The
welfare reform law of 1996 has been an enormous success. Since the
reform, the welfare caseload in the Temporary Assistance to Needy
Families (TANF) program--formerly called Aid to Families with
Dependent Children or AFDC--has been cut in half. Among
disadvantaged single mothers, who had the greatest tendency to
become long-term welfare dependents, the employment rate has soared
upward 50 percent to 100 percent. As employment soared, the
poverty rate of single mothers dropped by nearly a third and is now
at the lowest point in U.S. history. (See Chart 1.)
These dramatic successes came after a
quarter century of failure of a liberal welfare system. For
example, from 1970 to the mid-1990s, while liberals were running
the welfare system, the black child poverty rate in the U.S.
actually increased. But, as Chart 2 shows, since the mid-1990s,
black child poverty has dropped by a third and is now at the lowest
point in U.S. history.
Opponents argue that these positive
changes were due to the strength of the economy in the 1990s. But
the decline in dependence, the surge in employment of single
mothers, and the sharp drop in child poverty are historically
unprecedented. Nothing similar occurred during any prior economic
boom. Clearly, it was welfare reform that made the difference in
the late 1990s.
KEY ELEMENTS OF THE 1996 REFORM
In
the mid-1990s, the Republican-controlled Congress passed major
welfare reform legislation entitled the Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). The act replaced the
discredited Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program
with a new program named Temporary Assistance to Needy Families
(TANF). Unwilling to risk a third veto of welfare reform
immediately before the presidential election, President Bill
Clinton signed PRWORA into law on August 22, 1996.
The
1996 reform act dramatically altered many aspects of the welfare
system. The act:
- Ended
entitlement funding. The pre-reform AFDC program was based
on entitlement funding: the federal government awarded funding to
states on the basis of the number of families they enrolled in the
program. In contrast, the new TANF program was a "block grant" that
gave states a fixed sum, regardless of the number of recipients on
their rolls.
- Placed a time
limit of five years on an individual's receipt of federal TANF
welfare payments. This time limit was intended to break
the cycle of dependence, which, in the pre-reform era, had resulted
in the typical welfare mother spending 13 years enrolled in the
AFDC program.
- Replaced a
system of one-way handouts with a new emphasis on reciprocal
obligation. Under the old law, individuals in need were
entitled to aid, irrespective of their behavior. In contrast, the
reform made aid conditional; recipients would be expected to "earn"
welfare benefits by engaging in constructive behavior such as job
search, training, or community service.
- Demanded a
substantial increase in constructive activity. Whereas the
old law had allowed recipients to remain idle while on the rolls,
the reform sought to increase the number of recipients engaged in
constructive activity aimed toward employment and
self-sufficiency.
- Strongly
encouraged a "work first" approach to reducing dependence and
promoting self-sufficiency. This approach focused on
reducing caseloads and moving recipients quickly into employment
rather than placing them in extended training programs. In short,
recipients were required to take jobs or prepare to enter the job
market quickly. (Work-first strategies have been shown to be more
effective in increasing earnings than education-focused
policies.)
- Established
prominent national goals of reducing out-of-wedlock childbearing
and promoting two-parent families.
- Created a new
federal abstinence education program.
- Restricted
welfare benefits to immigrant non-citizens with the
rationale that a person who sponsored an immigrant to come to the
United States was legally required to support that individual, and
should not simply pass the financial burden on to the
taxpayer.
The
1996 reform legislation also gave states greater flexibility in
designing welfare programs, but that flexibility was not unlimited.
The act did not create a giant welfare slush fund that states could
spend in any manner they chose. States were given flexibility to
design programs within the context of strong new federal work
standards. In establishing the new welfare system, Congress
insisted that state flexibility would be subordinate to each of the
key principles of reform mentioned above.
During the welfare reform debate from 1994
to 1996, liberals in Congress initially opposed every single
element outlined above. Ultimately, some liberals accepted reform
with reluctance, while others remained steadfast in opposition. It
should therefore come as no great surprise that liberals are now
trying to overturn the reform almost completely.
WELFARE REFORM UNDER ATTACK
Welfare reform is now six years old.
Technically, it is time for Congress to "reauthorize" the TANF
program.
On May 16, 2002, the House of Representatives passed a welfare
reauthorization bill that retained the essential features of the
1996 reform with modest strengthening in the areas of work and
marriage. In the House-passed version, reauthorization means
carrying forward the successful 1996 reform.
By
contrast, liberals in Congress have used reauthorization as an
opportunity to attempt to roll back nearly all of the 1996 reform.
The centerpiece of the liberal counterattack against welfare reform
is the Work, Opportunity and Responsibility for Kids Act (WORK
act), sponsored by Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), which was passed in
June 2002 in the Senate Finance Committee.
Although liberals lamely contend that they
wish to continue the 1996 reform, the very size of the WORK bill
belies this claim. The WORK bill contains 257 pages of new text. There is
scarcely a single paragraph of the existing TANF law that the WORK
bill does not significantly alter or rewrite completely. In fact,
the WORK act overturns or undermines nearly every important element
of the 1996 welfare reform. Specifically, the bill:
- Expands
the size and scope of the welfare state, adding at least $10
billion in new spending over five years ($23 billion over 10
years);
- Effectively
eliminates the five-year time limit on receipt of federal
TANF benefits;
- Partially
restores the principle of entitlement funding, giving
states more funds when their welfare caseloads increase;
- Effectively
eliminates the reduction of welfare dependence as a goal
of welfare reform;
- Permits
recipients who consistently refuse to work or prepare for work to
continue receiving TANF benefits indefinitely;
- Creates
new incentives to expand welfare caseloads and lengthen stays on
welfare;
- Contains weak to non-existent "work"
requirements. (Few, if any, welfare recipients would be required to
work or prepare for work under this bill, and the work requirements
that it does contain are lax and nearly meaningless);
- Undermines the concept that welfare
recipients should be required to "earn" benefits through
constructive behavior and moves back toward an entitlement or
"one-way handout" system;
- Abandons the successful "work first"
orientation of the reform;
- Effectively
prohibits Wisconsin-style workfare programs;
- Authorizes public-sector unions to
organize and represent welfare recipients;
- Relieves sponsors of immigrants to the
United States of their responsibility to support the individuals
they bring to the U.S. and transfers the financial burden to the
taxpayers.
At
the same time, the bill does little or nothing to reduce the
anti-marriage penalties in the welfare system. The bill's so-called
marriage-promotion grant program is cynically designed so that it
has little or nothing to do with marriage. Rather than encouraging
marriage, the bill contains numerous provisions that are designed
to encourage and reward out-of-wedlock childbearing and single
parenthood. Finally, the bill creates a new
safe-sex/condom-promotion program for schools, despite the fact
that the federal government already spends over $1.1 billion on
safe-sex and family-planning programs.
Eliminating Reform's Time Limits
Under the current law, federal TANF funds
cannot be used to provide cash assistance for more than five years,
although day care and transportation aid can be provided
indefinitely. The "WORK" bill effectively
ends the five-year time limit on aid by permitting states to give
TANF "supplemental housing benefits" to recipients indefinitely.
Since there is little or no difference between giving cash aid and
giving vouchers for rent payments, this provision effectively ends
the federal time limits on TANF.
