For those who had counted on Clinton to “end welfare as we know it,” the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was not a disappointment. AFDC was gone in its entirety, along with the entire federal apparatus for directly administering welfare. In its place was a new system called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which completely transformed the country’s public benefits system.

TANF ended the guarantee that poor mothers could receive assistance from the federal government. Instead, it imposed a five-year lifetime cap on benefits and instituted a work requirement. Nobody could receive benefits for more than two years at a time. Immigrants (even lawful permanent residents) were barred from receiving benefits.

Most importantly, it decentralized the administration of benefits. Rather than being a federal program, TANF was delivered as a series of block grants to state governments, who were relied upon to make sure that the funds made their way into the hands of recipients. And the total amount spent by the federal government would be far less than its previous AFDC expenditures.