A
Legislative Agenda for TANF Reform
(cont'd)
WC100 Senate letter
February 2005
February 18, 2005
Dear Senator:
We are writing to urge you to
reauthorize the current TANF program rather than enact new law that will do
tremendous harm to poor families throughout the country. H.R. 240, the TANF
reauthorization bill pending in the House of Representatives, will injure poor
mothers and children by increasing work hours and participation rates, which
take away poor mothers’ right and ability to make their own decisions about the
appropriateness of employment given their children’s needs. The proposed
marriage and fatherhood programs will dedicate more than $1 billion over five
years to infringe basic constitutional privacy guarantees, threaten mothers’
safety, and push mothers into dependency relationships with men that they may
not want. Marriage promotion deflects attention away from the real causes of
poverty for mothers and children – women’s low wages, the lack of child care,
and the lack of economic recognition for the work of raising children.
The PRIDE bill
proposed in the Senate during the 108th Congress was less
extreme than the House bill in some respects, but even the PRIDE
bill poses grave dangers and so is not an acceptable alternative to
H.R. 240.
Senator Olympia Snowe’s
parents-as-scholars amendment has been welcomed for softening the PRIDE bill’s
work regime. However, as it currently is formulated, the Snowe provision must
be opposed because it will exacerbate inequality, as some poor mothers will be
selected for the schooling that leads to mobility while others are left behind.
The cap on caseload participation in the parents-as-scholars proposal will give
welfare agencies and caseworkers discretion to discriminate among TANF
recipients in determining which recipients may pursue education. Evidence is
bountiful that the power to discriminate in welfare administration leads to
discrimination against mothers of color.
Although the PRIDE bill did
gesture to poor mothers’ efforts to overcome barriers to employment such as
domestic violence, the time allowed to pursue services is far too short to be of
help to poor mothers.
We are especially concerned
that changing TANF will make bad social policy worse, particularly when a Senate
bill is conferenced with the extremely harsh House bill, H.R. 240. Pending
proposals to change TANF ignore the reality of life for the 47 million
Americans, mostly children, who currently are poor. Imposing additional work
requirements on mothers raising children alone further devalues the need for
parental care in families coping with numerous stresses.
The Women’s
Committee of One Hundred is a group of feminist scholars and
advocates who are concerned about the connection between women’s
poverty and our society’s failure to support caregiving work when it
is performed by poor women for their own families. We urge you to
fight for a welfare policy that helps families. As current TANF
reauthorization bills actually will harm families, the current TANF
program with all its flaws is better than any of the proposals.
If TANF is to be changed,
certain basic provisions are necessary to attenuate most brutal effects of
proposed changes.
·
Maintain current work hours including a 20-hour-per-week limit for
families with children under age 6.
The House bill increases work
requirements to 40 hours for all families including single parent families with
children under age 6. Such a change is unwarranted. The decline in the numbers
of families receiving assistance indicates that there is no reluctance of
recipients to work when work is available and when it allows adequate support.
Families continuing to receive assistance should not be forced to work such long
hours that family care is virtually impossible. We urge you to oppose any bill
that fails to keep work hours the same as they are now – 30 hours or 20 hours
for families with children under age 6.
·
Expand the definition of "work."
Work should include post-secondary education, vocational
education with no cap, English as a Second Language, Adult Literacy,
GED, participation in activities designed to address mental health
problems, disability, substance abuse or sexual or domestic
violence; caregiving for a disabled child or adult or child under
6. The House bill restricts the definition of work activities to
exclude all education and training activities and all of the
activities listed here. We feel strongly that states should be
allowed the flexibility to choose what activities make the most
sense for preparing their caseload for decent jobs while insuring
care for poor children.
·
Assure equal access for legal immigrants.
Benefits should be available to legal immigrants who need them.
·
Strengthen child care sanction protections.
Current protection against sanction for families who cannot
find child care for their children falls far short of what is needed. These
provisions must be improved.
·
Require Family Violence Exemption (FVO).
The FVO has been effective in
helping families escaping from domestic violence. It should be required in all
states.
·
Review and conciliation process pre-sanction.
Many of those who are sanctioned off the roles in TANF have
mental or physical disabilities, are struggling with issues of domestic
violence, lack child care or just misunderstood the requirements. A
pre-sanction review and conciliation process would insure that if there are
problems that can be corrected or if there is a misunderstanding between the
client and caseworker, the issue can be resolved without the family suffering
loss of desperately needed assistance.
·
Prohibit full family sanctions. Because sanctions are often the result of misunderstandings
or serious barriers to work, it is unconscionable to require
termination of assistance to all family members including the
children when a sanction is imposed. The House bill would require
such sanctions. The Senate should strongly voice its desire that
states never punish the children by withholding basic benefits.
·
No marriage promotion or discrimination on the basis of family
structure. The $500
million appropriated for this purpose in the House bill can be better spent on
child care, job training, support services for the disabled or victims of
domestic violence. The bill should include a provision prohibiting
discrimination on the basis of family structure.
·
Compliance stops the clock. If a family is doing everything they can to meet program
requirements, the five-year lifetime limit on receipt of benefits should be
tolled.
Because negotiations are
currently underway in the Senate Finance Committee to craft a Senate bill we
urge you to act now to make your views known to the members of the Committee.
Please support a reauthorization of the existing TANF law,
which will do the least harm to the poor families that TANF is designed to
assist.
Click
for more information or to
sign on to the Women's Committee
of 100 Immodest Proposal.
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