Restoring Entitlement Funding: An
Incremental Strategy
The
old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program was an
entitlement-funded program. Under this system, when the number of
AFDC cases increased in a state, the federal government increased
funding to the state. Conversely, when a state's caseload fell, the
federal government decreased funding to that state. This system
created perverse fiscal incentives for state governments: in
essence, the federal government rewarded increases in dependence
and penalized reductions. The 1996 reform legislation
replaced AFDC with the new TANF program, eliminating entitlement
funding and replacing it with fixed or block-grant funding. Under
this system, each state is given a fixed sum of money. If welfare
caseloads go down, the state still receives the original amount of
funds and can use its unspent surplus funds for other anti-poverty
activities. If welfare caseloads increase, the state does not
receive an increased federal grant.
The
Baucus WORK bill deliberately undermines the 1996 reform, taking
major steps that are intended to lead to a restoration of
entitlement funding over time. Specifically, the WORK bill
restores, at least partially, the pre-reform practice of increasing
state funding when welfare caseloads rise and cutting funding when
caseloads fall. The WORK bill does this by altering the current
TANF "contingency fund."
The
contingency fund was created to provide added federal funds to
states with very high unemployment levels. To receive contingency
funds under current law, a state must meet two criteria: (1) the
unemployment rate in the state must be above 6.5 percent; and (2) a
state's TANF spending, from its own funds, must at least equal its
state spending on AFDC in 1995. The second criterion was
set to ensure that a state would not get extra federal dollars
unless it was contributing its normal level of state funding to the
program. In other words, a state could not cut its own spending on
TANF and then ask the federal government for more money. (Since
welfare reform, nearly all states have cut their annual state TANF
spending by 25 percent. By contrast, the federal TANF spending is
greater than federal AFDC spending in 1995.) The current
eligibility criteria for the contingency fund were designed so that
states would receive funds only in unusual conditions. To date, no
state has received these funds.
The
WORK bill alters the contingency fund to make it vastly easier for
states to get extra federal funds. Under the WORK bill, a state's
TANF spending no longer needs to equal its 1995 AFDC spending for
it to be eligible for extra federal contingency funds. States will
be eligible for contingency funds if they meet new criteria as a
"needy state." To be designated as "needy," a state must (1) have
an unemployment rate that is one percentage point higher than the
rate in either of the prior two years; or (2) have a 10 percent
increase in either TANF or food stamp caseloads, relative to the
average caseload in either of the prior two years.
It
will be extremely easy for states to qualify as "needy" states. For
example, if a state has an unemployment rate of one percent and the
rate rises to two percent, the state becomes a "needy" state and
will remain one until the unemployment rate falls back to one
percent. In effect, states are likely to qualify as "needy" unless
their unemployment rates are near all-time lows. (The U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimates that, under
the WORK bill, nearly all states will qualify as "needy states" in
2003 and 2004. Even by 2007, more than half of the states would
qualify. This seems to be a conservative projection.)
Once
it has become a "needy" state, a state's federal TANF funding will
be governed by the pre-reform entitlement principle: When the
state's TANF caseload goes up, the state will receive more TANF
funds; when its caseload goes down, the state will receive less
funding (but never less than its 1996 federal TANF allocation.)
The Return of Perverse Incentives
A
bedrock premise of the 1996 welfare reform was that entitlement
funding created perverse incentives that led to harmful levels of
dependence. By financially rewarding states for increased caseloads
and penalizing them for lower caseloads, the old system gave states
incentives to keep recipients on the rolls and trapped millions of
families in unnecessary dependence. This is why welfare reform
abolished entitlement funding. The WORK bill rejects this
fundamental premise of reform and restores entitlement funding for
at least half the states.
True, the WORK bill does put limits on the
contingency fund. The annual maximum a state can receive from the
fund cannot be more than 10 percent of its regular federal TANF
funds. In addition, total contingency fund spending for all states
would be limited to $2 billion over five years. But, these
restrictions are deceptive. The designers of the WORK bill realize
that welfare reform is extremely popular; therefore they cannot
simply repeal reform overnight no matter how much they might wish
to do so. Thus, their efforts to undermine reform will be complex
and incremental. Once the WORK bill's new contingency fund is set
up, it is likely that efforts will be initiated to ease the funding
restrictions. This is particularly the case with the $2 billion
overall spending limit. Because it will be so easy for states to
qualify for contingency funds, the $2 billion will be exhausted
within a few years. Once this occurs, Congress
will immediately hear clamors that there is a "crisis" in the
contingency fund and that the program must be "fully funded."
Opponents of expanding the fund will be attacked as miserly enemies
of the poor.
Although the WORK bill also stipulates
that a state will not receive contingency funds for TANF caseload
increases if those increases were due "in a large measure...to
state policy changes," this caveat is meaningless. Liberals have
traditionally argued that economics, rather than policy, determines
caseload size and have never agreed that lenient policies increase
dependence. For example, liberal experts have argued that the
unprecedented caseload declines of the past five years were due
mainly to the economy rather than reform policy. Based on the
experience of the last decade, the question of whether changes in a
state's caseload were largely driven by economics or policy will be
subject to endless dispute. Moreover, policies that affect caseload
size often involve subtle and undocumented administrative changes
in outreach, intake procedures, frequency of sanctions, assignment
of activities, and dozens of other procedures. Because of the
complexity of the welfare system, it would be virtually impossible,
in most cases, to prove that changes in bureaucratic practices led
to a caseload increase.
Penalizing State Rainy-Day Funds
When
TANF was created as a fixed-funding or block-grant program, there
was an expectation that states would set up TANF "rainy-day" funds,
saving a portion of TANF funds during good economic years and then
expending that surplus when caseloads rose during a recession. Both
the President's proposal and the House-passed welfare
reauthorization (H.R. 4737) seek to make it easier for states to
operate such rainy day funds in the future. The WORK bill does the
opposite. It declares that states that have put away even a small
amount in rainy- day funds will be ineligible for contingency
funds. Specifically, the bill asserts that a state will be
ineligible for federal contingency funds if the state has placed
more than 30 percent of its annual federal TANF grant in a
rainy-day fund. Thus the Baucus bill
deliberately penalizes states for saving TANF funds. Overall, the
bill ensures that states will save little and will demand
additional federal funds whenever their caseloads increase.
ABANDONING THE GOAL OF REDUCING
DEPENDENCE
Reducing welfare dependence was a critical
goal of welfare reform. It was an essential element of the
work-first orientation of the reform and was a major factor in the
reform's success. Since the enactment of reform legislation,
welfare caseloads and the poverty rate of single mothers have both
dropped dramatically. Prior to the reform there had been no net
reduction in either welfare caseloads or poverty of single mothers
for a quarter century.
The
1996 welfare reform set clear performance standards for states to
reduce dependence. Over five years, states were required to reduce
their AFDC/TANF caseloads by 50 percent or to have 50 percent of
the caseload engaged in "work-related" activities, or some
combination of the two. (For example, if a state cut its TANF
caseload by 30 percent, it was expected to have 20 percent of its
welfare recipients participating in "work-related" activities.)
