Text of UREAP Email to Jace Johnson, Senator Hatch's staff on welfare
reform, sent on July 14, 2003 in response to Senator Grassley's TANF Reauthorization
Proposal, "Personal Responsibility and Individual Development for Everyone
(PRIDE)"
Dear Jace,
Doubtless you know why we are writing. We have reviewed information available
to us explaining the welfare reform reauthorization proposal Senator Grassley
has put forward and are very concerned with the impact it would have on the
Utah's TANF program and the families it serves. We are in the process of
trying to inform our participants about the elements of the proposal and
we understand that more detail will become available as the proposal is discussed.
However, we are writing now in hopes that Senator Hatch can mitigate some
of the more troubling aspects of the proposal as we understand it--if possible,
before the mark is released.
Very frankly, much of what we have to say about the Grassley Proposal in
light of UREAP principles and positions is redundant because of the extensive
similarities it bears to the Administration's Proposal and HR 4. Most of
our concerns about the Grassley Proposal therefore mirror those we have expressed
to you in the past with regard to the latter approaches. Additionally, we
are gravely disappointed to observe that the work of the tripartisan group
in the Senate Finance Committee last year is entirely missing. The gains
we saw in the WORK Act largely coincided with UREAP's principles and goals
that have driven our position papers and other communications with Senator
Hatch last year and this. Overall, we see little in the Grassley Proposal
that responds to what has been learned about the 1996 welfare law and the
way it worked--and didn't work--for various groups of families. In fact,
the Grassley Proposal, much as the Administration's Proposal and HR 4, appears
to seek to make changes in the current law that are not called for in any
research we have seen--changes that we believe will harm children and families
and turn states' TANF program in the wrong direction. What we believe needed
to be done upon the opportunity of reauthorization will not be done if what
is signed into law does not greatly improve upon the Grassley Proposal and
HR 4. We suspect it is not useful to suggest that Senator Hatch somehow bring
back the WORK Act, but there is simply no question, in our view, that the
WORK Act--based on careful consideration of research and input from various
sources and representing the work of a committed tripartisan group including
Senator Hatch--would have resulted in positive, appropriate refinements to
the current welfare reform law. There is also no question, in our view, that
the Grassley Proposal repeats the mistakes and misguided directions found
in HR 4.
That said, we will work our way through the "Highlights of Grassley Proposal
. . ." as succinctly as possible, conveying our major concerns and recommendations.
We have also attached another copy of our March 26, 2003 comment to the Senate
Finance Committee in conjunction with the Committee's hearing and a letter
we wrote to Senator Hatch in May of 2002 with UREAP's responses to the concept
paper released by the Tripartisan working group the month before. We do not
wish to overhwlem you with paper, but this is so important that we must do
what we can to be sure we don't miss anything that could possibly be helpful
to Senator Hatch as he thinks through what might work best for Utah at this
juncture.
"Provisions Maintained from Current Law." We will comment on the 4th and
9th bullets in this section of the proposal.
#4 "Maintains current allowable activities for core work requirements." While
we are relieved to see that at least Senator Grassley has not gone along
with HR 4's effort to eliminate job search and vocational education from
the list of countable core activities, we do not consider this to be an effective
response to what has been learned about TANF families' needs and pertinent
shortcomings in the 1996 law. The opportunity of reauthorization should be
taken to improve on the current law and, in the process, increase the number
of families who are helped and decrease the number who fall by the wayside
and deteriorate because they are not.
This is exactly what the Tripartisan group recognized and addressed by adding
substance abuse and mental health treatment as countable activities last
year. We know members received a great deal of positive feedback and documentation
from states indicating the appropriateness of their approach. Utah's research
and that of other states has shown consistently that providing effective
interventions can and often does help these families recover. It also is
clear that putting more pressure on families with severe and multiple barriers
generally causes further fragmentaion of their efforts. If the goals of the
TANF program are to help people become self-sufficient, and as HR 4 proposes,
to add child well-being as a purpose, how can it be that our options
for TANF reauthorization legislation, either do not encourage states to assist
families to overcome their barriers (the Grassley Proposal), or put states
in a position where they are unlikely to be able to help them with meaningful
interventions at all (HR 4). Moreover, since many parents suffering from
these problems are NOT likely to succeed in the workplace, we are not doing
employers any favors by asking them to hire people with serious, unresolved
employment barriers.
