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The Baucus "WORK" Act of
2002: Repealing Welfare Reform by Robert E.Rector Backgrounder
#1580
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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.
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