Ironically, the very success of the PRWORA
performance standards has rendered them obsolete. In PRWORA,
caseload reduction goals were tied to specific conditions in the
mid-1990s; states were required to reduce caseloads by 50 percent
relative to their 1995 caseload levels. Over the past six years,
nearly all states have reduced their TANF caseloads by 50 percent
or more. Hence, PRWORA caseload reduction standards and the
contingent work participation standards have become irrelevant
because states have superseded them. The House-passed welfare
reauthorization bill (H.R. 4737) solves this problem by updating
the PRWORA caseload-reduction and work-participation standards.
Under the House bill, states are required to reduce current adult
TANF caseloads by 70 percent by 2007 or to increase work-related
participation of TANF recipients by the same amount, or any
combination of the two.
Despite the success of welfare reform, the
Baucus WORK bill jettisons the primary goal of reducing welfare
caseloads. It also effectively eliminates work participation
requirements (See "Eviscerating Work and Work Preparation
Requirements" below). In place of the original PRWORA goals, Baucus
substitutes a new performance measure called "employment exits"
(i.e., the number of TANF recipients who leave the welfare rolls
and take jobs). While this sounds plausible, it is, in fact, a very
misleading measure of success.
Under the old AFDC program, millions of
recipients left the rolls each year, even as caseloads rose to
record levels. Today, in the typical state, the number of families
leaving TANF each year is equal to about 130 percent of the monthly
adult TANF caseload. The number of annual
"leavers" who are employed around the time they exit is typically
around 80 percent of monthly TANF caseload. Thus, most exit
standards would be very easy to meet. Nearly all states could
readily fulfill the Baucus exit standards without improving their
performance, without increasing employment, and without reducing
welfare caseloads.
Dependence is reduced only if the number
of exits from the TANF caseload is greater than the number of
entrances. The Baucus bill is deceptive: It deliberately focuses on
exits while ignoring entrances. Thus, under the bill's
requirements, states could be judged successful in reducing
dependence even as their caseloads grew. This is no accident.
While it is not the only objective of
welfare reform, reducing welfare dependence has been and should
remain an important goal of effective reform. The Baucus bill
utterly rejects this goal. Indeed, the bill actually reverses the
goal by creating financial incentives through the contingency fund
that reward states for increasing caseloads.
EVISCERATING Work and Work-Preparation
Requirements
The
WORK bill effectively eviscerates meaningful work requirements and
state goals for work participation.
A Hollow Notion of "Universal
Engagement"
The
Baucus bill places a strong rhetorical emphasis on the concept of
"universal engagement"--the idea that all recipients should be
engaged in activities leading to self-sufficiency. While universal
engagement is an excellent concept, in reality, the WORK bill
requires little or no engagement.
In
order to promote "universal engagement" the bill requires that all
recipients complete an individual responsibility plan (IRP) within
two months of enrollment. In fact, an IRP is not a
new idea; most states already require an IRP or something similar
in their TANF programs. However, policymakers have realized that,
without enforceable follow-up, an IRP alone is meaningless. Unless
a welfare agency continually engages a recipient in constructive
activities after the IRP is signed, the document is nothing but an
additional piece of paper in the recipient's case folder. (Federal
work-participation standards were instituted precisely to ensure
that recipients make active progress toward self-sufficiency.) The
Baucus bill does not require or even suggest that continuous
participation in such activities is necessary; its notion of
universal engagement is a hollow slogan and nothing more.
Loopholes in Work- or
Activity-Participation Standards
The
White House has sought to increase the percentage of TANF
recipients who are engaged in work-related activities. In the past,
an increase in work requirements has led to drops in welfare
dependence and increases in employment. Increasing the number of
recipients engaged in work and other constructive activity would
seem to be essential to the idea of "universal engagement" that is
promoted in the Baucus bill. However, while the language of the
WORK bill implies that it would increase work participation levels,
in reality, it would not.
On
the surface, the Baucus bill requires 60 percent of TANF recipients
to participate in education, work, or other related activities by
2005 and raises the nominal participation level to 70 percent in
2007. However, the bill provides exit credits and other credits
against the work participation rates that, in total, are worth more
than 100 percent of caseload. Consequently, the real
required participation rate would be zero. No recipients would be
required to do anything.
In
response to criticism about excessive credits, the bill creates a
second "floor" of required participation rates--40 percent in 2005
and 50 percent in 2007. However, the bill immediately drills five
separate holes in this "floor." Several of these holes involve the
ploy of "shrinking the denominator," a standard tactic for creating
the appearance of high participation without the substance. (For
example, if a reported participation rate is 50 percent, but half
of the actual caseload is excluded from the denominator of the
calculation, then the real participation rate would be just 25
percent.)
HOLE
#1: The Baucus bill excludes parents with children under
age one from the participation rate denominator. These parents
represent around 13 percent of the adult TANF caseload.
HOLE
#2: The bill also allows a state to exclude up to 15
percent of adult TANF recipients from work calculation if the
parent is caring for a child with a chronic illness or disability
"as defined by the state." It will be easy for states
to exclude at least 15 percent of TANF parents from the
participation rate denominator on these grounds, since states are
free to define widespread problems such as attention deficit
disorder or developmental delay as disabilities.
HOLE
#3: The bill requires the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS) to approve any waiver request from any state
that duplicates a waiver that currently exists in another state.
One of the waivers that HHS would be forced to approve would allow
the states to exempt all parents with children under five from the
work requirement and also to remove them from the work
participation rate denominator. This would enable states to remove
55 percent of the TANF caseload from the participation-rate
calculations.
Of
course, many parents on the TANF caseload may not be expected to
immediately participate in work or other constructive activities.
It is reasonable for a state not to impose work or activity
requirements on mothers with very young children or mothers caring
for authentically disabled children. Because not every mother can
work or prepare for work, federal participation rates are always
set well below 100 percent. However, to exclude most of those who
are not working from the denominator is very misleading; it creates
the appearance of high levels of work and participation when, in
fact, the levels may be very low. The Baucus bill is deceptive
because it sets a low participation "floor" of 50 percent and then
lowers that floor even further by excluding large portions of the
caseload from the denominator in assessing participation
levels.
There is considerable overlap between
holes #1, #2, and #3. Together, they would probably permit states
to exempt some 60 percent of adult TANF participants from activity
requirements and to exclude them from the participation rate
denominator. This would reduce the required participation rate
floor to just 16 percent in 2005 and 20 percent in 2007. Yet, the
WORK bill cuts even more holes in its participation floor.
HOLE
#4: The Baucus bill allows states to reduce their
participation rates by the number of applicants who are diverted
from entering the TANF rolls. The magnitude of this exemption is
unclear.
HOLE
#5: Finally, the bill exempts any state from
work-participation floor requirements if the state meets any two of
the following conditions used in defining a "needy" state: rising
unemployment, a rising TANF caseload, or a rising food stamp
caseload. The U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services estimates that this provision would
exempt approximately 20 states from the "floor" requirements in
2005 and 17 in 2007.
The
bottom line is that the so-called work floor in the Baucus bill is
made of Swiss cheese. Under the bill, the number of TANF recipients
who will be required to participate in any activity, even five
years in the future, will probably be no more than 10 percent to 15
percent. The hollowness of the Baucus work-participation standards
should not be surprising, given that members of Senator Baucus's
staff have publicly stated that they regard federal participation
rates to be unnecessary and counterproductive.
