SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY

LENGTH: 2360 words

COMMITTEE: HOUSE WAYS AND MEANS

SUBCOMMITTEE: HUMAN RESOURCE

HEADLINE: WELFARE OVERHAUL PROPOSALS

BILL-NO:

 

H.R. 3113             Retrieve Bill Tracking Report


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TESTIMONY-BY: PATSY T. MINK,, REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE

AFFILIATION: STATE OF HAWAII

BODY:
Statement of Patsy T. Mink, a Representative in Congress from the State of Hawaii

Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the House

Committee on Ways and Means

Hearing on Welfare Reform Reauthorization Proposals

April 11, 2002

Chairman Herger, Ranking Member Cardin, and Members of the Subcommittee on Human Resources

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on proposals to reauthorize the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. What we finally decide will have a tremendous impact on the poorest of our nation's children and on their parents who are struggling to improve their family's condition.

In October 2001, I introduced H.R. 3113, the TANF Reauthorization Act of 2001. I am delighted to report that the bill currently has 89 sponsors and has been endorsed by 80 organizations, including Business and Professional Women/USA, Center for Women Policy Studies, National Association of Commissions for Women, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, National League of Women Voters of the U.S., and YWCA of the USA, to name just a few. I attach a list of HR 3113's co-sponsors and the list of organizations that support HR 3113. I urge the Subcommittee to seriously consider the provisions of HR 3113 as you begin marking up a TANF Reauthorization bill. This is an issue very close to my heart. In 1995, I offered the Democratic substitute to HR 4, an early version of the welfare-to- work legislation, which was vetoed by President Clinton. In preparing for the reauthorization of TANF in the 107th Congress, I incorporated many of the provisions contained in my 1995 substitute to HR 4 as well as recommendations from grassroots organizations representing the people most affected by welfare reform in 1996. These organizations held extensive hearings to identify the barriers that TANF families encounter in making the transition from welfare to economic security.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), which became law in 1996, has been hailed by many as a success because of the dramatic decline in the number of persons on welfare rolls in many states. Many equate the declines in numbers of families receiving benefits with a corresponding decline in the need for assistance. But we have evidence that many families have been pushed from the welfare rolls before they were able to adequately provide for their families. Is this our goal--simply to reduce the number of persons receiving benefits? Or are we trying to help these families find their way to economic security?

Some 50 percent of former recipients are still living in poverty and 30 percent have been unable to find jobs. Study after study shows high rates of hardship, ranging from having to forego needed medical care to skipping meals, to being unable to pay the rent.

I believe our goal in creating a social welfare safety net for families must be, first and foremost, to ensure the well-being of the children affected. Reducing dependency is a valid goal, but only if it means that families can move onto true self- sufficiency. I believe that the best way to achieve these goal is to enable women receiving TANF to pursue the training and education they need to get good jobs so that they can leave public assistance permanently, provide economic security for their families, and set an example of achievement and ambition that their children can emulate. Are we well-served by pushing a young single mother to accept a low-wage dead-end job where she will receive minimum wage, inadequate or no benefits, and little hope for a better future for herself and her children? Or would we be better off giving that woman an opportunity to earn a college degree, become certified as a nurse or computer technician, or receive advanced vocational training so that she and her children can become economically secure?

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.

HR 3113 seeks to:

1. Expand the definition of "work activity" to include

a.education and job training at all levels (elementary and secondary education, literacy training, ESL, GED, high education, and work-study programs)

b.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. The bill will prohibit full family sanctions, permitting only an incremental reduction in the family benefit tied to the benefit of the parent found in violation of the rule. This will protect children by assuring them their safety net even if a mother loses her benefit.

4. Make paternity establishment and child support enforcement voluntary, while encouraging cooperation by directing all child support collections to the family. This provision will restore the constitutional privacy rights of poor mothers by making the paternity establishment and child support cooperation provisions voluntary for mothers. Current policy requires mothers to disclose the identity of biological fathers to welfare agencies even if they do not want them involved with their children. To enforce these rules against mothers, TANF requires them to answer intrusive questions that strike at the very heart of privacy guarantees. Child support enforcement should be available to all mothers who want fathers to help financially with children. But mothers should not be compelled to secure child support against their own best judgement.

