Based on careful research in 12 states, for example, the Urban Institute found that many families leaving welfare are eligible for food stamps but are not receiving the benefit. Similarly, many investigators have shown that families and children are also not receiving the Medicaid coverage to which they are entitled. The problem in both cases is not that changes in federal statutes during welfare reform rendered families and children ineligible for food stamp or Medicaid benefits.
Rather, the problem appears to be that for some reason, families that are eligible under federal statutes do not participate. Under the old AFDC program, families that applied for welfare were automatically given food stamps and Medicaid. But under the TANF program, some applicants are diverted from the welfare program into work and never appear on the rolls, thereby missing out on food stamps and Medicaid.
There is also much more turnover in the caseload. Studies show that once a family leaves AFDC or TANF, participation in food stamps and Medicaid declines, perhaps because families have not been informed that they retain eligibility. In addition, working families may find it too difficult and time consuming to report to welfare offices to confirm their eligibility, especially in states where families must actually visit the welfare office, and families with frequent changes of income may be put off by the continuous reporting requirements.
As noted earlier, there is little information on whether welfare reform is having an impact on children. On the positive side, the evidence we have suggests either small positive or no effects.
However, there are still fears that, especially in the case of floundering families, children could go hungry, be left alone at an early age while their mothers work, or suffer more abuse and neglect as a result of increased stress on their mothers. Child advocates and others will raise the concern that when the first recession hits or the first wave of families lose benefits as a result of the five-year time limit in , the picture for children could take a sudden turn for the worse.
There is little question that Congress will devote considerable attention to these issues during the reauthorization debate. Two child care issues will receive extensive attention during reauthorization: whether states have enough money to pay for care and whether available care is of sufficient quality.
In addition, states were allowed to use money from their TANF block grant for child care. Regulating the quality of care was left to states and localities. Thus, states are purchasing much more care than ever. Despite this increased funding, critics believe that even more federal spending is necessary, especially since families leaving welfare are provided with child care subsidies while similar low-income families that did not go on welfare but are eligible for subsidies often do not receive them.
A widely-cited estimate from the Department of Health and Human Services suggests that existing child care block grant funding provides enough money to serve only 12 percent of all eligible low-income children.
There is also continued concern about the quality of care and the federal role in promoting better care through federal or state regulation or by providing federal funds that states must use to improve quality. Assistance for the working poor has increased dramatically since the early s, with expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit being the most prominent example.
But reauthorization will almost inevitably catalyze a debate about whether a mother who has moved into the low-wage job market has enough income to adequately support her family. Those who believe she does will point to the numerous benefits already available to such families, including the EITC, child care, food stamps, Medicaid, and enhanced child support.
Further expansions are likely to be expensive and could lead to permanent dependence on government support. Others will press for more assistance, whether in the form of a higher minimum wage, an expanded EITC, greater subsidization of child care and health care, more money for education and training, or other work supports. They will argue that in the absence of such assistance, high rates of poverty and living at the margins of society are likely to continue.
The vision of those who supported work requirements in the reforms was that every state would have an increasing percentage of its caseload actively involved in work programs for 25 or 30 hours per week.
However, because all states have reduced their caseloads and caseload reductions can be used to meet the work requirement, states have been able to meet the work requirements without starting programs in which welfare recipients work in exchange for their benefits. Advocates of work programs may propose a requirement, separate from the current work participation standard, that states place some fixed percentage of their caseload, perhaps 20 percent or more, in work programs.
Supporters of this proposal will argue that adults on welfare should work, that properly designed work programs provide valuable work experience to mothers with barriers to employment, and that having work experience positions available will be especially important as the rolls expand during recessions. States can be expected to vigorously oppose additional work participation mandates. The child support program appears to be improving steadily. However, two problems seem nearly certain to receive attention during the reauthorization debate.
First, as demonstrated by a to 18 vote in the House during the th Congress, many members of Congress, and both conservative and liberal advocacy groups, believe more child support collections should be paid to families. Under current law, the state and federal governments can retain all payments by fathers while mothers are on welfare and around half the payments on overdue child support after mothers leave welfare. Powerful members of Congress from both parties will make this issue part of welfare reauthorization.