Ironically, the participation standards in
the Baucus bill for the year 2007 are actually below the current
levels of "engagement" in states under the largely obsolete
participation standards of the 1996 act. At present, approximately
39 percent of recipients are engaged in some type of work-related
activity. To maintain the current moderate levels of participation,
new federal standards are probably not needed. However, if the goal
is to increase the level of activity of recipients, moving states
toward universal engagement and increasing progress toward
self-sufficiency, then higher federal standards will be necessary.
Yet tougher participation standards are one thing the designers of
the ironically named WORK bill definitely do not want. Since the
WORK bill does not strengthen the work requirements (and, in fact,
greatly weakens them), it would be better to simply extend the
current TANF law indefinitely rather than to enact the spurious and
misleading provisions of the Baucus reauthorization bill.
Failure to Increase Hours of Required
Activity
In
contrast to President Bush's proposal, the Baucus bill does not
increase the hours of required activity for TANF recipients. The
bill is similar to current law. As in current law, mothers with
children under age six are to participate in work-related
activities for 20 hours per week. Mothers of older children are to
participate in activities for 30 hours per week, 24 of which are to
be "work-related." (Under current law, mothers of older children
are required to participate in 30 hours of activities a week, 20 of
which must be work-related). Not only is the bill's definition of
work-related very porous, but, because the bill's required
participation rates are so low, these provisions are effectively
meaningless.
Sending Welfare Mothers to College
In
section 105(e), the WORK bill creates a new TANF sub-program to
encourage states to send TANF recipients (nearly all of whom are
single mothers) to college. Under the new provision, welfare
mothers can spend up to six years completing college while the TANF
program supports the mother and her children. For purposes of meeting the
state work participation rates, states may count up to 15 percent
of adult welfare recipients as "working" while they attend
college.
In
some respects, this provision is not new. Under current law, states
are free to send TANF mothers to college; however, college
attendance, in general, cannot be counted as a work activity for
purposes of meeting the federal work standards. Since the federal
work standards never applied to more than half the TANF caseload,
the federal rules were not an impediment to states' sending TANF
recipients to college; however, those rules did mean that states
could not focus exclusively on education in lieu of work-related
activities.
The
emphasis on college education in the Baucus bill is intended to
send a symbolic message to state welfare bureaucracies and to
welfare recipients across the nation. That message is that the era
of work-oriented welfare reform is at an end. This effort to turn
away from the "work first" orientation of the 1996 reform and to
return to the pre-reform focus on classroom training would be
counter-productive. "Education first" strategies have proven to be
largely ineffective in reducing dependency, reducing poverty, and
promoting employment.
An
emphasis on sending welfare mothers to college is highly
problematic. First, society should be very careful about the
symbolic messages it sends to young women who are at risk of
out-of-wedlock childbearing. The message "Have a child out of
wedlock and the government will put you through college for free"
is not healthy and is very likely to have negative side effects.
Second, three quarters of adult Americans do not have college
degrees. Taxing these individuals to provide welfare payments to
send never-married mothers through college raises severe equity
problems. As a general rule, society
should not reward dysfunctional behavior. It should not give less
benefits to those who play by the rules than to those who break
them.
Focusing on Education Rather than
Work
The
WORK bill increases the number of TANF recipients who could enroll
in education programs and still be counted as working. Eight
percent of TANF recipients could attend high school and be counted
as working. An additional 30 percent of all "work participants"
could attend vocational education programs. As noted, 15 percent of
adult TANF recipients could attend college for up to six years
under the "post-secondary education program" specified in section
105(e) and be counted as working. In addition, an unlimited number
of TANF recipients could attend post-secondary schools for up to
two years and be counted as working. Given this very broad
definition of "work," states could meet even rigorous work
participation standards without requiring any recipients to work or
even search for a job.
No Work Requirements in the Food Stamp
Program
The
House-passed welfare reauthorization bill permits up to five states
to convert their food stamp programs from entitlement programs to
block grants. Hopefully, several states would use this opportunity
to establish work requirements in food stamps similar to those in
TANF. In contrast, the WORK bill does not allow states to block
grant food stamps, and it does not increase work requirements in
the national food stamp program.
Creating a New CETA Program
The
bill abolishes the current high-performance bonus fund and replaces
it with a program called Innovative Business Link Partnership
Grants.
This program will spend $200 million per year to provide subsidized
jobs to current and former TANF recipients as well as to
non-custodial fathers who have difficulty paying child support.
Individuals placed in these jobs would be paid the same wage rate
as non-subsidized employees. The program closely resembles the
costly, ineffective Comprehensive Employment and Training (CETA)
program of the late 1970s.
The
intent of this program is to provide recipients with much better
paying jobs than they could otherwise obtain. In addition to being
costly, this program entails equity problems: It provides job
opportunities to women who have had children out of wedlock that
are not available to similar women who have not had children out of
wedlock.
The
program also targets delinquent non-custodial fathers as
beneficiaries but very deliberately makes no mention of supportive
married husbands. While it is possible that a few husbands might
benefit from the program as current or former TANF recipients
(around 10 percent of TANF families are married couples), the
number would be extremely small. The emphasis of the program is
clear: Like most other welfare programs, it is intended to reward
single mothers and delinquent non-married fathers--conscientious
husbands need not apply. This is typical of the ubiquitous neglect
and disdain for marriage and husbands that permeate the Baucus
bill.
Weakening Work Requirements with New
Waivers.
The
WORK bill allows ten states with existing waivers to continue those
waivers through 2007. These waivers, in varying degrees, exempt
states from federal work standards. Moreover, the bill permits any
other state to automatically obtain new waivers equivalent to those
held by these 10 states. This provision would allow any state to
exempt over half its caseload from any federal requirement for work
or constructive activity and to remove all exempted recipients from
its participation rate denominator. This further undermines the
work standards of the bill.
PROMOTING WELFARE AS A ONE-WAY
HANDOUT
Prior to the 1996 welfare reform, welfare
benefits were largely one-way handouts. Individuals deemed "needy"
were entitled to a check and aid was given out unconditionally.
Recipients were rarely, if ever, required to engage in constructive
activities as a condition of receiving aid. The 1996 reform act was
a major step toward ending cash welfare as a one-way handout. The AFDC
system of cash entitlements was replaced by the new TANF program,
which focused on reciprocal obligation: Individuals in need would
be given aid but would be required to work or to prepare for work
as a condition of receiving that aid. Under TANF, aid would no
longer be unconditional but would be linked to constructive
behaviors.
In
establishing a welfare system based on conditional aid and
reciprocal obligation, two points are critical. First, recipients
must not be permitted to remain in idle dependence, but instead
must be required to engage in constructive activities while on the
rolls. Second, recipients who consistently fail to perform required
activities (such as job search, job training, or community service)
should not continue to receive welfare checks.
Accordingly, the 1996 welfare reform
legislation insisted that an increasing proportion of recipients
engage in constructive activities. The law also required that TANF
recipients be subject to a "full check sanction." Recipients who
refused to perform any and all required activities would not
continue to receive TANF benefits. Specifically, the law stated
that if a recipient refused to perform required activities, the
state should, at a minimum, "reduce the amount of assistance
otherwise payable to the family pro rata." That is, the family's
TANF check should be reduced in proportion to the degree of
non-compliance. The clear meaning of this provision was that
individuals who consistently performed none of the activities
required of them should receive no TANF benefits. "No activity"
meant "no benefits." The congressional conference report on the law
clarified this basic point.