In our view, the effective approach welfare reform reauthorization should
take, based on what we have learned since 1996 and to further the goal of
moving families into meaningful activities, is to give states the flexibility
to provide individual families with what they need by adding to the list
of allowable core activities substance abuse, mental health, and domestic
violence treatment for parents with these barriers and ensure that any inflexible
time limits on specific activities, such as three months out of 24, are not
implemented. Parents with treatable problems that prevent work or effective
parenting should be rewarded for taking steps to get help and their efforts
facilitated by counting those activities towards work requirements.
We are told that Senator Jeffords wishes to allow barrier-removal activities
to count for six months, plus an additional six months in conjunction with
work activities. This would be a substantial improvement over Senator Grassley's
proposal. We ask that Senator Hatch take a close look at this proposal as
he looks for ways to help move the countable activities question in a direction
that will help families succeed, rather than set them up for failure.
Senator Hatch and others worked very hard last year to add up to 24 hours
of education and training to the list of countable activities. The Grassley
Proposal fails to acknowledge the need for such an increase and HR 4 strips
vocational education from the list entirely. We pledge to help the Senator
in any way we are able to allow additional hours of education and training
for TANF parents. Post-secondary education and training, adult literacy,
English as a Second Language, and other work-preparation activities or activities
needed by parents to allow them to achieve family-sustaining incomes should
be encouraged, available, and countable so that states can help families
get somewhere besides off the roles or cemented into low-paying jobs that
offer no benefits.
We also oppose bullet #9: "Maintains the current ban on use of funds for
legal immigrants." Utah and many other states are using all state funds to
provide services to these families because they believe it is the right and
prudent thing to do. The overall health of our communities is facilitated
by helping all people to be productive. State fiscal crises make accomplishing
this increasingly difficult. The Tripartisan group last year understood this
dilemma--and our economy was stronger last year--and determined to allow
states to spend TANF dollars to assist legal immigrant families.
We urge Senator Hatch to work to achieve this enhancement to the current
law.
"Improvements from the Administration's Proposal"
4. Work/Participation Rate: We have consistently counseled against increasing
work participation rates and our concern about this is increasing over time.
It is especially unwise to increase work participation rates precisely at
a time when unemployment is on the rise and states lack the resources to
support other essential activities because of economic slowdown. We believe
it is especially unwise to increase work participation rates in the context
of attempts to constrict countable activities to exclude activities vulnerable
parents need to be able to participate meaningfully or successfully and to
increase required hours of participation. The three-way squeeze on families
and states proposed by the Administration and HR 4, and to a slightly lesser
extent by the Grassley Proposal, must be mitigated.
In searching for a rationale for increasing participation rates, we hear
it is driven by the fact that "states have an effective participation rate
of zero." Perhaps we are missing part of the argument. Most states have actual
participation rates that are far higher than zero. They appear to us to be
actively engaged in helping families be involved in countable activities,
regardless of what they are required to do to avoid sanction. And, beyond
that, it must be recalled that the current participation rate calculation
looks only at parents who are participating full-time in a handful of federally-determined
activities, leaving out of the equation all parents who are participating
to the best of their ability Iless than 30 hours) in uncountable activities
(that states believe are nonethless appropriate and useful to those parents).
The call for higher participation rates places the focus in the wrong place.
We know that there is support for increasing work participation rates--including
among members of the Tripartisan group last year--but we ask the Senator
Hatch give serious consideration to raising with his colleagues our alternative
package of policies (just below) designed to ensure that parents are getting
effective opportunities to move ahead and attain self-sufficiency. It seems
clear to us that most states, including Utah, will not be able to run our
TANF programs with increased participation rates--especially if the list
of allowable activities is not substantially increased.
This is the policy package we recommend and for which we request Senator
Hatch's support:
a) implement the model for universal engagement embodied in the WORK Act:
early assessment and development of Individual Responsibility Plans (IRPs)
that include activities designed to help families get somewhere and to enhance
child well-being,
b) expand the list of countable activities beyond the current law so that
states are able to place parents in activities that are appropriate for their
circumstances and will help them become employable and move forward towards
self-reliance,
c) follow the lead of the Tripartisan group last year by maintaining the
current law's required work hours at 30,
d) replace the current caseload reduction credit with an employment credit
that rewards states (and allows them to reduce pressure on families) for
helping families become employed and get better jobs,
e) leave state participation rates where they are.
