Welfare Overhaul Senators pass a landmark bill

What began in 1935 as a temporary pension program for widows, then ballooned into an income-maintenance program for millions of unemployed women with children, may now become a job program that would enable people to get off the dole altogether. By a vote of 93 to 3, the Senate agreed last week to revamp the nation's welfare laws in the hope of breaking the cycle of dependency on government support. "It's the first major change since the 1930s," said New York's Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the architect of the bill, "and it redefines the notion of welfare."

The idea behind...

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