Regrettably, the Clinton Administration
ignored the clear content of the PRWORA reform law on this point
and issued TANF regulations that authorized states to use lenient
or partial sanctions on parents who were fully non-compliant.
Today, more than half of the nation's TANF recipients reside in
states with lenient or partial sanctions. In these states, parents
can consistently fail to perform any and all required activities,
month after month, and still continue to receive most of their TANF
cash aid.
The
welfare reauthorization bill passed in the House of Representatives
on May 16, 2002, reaffirms the principle of reciprocal obligation
between society and the welfare recipient. The bill reaffirms the
sanctioning provisions of the original TANF law, stipulating that
state TANF programs must have meaningful sanctions for
non-compliant behavior. At a minimum, if a parent on TANF who is
required to engage in activities fails to perform any activity
whatsoever for two consecutive months, the entire TANF check for
the family must be suspended for one month. The TANF check may be
resumed in the next month if the parent has complied with the
activity requirements.
By
contrast, the WORK bill rejects the fundamental premise of reform
that a reciprocal obligation exists between society and welfare
recipient. According to the WORK bill, society has an obligation to
support welfare recipients, but recipients have no obligation to
engage in constructive activities in exchange for that aid. The
bill seeks to incrementally re-establish a system of one-way cash
handouts. The bill permits states to give federally funded TANF
checks indefinitely to individuals who have consistently refused to
perform all activities that have been required of them.
Furthermore, the bill makes it
considerably more difficult for all states to impose any penalties
on non-compliant TANF recipients by creating an additional
bureaucratic step to the sanctioning process. It mandates that a
state agency must review the recipient's Individual Responsibility
Plan (IRP) before applying any sanction. This provision does not
make sense. Since recipients are sanctioned for failure to perform
activities required by the state, a review of an individual's IRP
is completely irrelevant. The sole intent of this provision is to
reduce the number of sanctions by making it more difficult for
welfare officials to impose them. (This restriction on sanctioning
is discussed more fully below in the sections on Wisconsin-style
workfare.)
PROHIBITING WISCONSIN-STYLE WELFARE
REFORM
Under the welfare reform implemented in
Wisconsin, adult AFDC/TANF caseloads were cut by 90 percent and
child poverty fell by 40 percent--one of the larger declines in the
nation. Despite Wisconsin's leading role in reform, the WORK bill
launches a deliberate attack on Wisconsin-style reforms. Jason
Turner, who played a key role in designing the state's welfare
reform as Manager of Employment Programs in Wisconsin and later
served as New York City Commissioner of Welfare under Mayor Rudy
Giuliani, declared, "The provisions of the Baucus bill constitute a
de facto prohibition on operating workfare programs like those in
Wisconsin or New York City."
Employment Laws: Obstructing Workfare and
Community Service
The
core of the successful Wisconsin model is the requirement that TANF
recipients perform community service or be involved in "work
experience" (typically, in non-profit and public-sector
organizations) in exchange for their benefits. The maximum number
of hours of required activity was set by dividing a recipient's
TANF and Food Stamp benefits by the minimum wage. Although
work-experience positions are not formal jobs, they provide
preparation and motivation that help recipients enter the
workforce. Most individuals in work-experience positions quickly
leave to obtain actual employment.
Despite the Wisconsin model's dramatic
record of success in increasing employment and decreasing
dependency, Senator Baucus's WORK bill would deliberately make it
difficult or impossible for states to operate workfare programs
similar to this model. The bill does this by making all community
service workfare programs subject to an unlimited range of
"workplace laws." The term "workplace laws" is undefined, but, in
the past, liberals have argued that work experience and other
activities to which TANF recipients are assigned should be subject
to the Davis-Bacon Act, the Service Contract Act, the National
Labor Relations Act, and some 20 additional labor laws. Under the
Davis-Bacon Act or Service Contract Act, states would have to
either substantially increase the welfare benefits given to
recipients performing work experience or greatly reduce the hours
of "work" performed.
In
addition, the "workplace law" provision of the Baucus bill appears
to require welfare agencies to pay unemployment insurance and
Social Security taxes for recipients who participate in
work-experience programs. This would substantially increase the
costs and paperwork involved in operating these programs. The
National Labor Relations Act would give unions the right to
organize and represent welfare recipients as union members.
Governments would then be required to engage in collective
bargaining with unions regarding the operation of the TANF
programs.
Prohibitions on Alleged Job Displacement
The
Baucus bill launches an additional assault against Wisconsin-style
welfare reform, stipulating that work-experience programs cannot
"supplant" normal employment. This means that a welfare
recipient performing work experience in a non-profit organization
or government agency could not perform any activities that had
previously been performed by a regular employee--even if the
employee had left voluntarily and the organization had expanded its
workforce in other areas. For example, consider the
following scenario. A non-profit has a paid employee who answers
the telephone. The employee quits. The organization wants to use a
work-experience participant to answer the phones. It cannot do this
because to do so would involve "supplanting" normal paid
employment.
This
provision constitutes a de facto prohibition against states'
operating community-service or work-experience programs. As Jason
Turner explains, "If these worker displacement rules had been in
effect earlier, it would have been very difficult, if not
impossible, to establish the current workfare programs in Wisconsin
and New York City. Even the most limited interpretation of the
Baucus language would give advocacy groups ample grounds to
repeatedly sue welfare departments over the operation of
work-experience programs. The prospect of endless lawsuits will
dissuade most states and counties from operating work-experience
programs."
The
provisions in the Baucus bill to outlaw Wisconsin-style workfare
have been urged by public-sector unions who have always feared that
work-experience programs would displace government employees.
However, even from the narrow self-interested perspective of the
unions, such fears are unrealistic. Wisconsin operates the
strongest work-experience program in the nation and has placed
nearly all of the state's TANF beneficiaries in work-experience
slots. Even so, there are only about 10,000 work-experience
positions in the whole state, most of which are in the under-funded
non-profit sector. By contrast, there are over 300,000 state and
local government employees in Wisconsin. Workfare hardly poses a
credible threat to public-sector employment. In fact, employment by
the state and local governments actually increased under Governor
Tommy Thompson's tenure.
Restricting Sanctions
In
the Wisconsin welfare system, all adult TANF recipients are
required to work as a condition of receiving aid. Those who do not
have a private-sector job perform work experience/community
service. Recipients in community service slots are under a "pay for
performance system": they must earn their TANF checks as they would
earn a real paycheck. If they fail to perform work without good
cause, their TANF check is immediately reduced in direct proportion
to the work missed. For example, if a recipient was required to
perform 120 hours of community service in a given month but
actually performed only 60 hours, the TANF check for the month
would be cut in half. Like any payroll system, the reduction in the
TANF check is calculated automatically by computer in response to
the number of hours of work reported by the supervisor.