We believe this combination of work-related provisions will work together
to make the refinements to the nation's welfare system that are called by
research and sound reasoning and that will advance the goals of self-sufficiency
and child well-being in the law.
4. Work/Hours: We have already said above--and before--that the list of core
activities needs to be increased. The Grassley Proposal relegates those additional
activities to activities parents may engage in "after 24 hours" to reach
their total of 40 hours. As we interpret research on families with employment
barriers, this approach puts the cart before the horse.
The activities listed as countable "for hours above 24" are needed as front-line
(core) activities for many parents who are not prepared to work yet and for
parents who perhaps can get jobs, but whose low skill levels doom them to
low pay and jobs without benefits. Families should not have to work for 24
hours per week to "earn" the right to get interventions that will help them
"get somewhere." We know that many of them will not be able to do so--they
need the interventive activities first, before they will be able to work
reliably or at all. The most reasonable approach for hours beyond the core
hours is to allow states and parents to select from among a broader list
of allowable activities to develop a plan for success that responds to the
parent's and family's needs. Making good choices through the assessment and
IRP process is in the best interest of states and parents and we believe
that, in most cases, good choices will be made.
As for what rules should be applied to the "3 months in 24" component of
the Grassley Proposal, we favor the approach put forward in "Option H," but
without the exception that the activities must be other than the existing
core activities. On this limited time period innovation, we take the same
position as we have on other questions of activities. We strongly recommend
that whatever law passes to reauthorize welfare reform should focus clearly
and consistently on allowing and encouraging states to, and rewarding them
for, structuring opportunities where activities will match what will increase
parents' functioning--as employees and as parents--and enhance their earning
power. We do not believe it is advisable, or even possible, for Congress
or the Administration to attempt to prescribe strict time frames/the order
in which they should be done. Utah has always taken a case-by-case approach
to this and it is the only approach that makes sense when the subjects of
discussion are families with children. Any x-month provision that is included
should be designed to give states maximum flexibility to get barrier-removal
or employment enhancing activities" going and positive. Additionally, as
we stated above, there should be ways to extend an effective treatment beyond
x months if it shows any promise at all of being successful.
Paragraph #4 under "Hours" introduces a positive change to the current law
by giving partial credit, although as we said above, we do not see evidence
to indicate a value in increasing the standard hour requirement beyond 30.
The concept paper released last year by the Tripartisan group in the Finance
Committee demonstrated clear understanding of the fact that most TANF parents
are single parents, trying to perform both the role of breadwinner and parent
single-handedly and that participation for 30 hours (and for 20 for parents
of younger children) should be enough. Additionally, a large majority of
low-income parents confront transportation problems and often must spend
additional hours away from their children trying to get to and from work,
and to and from child care, than those of us with more means must spend.
This is especially true for families in rural areas.
We recommend a revised tiered approach that would give credit as follows:
20-23 Hours: 0.50 credit
24-29 Hours: 0.75 credit
30-33 Hours: 1.0 credit
34+ Hours: 1.25 credit
We would characterize this alternative to the Grassley Proposal's Modification
#2 of Option H as "slightly more flexible," "slightly more generous to states,"
and *substantially more realistic for TANF parents and their need to parent
their children.*
5. Universal Engagement. UREAP is on record as supporting "universal engagement"--we
have seen it work in Utah--and we know that Senator Hatch has put a great
deal of thought into ways to make this component of a new welfare reform
law most helpful to families. Somehow, though, the provision crafted by the
Tripartisan group last year has been redirected. Senator Hatch's focus on
ways to help families to make the most of their limited time on welfare by
planning early their steps to self-sufficiency and providing appropriate
resources appears to have been lost in favor of penalties if states do not
comply. This punitive tone disturbs us in other parts of the Proposal as
well. Our membership does not include the agencies in our state who administer
the TANF and related programs, but we work very closely with them. We do
not agree that a major reauthorization issue is forcing states to do what
they are told. The whole idea around devolution in 1996 was that states and
local areas are better equipped than those at the federal level to understand
the needs of their clients and they would therefore design better programs
to meet those needs. We believe the successes of welfare reform have come
about largely to the extent that states and localities acted on that idea,
and often, as in Utah, they have involved a broad spectrum of interested
parties in the process. We saw in the work of the tripartisan group within
the Senate Finance Committee last year a continuation of this sense of trust
and respect as the various provisions were worked through. The success of
welfare reform reauthorization legislation is threatened when too much focus--sometimes
primary focus--is on assumptions that Congress must prevent states from getting
away with doing the wrong thing. This is very unattractive public policy-making
and we hope that Senator Hatch can somehow help mitigate the trend and turn
the focus back to what he contributed to the Universal Engagement provision
of the WORK Act.