Second, states can be expected to have increasing difficulty financing their child support enforcement programs. The average state now receives around 30 percent of the money it uses to finance its child support program from retained collections in welfare cases. Because the welfare caseload has been in such precipitous decline since , these collections have shrunk. Some states are already experiencing this problem.
As a result, states can be expected to come to Congress and ask for additional child support funding. The strong backing for distributing more collections to mothers on welfare will aggravate this problem, thereby making the issue even more important during the reauthorization debate.
There are three issues in this area that are likely to receive attention during the reauthorization debate. First, during the original debate on welfare reform, Democrats expressed great concern that the law did not place greater emphasis on education and training. At a minimum, there will almost surely be amendments to expand the number of hours of education that can count toward fulfilling the work requirement.
Republicans may oppose these amendments on grounds that welfare mothers can combine work and education now, and that states already have enough flexibility to increase education even if it does not count toward the work requirement. Moreover, because of the rapid decline in the welfare rolls, states have much more money available for education than they had before welfare reform.
A second issue is that research shows clearly that mothers who leave welfare for work often lose their jobs in a few weeks or months. Some of the job terminations are voluntary and even those that are not may be caused by factors over which mothers have some control, such as missed work, lateness, or conflicts with peers or supervisors. Program operators and researchers believe that programs are needed that help mothers retain their jobs longer or find new ones quickly.
A number of studies of model programs that attempt to help mothers adjust to the workplace and retain their jobs are now underway. Again, Congress is likely to search for ways to require or encourage states to launch such job retention programs.
Beyond helping mothers simply keep their jobs, a third important issue involves steps that states can take to help mothers achieve career advancement. Previous programs aimed at helping low-income adults train for and then obtain jobs that involve moderate to high levels of skill have not been very successful.
But now that two million or so additional low-income mothers are working, the debate is likely to intensify about how to help them get the education and training they need for better jobs. It was a seismic effort from the federal government that, from its inception, ignited debate.
Funded by federal tax dollars, welfare use by families ballooned far beyond the Depression era. In , , families received support. By , that number soared to 1,, Aid, however, was not always distributed fairly. Families of color were largely left out of, or actively block from, government policy.
President Bill Clinton signing the welfare reform bill, Four years later, The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was passed that gave states control of welfare, ending six decades of federal government control of the programs. In dismantling that model, he created something new: the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, or TANF, which changed the financing and benefit structure of cash assistance.
Instead of welfare being funded in a more open-ended manner, now welfare was funded by federal block grants to states, along with a requirement that states had to match some of the federal dollars.
This legislation also created caps for how long and how much aid a person could receive, and well as instituting harsher punishments for recipients who did not comply with the requirements.
In the late s, the economy was booming and to many analysts, it looked as though the Clinton-era welfare reforms were a success. President Ford's approach to social programs emphasizes better delivery of services, less red tape through putting more control into state and local hands through block grants, and more help for those who are in need but none for those who don't need it.
In the last two years, despite major economic difficulties, President Ford has undertaken many actions designed to provide better, more efficient social services. The President:. President Ford has recognized that an election year is a difficult time in which to try to make massive and sweeping changes in the inefficient welfare system. But he strongly believes that the improvements he has undertaken and proposed are needed urgently now.
Meanwhile, he has ordered a careful study of alternatives for really comprehensive welfare reform. The President's proposal is designed to overcome some of the most serious defects in the present system of Federal financing of health care and to permit States to meet their citizens' health needs more effectively. The program would:. President Ford is a strong supporter of Federal action to help provide a healthy diet to children whose families are not able to do so,.
In a special message to Congress on March 23, , requesting enactment of the Child Nutrition Reform Act of , the President said:. Without the reform proposed by the President, recent Congressional changes soon will require the Federal government to be spending more money on non-needy children than on the needy children.
Children from all families, regardless of income, are now eligible to receive Federal subsidies for school lunches. At the same time, it is estimated that at least , children from poor families are receiving no nutrition benefits at all.
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