The
Baucus WORK bill would make it difficult or impossible to operate
this system because it imposes a cumbersome bureaucratic review
process that must occur before any check can be reduced for
noncompliance. The WORK bill states that the welfare bureaucracy
must actively "review the individual responsibility plan prior to
imposing a sanction against the adult recipient or the family for
failure to comply with a requirement of the plan." This provision
is pointless; there would be no reason to review the individual
responsibility plan because the recipient would be sanctioned for
failing to perform those activities to which he was assigned under
the plan. The sole purpose of this provision is to make it much
more difficult for states to sanction recipients who refuse to
work. In the case of Wisconsin, it would make very difficult or
impossible for the state to operate the current automatic
pay-for-performance system. The reduction in a recipient's welfare
check for failure to perform required activities would probably be
delayed for a month or more, and the critical linkage between
behavior and reward would be dismantled.
DISCOURAGING Marriage:
ENCOURAGING Out-of-Wedlock ChildBearing
Just
as the notion of "universal engagement" and work participation
within the WORK bill are empty slogans, the bill's
"marriage-promotion" elements, likewise, are hollow. Overall, the
bill discourages marriage and promotes single parenthood.
Marriage Promotion Grants That Have Nothing
To Do with Marriage
Two
of the four principal goals of the 1996 welfare reform legislation
were to reduce out-of-wedlock childbearing and to increase
two-parent families. It was expected that states would use TANF
funds to develop programs to promote healthy marriages. Yet,
despite the fact that more than $100 billion in federal TANF funds
has been available for this purpose over the last six years, only
$20 million has been spent on pro-marriage programs. States claim
they were unable to promote marriage because they lacked model
programs to follow. Because of the lack of activity on the critical
marriage issue, the Bush Administration decided to allocate $300
million annually to fund pilot programs to reduce child poverty and
increase child well-being by increasing healthy marriages. (This
sum equals roughly 2 percent of future federal TANF funds.)
Although the Baucus bill allocates $200 million per
year to a "healthy marriage promotion grants" program, this program
is about marriage in name only. Indeed, most of the activities that
qualify for funding under the Baucus marriage program have nothing
to do with marriage. For example, Senator Baucus's own summary of
his bill states that "marriage promotion" funds may be used for
"broad-based income-support strategies that provide increased
assistance to low-income working parents, such as housing,
transportation, transitional benefits, etc., independent of family
structure." In other words, the
marriage grant program is designed to support the vast array of
conventional welfare services rather than to promote and support
healthy marriages. Under the Baucus bill, providing cash, public
housing, health care, or day care to single mothers would
constitute a "pro-marriage" activity.
Prohibiting Reductions in Anti-Marriage
Penalties
Existing means-tested welfare programs
such as TANF, food stamps, public housing, Medicaid, and the Earned
Income Tax Credit (EITC) profoundly discriminate against married
couples. If a single mother marries an employed father, the
father's earnings will make the mother ineligible for most welfare
aid. The existing welfare system creates strong financial
incentives for low-income mothers and fathers to remain separate
rather than to marry.
One
of the objectives of President Bush's proposed marriage program was
to encourage small-scale experimentation in reducing the
anti-marriage incentives of welfare and to assess the impact of
these experiments in promoting healthy marriages. In contrast, the
so-called marriage promotion program of the Baucus bill appears to
prohibit any reduction in the anti-marriage penalties of the
welfare system, dictating that all benefits must be provided in a
manner that does not "exclude families from participation based on
the number of parents in the family."
While this language sounds benign, it is
not. In the simplest sense, it prohibits the relatively meager
marriage program funds from being targeted toward low-income
married couples. Even worse, the language may prohibit
experimentation in reducing the anti-marriage penalties in welfare
programs. As explained above, the
welfare system creates anti-marriage penalties because a mother
loses most of her benefits if she marries an employed man. The
disincentive for marriage can be reduced by allowing a mother to
retain at least a portion of her benefits if she marries; this
would generally be done by "disregarding" a portion of the
husband's earnings, that is, ignoring them for purposes of
calculating the mother's benefits. The Baucus language appears to
prohibit disregarding a husband's earnings, thus ensuring that the
full anti-marriage bias of welfare will be retained for couples
participating in the so-called marriage promotion program.
States to Pay the Full Costs of
Out-of-Wedlock Births
There are 1.3 million out-of-wedlock
births in the United States each year. The Medicaid program pays
for the medical costs for about 85 percent of these out-of-wedlock
births. (By contrast, if a mother-to-be is married to an employed
husband, in most cases, she will be ineligible for Medicaid
assistance.) Under current law, states may attempt to recoup some
or all of the hospital maternity costs from the non-married father
of the child. The Baucus bill prohibits states from attempting to
have non-married fathers reimburse the government for child-birth
costs.
This is, again, in keeping with the general thrust of the bill,
which seeks to promote and increase government subsidies for
out-of-wedlock childbearing and to relieve non-married parents of
responsibility for their actions.
Granting TANF Benefits to Non-Citizens Who
Give Birth Out of Wedlock
Most
non-citizen residents who come to the United States have sponsors
who pledge that, if the non-citizen falls into financial
difficulty, they will support that individual rather than having
the welfare system do so. However, the sponsor's commitment to
support immigrants has proven to be completely unenforceable. The
1996 welfare law put teeth into the sponsor's obligation by
ensuring that non-citizens could not receive federal TANF aid. The
Baucus bill overturns this stipulation and allows state governments
to give federal TANF funds to non-citizens. It is expected that
states with large immigrant populations will return to the
pre-reform practice of giving federal welfare benefits to
non-citizens. In effect, the Baucus bill will relieve immigrant
sponsors of financial obligation by allowing lawful non-citizens to
receive TANF assistance. Nearly all the beneficiaries of this
provision will be non-citizen single mothers, many of whom had
children out of wedlock after coming to the United States.
At-Home Care Provision: A New Program to
Reward Illegitimacy
The
WORK bill creates an experimental program with $150 million in
funding over a five-year period to pay non-married mothers to
provide infant care for their own children who are under age two. Receipt of
these at-home care funds would not count against the five-year time
limit on receipt of TANF aid. This provision repeats the same
failures of the old AFDC system, but will be even more generous in
rewarding illegitimacy. The impact of this provision is clear: It
is explicitly designed to encourage and reward women for having
children out of wedlock.
Increasing Welfare Payments for Single
Mothers
Under current law, a single mother's
welfare benefits are, in general, reduced when she receives child
support from the father. The Baucus bill makes it much easier for
mothers on welfare to "double dip," receiving both child support
payments and their full TANF check. By significantly raising the
incomes of single mothers on welfare, this provision makes it less
likely that they will leave welfare and obtain employment.
(Ironically, if the mother decides to marry the child's father
rather than merely collecting child support, she will, in most
cases, lose her TANF aid.) The effect of this provision, like many
others in the Baucus bill, is to increase the financial incentives
for a mother and father to remain separate and not marry. It is
estimated that the cost to the taxpayer for this provision will be
approximately $1 billion over five years.
Excluding Goals to Promote Marriage and
Reduce Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing
Under current law, each state is required
to formulate and publish a "state plan" for its TANF program. The
federal law requires that each state plan must "establish goals and
take action to prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock
pregnancies, with special emphasis on teen pregnancy." The current
law further requires states to "establish numerical goals to reduce
illegitimacy" between 1996 and 2005. The Baucus bill eliminates all
references to out-of-wedlock childbearing from the required state
plans as well as the state's numeric goals to reduce illegitimacy.