Priorities for SFC Members. We surmise that Senator Grassley has left this
section of the Proposal sketchy because he is open to suggestions and approaches
from others. We will say that these are, indeed, very important issues that
need to be addressed in the Senate Finance Committee's bill. Hopefully that
will be done in an effective way in the Mark. On these issues, these are
our brief remarks until more detail becomes known:
Contingency Fund. We support efforts to ensure that the Contingency Fund
can be useful to states in fiscal crisis.
Child Support. We support Senator Snowe's proposals to improve child support
provisions in the current law and urge Senator Hatch to be supportive.
Penalty Relief. As suggested above, penalty relief is welcome wherever it
can be accomplished. While it is important that states be accountable for
their expenditure of public funds, it is counterproductive when penalties
are so structured that they must become central--at the expense of families--if
states want to survive. Penalties should, in our view, be a last resort measure,
especially understanding that, once a state is penalized, often that begins
a downward fiscal cycle that becomes progressively more difficult for a state
to recover from. All along the way, services to people suffer and the process
tends to worsen as time goes on.
Special Rule--Caring for a disabled child. We are consulting with UREAP members
with special expertise in the disabilities arena, but for now, although there
are definitely positive aspects to the "Special Rule--Caring for a disabled
child," we believe it needs work to be effective. First, we are not sure
why only "a single parent" could qualify, especially when other areas of
discussion seem to indicate consensus that single-parent and intact families
should be dealt with more equitably in welfare law. Second, requiring that
a medical verification find the need for "continuous care" seems overzealous.
We are not sure what "continuous care" would look like, but suggest that
it would be closer to the real life situation that this provision appears
to intend if "substantial care" were substituted. Third, the requirement
that the single parent be deemed "the only one" able to provide the required
care may not even be able to be met. It is hard to imagine what a physician
would have to consider to be able to say that "no one" but the parent could
provide necessary care. It seems far preferrable to use the terminology "among
the most appropriate" instead.
Child care funding. Especially given the increasing fiscal crises in states,
the rising deficit, inflation, and the fact that we are already very far
from providing needed child care assistance of a quality that will help children,
child care funding is probably one of the most important issues currently
on the table. We know that Senator Hatch has committed to increasing mandatory
funding far beyond was the House bill contains. We have heard that he is
prepared to fight for an additional $5.5 billion, the same amount that was
contained in last year's WORK Act. This is so important! Please let us know
if there is anything at all UREAP can do to support Senator Hatch in his
efforts to address the complex and critical need for quality child care for
low-income TANF and working families in our state and nation.
UREAP Priorities Not Addressed in the Grassley Proposal
UREAP is very interested in several issues that have not been addressed at
all in this Proposal: a) Transitional Medical Assistance (TMA), b) Teen parent
provisions, c) resources for states to develop employment opportunities and
enhance linkages with employers, and d) tribal issues. Over the past two
months, UREAP has emailed our views on these issues, so we will not go into
them further here, but we wish to assert our support for their inclusion
in the Senate Finance Committee's bill on welfare reform reauthorization
and offer our help as you and Senator Hatch consider the best approach.
Thank you very much for your attention to this information. We are anxious
to hear about Senator Hatch's priorities and plans at your earliest convenience.
We would also appreciate any information that can help us explain to UREAP
participants what is actually happening or predicted to happen in the SFC
under the current climate. So that you know, we will email our reactions
to the specifics of Senator Grassley's proposal to Becky Shipp very soon,
along with other members of the Senate Finance Committee and Senator Bennett.
Sincerely,
Bill and Shirley
Shirley Weathers and Bill Walsh, UREAP staff
Walsh & Weathers Research and Policy Studies
P. O. Box 270090
Fruitland, UT 84027-0090
(435) 548-2630
FAX: (435) 548-2438