5. Count treatment for domestic and sexual violence, mental health problems, and substance abuse as "work activities" and stop the clock while TANF recipients are undergoing prescribed treament. Approximately 60% of women on welfare report having been victims of intimate violence at some point in their adult lives and 30% report abuse within the last year. HR 3113 promotes the safety interests of families enrolled in TANF by making various requirements more flexible for families dealing with domestic violence. The bill builds on the current family violence option, making it a requirement for states.

6. Prohibit states from establishing family "caps" that withhold benefits from a child born to a mother on welfare; 19 states currently have family caps.

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. Although current law includes sanction protection for recipients who cannot find quality child care, the reality is that recipients are being forced to leave their children in unsafe, undesirable child care situations. HR 3113 would ensure that the care needs of children will be met as their mothers move into the labor market. It stops the 5-year clock when recipients are unable to work due to lack of suitable child care.

9. Guarantee equal access to TANF regardless of marital or citizen status--full access to TANF benefits would be restored to legal permanent residents.

10. Enforce anti-discrimination and labor laws, as well as due process guarantees. This will assure enforcement of the minimum wage, for example. It also will explicitly require TANF agencies to abide by Title VII and Title IX prohibitions on sex discrimination, neither of which are signaled in the current TANF statute.

11. 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);

12. Provide incentives to states to provide programs to reduce barriers to employment, to offer job training, and to encourage education; and

13. 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.

The failure of TANF to count post-secondary education as a work activity is its biggest hypocrisy and one of the key problems my bill 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. Gaining education must be credited as work and must stop the clock.

It is also hypocritical for us to lavishly praise the middle- class or upper-class mother who chooses to forgo work outside the home so that she can stay home and take care of her young children and treat poor mothers as though they are lazy if they too want to care for their young children. Young TANF mothers are forced to leave their children in inadequate child care while they participate in make-work programs or low-paying jobs. It is extremely difficult for a poor single mother to balance the demands of work and family. The logistics (and expense) of getting more than one child to babysitters and school and picking them up can be overwhelming, especially when one doesn't have reliable transportation. Unreliable childcare and what to do when one's child is sick and cannot go to school are also major crises for poor working mothers. And now the President wants to require TANF recipients--even those with preschool-age children--to work a full 40-hour week! Many of these women lack job skills and must accept irregular shift or part-time work or must balance two or more part-time jobs while caring for their children.

Perhaps the greatest failing of the current program and the Administration's proposal is a lack of appreciation of the barriers that some recipients face in making the transition from welfare to work. We must allow prescribed treatment to count as work activity for those who are afflicted with a drug or alcohol dependency, severe depression, or other mental illnesses and for women who have been victims of domestic violence. My bill stops the clock while these TANF mothers are undergoing treatment. The Administration's proposal to allow only 3 consecutive months of treatment for substance abuse (in a 24-month period) to count as a work activity is clearly inadequate.

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 employed. 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. To enforce work, there must be quality child care. The State set aside to improve quality of child care must be increased from 4 percent to 8 percent.

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. But 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 mother's own best judgment about what's best- -and safest--for herself and her children. What's more, TANF provides that child support money collected by the government stay with the government as reimbursement for welfare.

What Congress needs to do is to undo punitive regulation of mothers on welfare. 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 want all women to be treated--with the respect, dignity, and the 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.

H.R. 3113 retains the basic structure of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, including an emphasis on work and a five-year lifetime limit. The bill has been drafted with careful attention to the challenges that have prevented welfare recipients from escaping poverty during the last five years under TANF. The bill directs work efforts to permanent, sustainable, high wage employment opportunities through education, training and targeting high wage jobs. The bill also focuses on providing work supports like child care and addressing barriers to economic self-sufficiency such as domestic violence, mental or physical disability and substance abuse. Finally, the bill restores full access to qualified immigrants.

I urge my colleague to support the changes to TANF embodied in H.R. 3113.



LOAD-DATE: May 1, 2002