The bill also removes all references to reducing out-of-wedlock
childbearing from the national TANF performance measures. According
to the Baucus bill, it is either inappropriate or unimportant for
the states to reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies as current law
urges.
In
place of the current language on reducing out-of-wedlock
pregnancies, the Baucus bill creates a new national goal of
reducing "teen pregnancies" by one third. HHS is required to assess
each state's progress toward that goal. At first glance, the
elimination of all reference to out-of-wedlock childbearing from
the state plans and the substitution of a new provision targeting
teen pregnancy exclusively is perplexing. While one-third of all
U.S. births are now out of wedlock, only 15 percent of those births
occur to girls under 18. Most out-of-wedlock births occur to women
in their early twenties.
The
apparent paradox can be understood by taking into account the
conventional wisdom within feminist circles. Radical feminists
believe that, while it is unwise for a young girl to have a child
before she has finished high school, it is perfectly appropriate
and even commendable for slightly older women who have completed
high school to have a child outside marriage. Thus, while it is
appropriate for the government to discourage teen pregnancy, it is
inappropriate for the government to seek to reduce out-of-wedlock
pregnancies among women who are just a few years older. The
philosophy behind the Baucus bill is clear: It is imperative for
the government to extensively subsidize never-married mothers, but
it is inappropriate or unimportant for the government to seek to
reduce out-of-wedlock childbearing.
Ending the Bonus Fund for Reducing
Out-of-Wedlock Births
The
1996 reform created a bonus fund of $100 million per year to reward
states that were most successful in reducing out-of-wedlock births.
The intention was to create an incentive for states to develop
vigorous programs to reduce out-of-wedlock childbearing. However,
the bonus fund has thus far generated little interest or activity
among the states. As a consequence, both the Administration's
welfare plan and the House-passed welfare reform bill (H.R. 4737)
eliminate the out-of-wedlock birth reduction bonus fund and shift
the funds to a new marriage-promotion program that authentically
seeks to encourage marriage. The Baucus bill eliminates the
reduction bonus and places the funds in its new "healthy marriage
promotion program." However, as noted above, the Baucus marriage
program has little or nothing to do with marriage. The Baucus bill
thus reduces the efforts in current law to reduce illegitimacy
without creating a corresponding new emphasis on marriage. This is
not an accident; it is consistent with the overall theme of the
Baucus legislation, which encourages out-of-wedlock childbearing
and subsidizes single parenthood.
Removing Marriage and Illegitimacy from
the High-Performance Bonus Fund
The
current TANF law established a high-performance bonus fund of $200
million per year. These funds were to be allocated to the states
according to their success in meeting the four goals of TANF. Two
of these goals were reducing out-of-wedlock childbearing and
strengthening two-parent families. In effect, half of the bonus
fund was to be targeted to states that were most effective in
reducing illegitimacy and strengthening marriage. The Baucus
bill restructures the high-performance bonus fund into a "business
link partnership program," removing all references to marriage and
out-of-wedlock childbearing. (The House bill redirects $100 million
from the high-performance bonus to the new marriage promotion
program; the smaller redesigned high-performance fund is focused on
work issues.)
De-emphasis on Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing
Uncompensated by an Emphasis on Marriage
The
current law makes reducing out-of-wedlock childbearing one of the
four major national goals of TANF. While the Baucus bill does not
take the blatant step of eliminating this formal goal, it does
eliminate all other practical provisions in TANF dealing with
out-of-wedlock childbearing. As noted in the preceding sections,
the WORK bill eliminates the illegitimacy-reduction bonus fund;
removes the reduction of out-of-wedlock pregnancies as one of the
four major elements considered in awarding grants under the
high-performance bonus plan; and drops out-of-wedlock pregnancy as
an element in state TANF plans. Thus, the Baucus bill deliberately
neuters the original TANF goal of reducing out-of-wedlock
childbearing and renders it meaningless.
The
House-passed reform bill also eliminates the illegitimacy-reduction
bonus fund and removes both illegitimacy and marriage as criteria
from the high performance bonus, but the House bill redirects $200
million from these existing bonus pools to the new healthy marriage
promotion program. Since the Baucus bill does not create a
meaningful marriage program, its de-emphasis of out-of-wedlock
childbearing is uncompensated by any real increase in emphasis on
marriage.
Dropping Reference to Marriage in TANF
Goals and Findings
As
noted, one of the four marriage goals of the original 1996 TANF law
was to "encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent
families." Although there was no doubt at the time of passage that
the intent of this goal was to encourage marriage, in subsequent
years, liberals and state welfare bureaucracies gave a very
different interpretation to the term "two-parent families."
According to these groups, encouraging the formation and
maintenance of "two-parent families" means merely collecting child
support from absent fathers or providing job training to
non-married fathers in the hopes they will pay more child
support.
The
Bush Administration's plan and the House-passed reauthorization
bill have sought to clarify the original intent of the TANF law by
replacing the original language with a more clearly stated goal to
"encourage the formation and maintenance of healthy, two-parent
married families, and encourage responsible fatherhood." (Emphasis
added.)
It
should be no surprise that the creators of the WORK bill were
unwilling to include this clarification of TANF goals in their
legislation. Instead, the Baucus bill retains the original vague
reference to two-parent families. The fact that the Baucus bill
fails to even mention the word "marriage" as part of the goals of
TANF is clear evidence of the unstated hostility toward marriage
that animates the designers of this legislation.
The
House-passed reauthorization bill also contains a list of
"findings" concerning the effects of marriage on children and
society. In its findings section, the House legislation documents,
on the basis of scientific literature, the simple fact that
marriage has strong positive effects on children while non-marital
childbearing and non-marital cohabitation have negative effects.
The Baucus bill also contains an extensive "findings" section but,
not surprisingly, it excludes all evidence relating to the positive
effects of marriage on adults and children. The WORK bill does make
the anemic assertion that "children deserve to be raised in
supportive homes, preferably by two parents," but, even here, it
avoids the "controversial" term "marriage." As noted above, to
liberals "two-parent involvement" means nothing more than
collecting child support from absent fathers.
The
Baucus bill is saturated with a deep, implicit hostility toward the
institution of marriage. Despite the overwhelming evidence that
marriage is highly beneficial for children and adults, the
promoters of the Baucus bill are unwilling to even mention that
evidence, let alone to make an authentic effort to strengthen
marriage as an institution.
Bogus Elimination of Discrimination
Against Marriage
The
Baucus bill does contain weak and confused language which allegedly
ends TANF's bias against marriage. The language prohibits state
TANF programs from imposing "stricter eligibility criteria for
two-parent families" than for one-parent families. As a means of
reducing welfare's bias against marriage, this provision is largely
irrelevant and possibly harmful. In all states, married families
are currently eligible for TANF benefits; differences in
eligibility standards between one-parent and two-parent families
are modest and of little practical significance.
In
reality, TANF and other means-tested aid programs (such as food
stamps and public housing) are biased against marriage not because
of eligibility standards but because of the essential structure of
means-tested aid. In a means-tested program, welfare benefits are
reduced as earned income in the household increases. This means a
welfare mother will lose most or all of her welfare benefits if she
marries an employed male. Thus, most low-income couples can
maximize income if they remain unmarried. Changing eligibility
standards will not correct this anti-marriage bias. As noted above,
the bias against marriage in TANF can only be reduced if a state
"disregards" some or all of a husband's earnings. ("Disregarding"
the husband's income means the state does not count part of the
husband's earnings when determining the mother's TANF benefits.)
