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[Page: H8402]  GPO's PDF
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   The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Hawaii (Mrs. MINK) is recognized for 5 minutes.

• [Begin Insert]

   Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. Mr. Speaker, I rise to advise this House that I have introduced a bill, H.R. 3113, which seeks to amend and reauthorize the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF ). H.R. 3113 currently has 49 sponsors. I hope that more Members will join in support of major changes to the TANF law that Congress enacted in 1996. The TANF block grants must be reauthorized next year. It is not too early to begin the review and discussion of necessary changes.

   TANF replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, which had distributed welfare benefits since the 1930s. Benefits under the AFDC program were provided as an entitlement and although benefit levels varied from state to state, the overall system was regulated by the federal government. TANF repealed the entitlement and made much of the eligibility and program structure subject to state law.

   TANF also imposed a cumulative lifetime time limit of 5 years on the receipt of benefits. TANF went into effect in 1996 and many of the families enrolled in the program are now reaching their 5-year limit. Five hundred families in Hawaii will be cut off in December of this year. In some states, thousands of families already have been cut off because the TANF law allows states to have even shorter time limits.

   The recession we now are suffering cost 415,000 jobs in October 2001 alone. Thousands more jobs lost in November spread economic vulnerability through wider segments of our population. This vulnerability is especially severe for TANF families. In October, 111,000 jobs were lost in the service sector, where many current and former TANF recipients have been employed. Layoffs are especially harsh for TANF families that do not qualify for unemployment insurance and who are no longer eligible for welfare. Of the 415,000 people who lost their jobs in October, only 40 percent were eligible for unemployment insurance. Of the thousands of workers who are not protected by the unemployment insurance system, many are mothers who have left TANF for the labor market.

   According to its proponents, TANF promotes labor market work as the way out of ``welfare dependency.'' Yet most of the jobs that are available to recipients pay such low wages that fulltime employment does not raise their families above the poverty line. So even for TANF recipients who do have jobs, employment has not yielded economic security. TANF actually impedes recipients' efforts to move into jobs at living wages. TANF does not allow recipients to meet the work requirement by pursuing post-secondary education; it limits vocational education to one year; and it caps the percentage of recipients who can be counted as engaged in a work activity by virtue of vocational training .

   TANF's work requirement stresses getting a job, any job, regardless of what it pays, what benefits it provides, and whether the combination of earnings and benefits are sufficient for a family to survive on. The failure of TANF to count post-secondary education as a work activity is its biggest hypocrisy and is one of the key problems H.R. 3113 seeks to correct. Research has long established that women with education beyond high school, especially a college education, are more likely to earn living wages.

   Child care is another nagging problem under TANF . Without dependable and appropriate child care there is little hope for a parent to be able to stay in an employment situation. Under the Family Support Act of 1988, child care was an entitlement. TANF repealed the entitlement for individuals, making it even harder for poor mothers to assure care and supervision to their children while they are away from home meeting their work requirement. One of the powerful ideas in the 1996 welfare debate was the strong view that one of the ways to help children in welfare families is to find their fathers and make them provide child support. TANF requires women seeking welfare to disclose the identities of biological fathers and to help government locate them. It enforces these requirements with new sanctions reducing family benefits when mothers don't comply. These harsh provisions totally disregard a mothers' own best judgment about what's best--and safest--for herself and her children. What's more, TANF provides that all child support money collected by the government stays with the government as reimbursement for welfare.

   What Congress needs to do is to undo punitive regulation of mothers on welfare. Instead, we need to encourage states to make job training and educational opportunities available to recipients so that leaving welfare for the labor market means leaving poverty. We need to make it possible for mothers to seek job training and education, as well as to keep jobs that pay living wages. We need to treat women on welfare the same way that we treat all women--with the respect, dignity, and rights we all cherish for ourselves.

   TANF needs to take into account the many different reasons that people are forced to turn to welfare. Many poor mothers lack the skills needed to land better-paying jobs. They need access to training and education. Many cannot afford to be employed, because they lack child care or can't find affordable transportation or aren't assured crucial benefits such as health care. They need to be protected by all labor laws, be guaranteed child care, and receive Medicaid benefits for as long as they are income-eligible. Some mothers suffer from substance abuse or mental health problems or debilitating illness or domestic violence. These mothers need access to treatment, recovery, legal remedies, and skills-building services before entering the labor market. All children desperately need loving care in the home. Their mothers need the resources and the flexibility to decide when their children need a mother's care, not that of a sibling or baby sitter.

   I urge my colleagues to consider H.R. 3113, which seeks to: 1. Expand the definition of ``work activity'' to include education and job training at all levels as well as a parent's caregiving for a child under the age of six or over the age of six if ill or disabled or if after school care is not provided: 2. Stop the 5 year clock from running if the recipient is engaged in an allowable work activity, including education and job training ; 3. Prohibit full family sanctions that punish whole families when the adult recipient doesn't meet a TANF rule; 4. Make paternity establishment and child support enforcement voluntary, while encouraging cooperation by directing all child support collections to the family; 5. Count treatment for domestic and sexual violence, mental health problems, and substance abuse as ``work activities''; 6. Prohibit states from establishing ``family caps'' that withhold benefits from a child born to a mother on welfare; 7. Replace the ``illegitimacy bonus'' with a poverty reduction bonus for states that lower poverty rates the most; 8. Restore the child care entitlement for TANF families when the parent enters the labor market or in a work activity leading to participation in the labor market; 9. Guarantee equal access to TANF regardless of marital or citizen status and enforcement antidiscrimination and labor laws, as well as due process guarantees; 10. Stop the clock for all TANF families during recession and temporarily restore TANF eligibility for families who have exceeded their time limit but who are otherwise eligible (recession equals 5.5% unemployment rate or higher); 11. Provide incentives to states to provide programs to reduce barriers to employment, to offer job training , and to encourage education; and 12. Stipulate that the statutory purpose and goal of TANF is to reduce child and family poverty.

   These changes will put TANF to work helping mothers parent in dignity and helping children grow up with economic security. I urge

[Page: H8403]  GPO's PDF

• [End Insert]

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