ending a series of defeats that dates back to 1954. This victory remains one of the most important events in American political history, an unexpected election result that radically changed the direction of the country. TREATY WITH AMERICA. The Treaty with America, a ten-point legislative program led by Newt Gingrich, the minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, served as a Republican model for the reforms that entered the 1994 midterm season. The candidates who signed the treaty agreed to support, among other things, a change in the balance of the budget, welfare reform and a term limit for congressional Congress. The implementation of the treaty`s provisions became the battle cry of the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives in the spring of 1995. Work on the adoption of the treaty led to modest legislative victories and pushed congressional policy in a more conservative direction. However, Democrats in Congress managed to block the passage of most of the treaty`s initiatives by mitigating its impact as an important issue in the 1996 federal election. The polarized and partisan atmosphere created by the treaty struggles formed the context for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998.

The results of the Treaty in 1995 were mixed. The Republican leadership of the House of Representatives actually put every item to a vote in the first hundred days. He divided each item into one or more bills, and thirty-one of the resulting thirty-two measures were passed – only one, to limit the mandate of Congress, failed. The Senate has acted much more slowly. This is partly because the Senate, as a debating body, usually proceeds with greater caution. Another reason was that senators, unlike their first-year counterparts in the House of Representatives, were much less willing to pass sweeping reforms: the Senate, for example, rejected the proposed constitutional amendment to the budget and simply delayed action on several other bills. President Clinton`s promise to veto all far-reaching welfare and budget proposals also clouded Republican plans, and in November 1995 this threat led to a bitter stalemate that led to the temporary shutdown of the federal government. “Democrats controlled the House for 40 consecutive years before 1994, with an interesting coalition of Northeast/Midwest liberals and Southern Democrats all of whom have become Republicans today,” he said, adding that Democrats had occupied the House for 58 of the last 62 years and the Senate for 34 of the 40 years before 1994.

“So the Republicans weren`t used to having power in Congress. They thought that the nationalization of the election could be a way to regain power. We need a new social contract, but certainly not a contract that combines clever treatment of the poor with fiscally irresponsible promises to the wealthy. Newt Gingrich has a flair for drama. But his treaty with America is far too reminiscent of the Faust agreement. The Republican deal should be rejected before it is broken, and the devil of social discord and unrest is trying to collect its debts with interest. Some observers cite the treaty with America, which helped secure a decisive Republican victory in the 1994 election; Others deny this role, pointing to its late introduction to the campaign. Whatever the role of the treaty, Republicans were elected by a majority in both houses of Congress for the first time since 1953, and parts of the treaty were enacted. Most of the elements were not passed in Congress, while others were rejected by President Bill Clinton or substantially altered in negotiations with President Bill Clinton, who sarcastically called it the “Treaty on America”[11][12], implying that the Republican legislative package resembled an organized crime “coup” to the American public. .