Only if a husband's earnings are disregarded can a mother marry an
employed father without losing welfare income.
For
this reason, the language of the Baucus bill is largely irrelevant
on the issue of discrimination against marriage. Even worse, the
bill could make TANF's current bias against marriage more severe.
The bill asserts that "a state shall not impose a requirement [on
two-parent families] that does not apply in determining the
eligibility of one-parent families." This provision may prohibit
a state from disregarding a husband's income, since a single mother
would not have the same disregard. In this way, the Baucus
bill could solidify welfare's bias against marriage rather than
reducing it.
An
additional problem with this provision is that it refers to
"two-parent families" rather than married families. As noted
previously, to liberals the term "two-parent family" covers
non-married cohabiting couples as well as absent fathers who
attempt to pay child support to non-married mothers. Consequently,
the provision could require states to pay TANF benefits to
unemployed cohabiting boyfriends and non-working absent fathers.
Such a policy would be wasteful and counterproductive.
Creating a New Condom Promotion Program
for Teens
The
1996 welfare reform legislation created a small new federal
abstinence program. Despite the creation of this program, most
federal funds continue to flow to safe-sex/pregnancy-prevention
programs that promote contraceptive use. The federal government
currently spends $85 million per year on abstinence programs,
compared to over $1.1 billion on safe-sex/pregnancy-prevention
programs that promote contraceptive use. Despite the overwhelming
current bias in favor of "safe sex," the Baucus bill creates yet
another condom promotion program for teens, which it
euphemistically calls "abstinence first." Despite its name, this
program will have nothing to do with abstinence but will
aggressively promote condom use in the nation's schools.
While abstinence-first programs contain
little more than cursory references to abstinence, they contain
large amounts of material that would be alarming to nearly all
parents. For example, "Focus on Kids," a so-called abstinence-plus
program promoted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), teaches
middle-school students and high-school students that
there are other ways to be close to a
person without having sexual intercourse.... Brainstorm ways to be
close. The list may include...body massage, bathing together,
masturbation, sensuous feeding, fantasizing, watching erotic
movies, reading erotic books and magazines....
Similarly, in "Be Proud! Be Responsible!,"
another abstinence-plus program promoted by the CDC, teachers are
instructed to ask students to
brainstorm ways to increase spontaneity
and the likelihood that they'll use condoms. (Examples : Store
condoms under mattress; eroticize condom use with partner.) Now ask
[students] to suggest ways to make condom use fun and pleasurable
by finishing these sentences: "Condoms could make sex more fun
by....Condoms would not ruin the mood if we...."
These programs are typical of the
so-called abstinence-first programs that would be funded by the
WORK bill. To refer to such programs as abstinence is both
ridiculous and dishonest.
MASSIVE NEW SPENDING
Not
content with merely repealing welfare reform, Senator Baucus adds
insult to injury by demanding more money to finance the repeal. The
WORK bill creates no less than 18 new spending programs. These
include the following: a grant program for housing for families
with multiple barriers to self-sufficiency; a grant program to
promote the purchase of cars; a new tribal job training program; a
new teen pregnancy resource center; a grant program for welfare
staff training and welfare benefit outreach; a grant program for
second chance homes; a new program for child support review; a new
advisory panel on child well-being; a tribal TANF technical
assistance fund; and, a new grant program for employment of
non-custodial parents. The Congressional Budget Office estimates
that the bill increases welfare spending by $10 billion over five
years. Over a 10-year period, the new spending will amount to $23
billion.
CONCLUSION
The
welfare reform passed in 1996 has been a dramatic success. Welfare
caseloads have been cut in half. Employment of single mothers has
surged. The poverty rates of single mothers and black children,
after remaining static for a quarter century, have dropped
dramatically and are now at the lowest point in U.S. history.
Ironically, all of the key elements of
this successful reform were opposed by liberals in Congress. At the
time of reform, liberals opposed:
- Setting
time limits on receipt of aid;
- Ending
the entitlement nature of funding;
- Setting
goals and policies to reduce welfare dependence and caseloads;
- Requiring welfare recipients to take a
job or, if no job was available, to prepare for work;
- Making
sponsors responsible for the support of immigrants they bring to
the country;
- Cutting
benefits for able-bodied recipients who refuse to work; and,
- Setting
goals to reduce out-of-wedlock childbearing and to strengthen
marriage.
Prior to 1996, liberals in Congress
created and defended a very different welfare system. This
pre-reform system provided long-term cash aid to able-bodied adults
who did not work, placed no time limits on receipt of aid, and
rewarded single parenthood while penalizing marriage. In the strong
conservative political tide of the mid-1990s, some liberals were
afraid to publicly oppose welfare reform and reluctantly voted for
the reform bill. Many others simply voted against it. Overall, most
liberals opposed the key principles of reform and sought to
preserve most of the pre-reform system.
The
attitudes of liberals in Congress on these issues have not changed.
They still oppose the essential principles of the 1996 reform and
seek, to the maximum extent possible, to restore the pre-reform
system. However, in attempting to dismantle welfare reform and to
restore the old welfare system, liberal politicians face a dilemma.
An overwhelming majority of the public believe that the pre-reform
welfare system was a failure and that reform, by contrast, has been
a great success. Americans state they would be less likely to vote
for a candidate who sought to repeal welfare reform by a ratio of
four to one.
American attitudes on marriage are
similar. Some 86 percent of the public believe that it is important
for the well-being of children that low-income parents get married
and stay married. Furthermore, 85 percent
favor pilot programs (like those proposed by President Bush) to
help reduce the number of children born outside marriage by
referring interested couples to marriage education programs.
Obviously, an overt assault against
welfare reform or marriage is politically impossible.Therefore,
liberals pursue a strategy of deception, publicly claiming to
support reform, while surreptitiously working to dismantle it. The
Baucus WORK bill exemplifies this strategy. The gap between what
proponents claim the bill does and what it actually does is
enormous. The Baucus bill creates a surreal landscape in which
everything is its opposite. This includes:
- A "universal engagement" policy that does
not require recipients to perform any activities;
- A 70 percent "work participation rate"
that is really 10 percent and involves no work;
- A "healthy marriage promotion program"
that subsidizes single mothers; and,
- An "abstinence" education program that
promotes condoms and promiscuity.
Senator Baucus's efforts to restore the
old-style welfare system of one-way handouts will have disastrous
effects on society and the poor. The Baucus bill's indifference to
marriage, the increase in rewards for out-of-wedlock childbearing,
and Senator Baucus's defense of a welfare system that actively
penalizes poor couples who do marry is a recipe for national
disaster.
The
1996 welfare reform has been one of the greatest success stories in
public policy in the last half century. Policymakers should resist
all efforts to turn back the clock on reform. President Bush and
the House of Representatives should refuse to compromise with
liberals in the Senate in their efforts to kill welfare reform.
Rather than pursuing a "reauthorization" of welfare reform that is,
in reality, the demise of reform, Congress should simply
appropriate funding for TANF, on a yearly basis, under the existing
PRWORA law.
-- Robert Rector is a
Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.