Text of UREAP's Communication on Welfare Reform Reauthorization and the Grassley Proposal Sent to Members of the Senate Finance Committee on July 17, 2003

We understand that, on July 23, the Senate Finance Committee will mark-up a bill to reauthorization the 1996 welfare law. 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 staff to the Utah Reauthorization Project, a project begun in April of 2001 to study welfare reform reauthorization issues and arrive at common ground recommendations for the next phase of welfare reform. UREAP communicates through a website and an email list of over 400 individuals throughout the state, representatives of both public and private entities. Our 28 official signing members are listed at the end of this communication.
 
We submitted a comment to you, as a member of the Senate Finance Committee, in June in conjunction with your hearing on Welfare Reform Reauthorization. We are writing now in hopes that you can work with Utah's Senator Hatch to mitigate some of the more troubling aspects of Senator Grassley's 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 mirrors concerns we expressed in our June comment because of the similarities is bears to the Administration's Proposal and the House bill (HR 4). Additionally, we are gravely disappointed to observe that the work of the Tripartisan Group in the Senate Finance Committee last year is imperceptible in the Grassley Proposal. The gains we saw in the WORK Act largely coincided with UREAP's principles and goals. 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 members of the Tripartisan group 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 would have resulted in positive, appropriate refinements to the current welfare reform law.
 
That said, we will work our way through the "Highlights of Grassley Proposal . . ." as succinctly as possible, conveying our major concerns and recommendations.
 
"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 you take a close look at this proposal as you look 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 have pledged  to help Senator Hatch and others in any way we are able to allow additional hours of education and training for TANF parents. We applaud Senator Snowe's Parents As Scholars provision. 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 you 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 that you give serious consideration to 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 your 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 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 for 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
 
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. The focus then was 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 members of the Committee can help mitigate the trend and turn the focus back to the spirit of 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 are told 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! We urge you 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. We wish to assert our support for their inclusion in the Senate Finance Committee's bill on welfare reform reauthorization.
 
Thank you very much for your attention to this information.
 
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
 
For the Utah Reauthorization Project and its members:

Active Re-Entry, Price, (Southeastern Utah)
Box Elder Family Support Center, Brigham City, (Box Elder County)
Bringing Hope to Single Moms Foundation, Logan, (Cache and Box Elder Counties)
Community Action Services, Provo, (Utah, Wasatch, and Summit Counties)
Disabled Rights Action Coalition (DRAC), Salt Lake City, (statewide)
Family Support and Children's Justice Center of Carbon and Emery Counties, Price
Housing Authority of Salt Lake City, Salt Lake City, (Salt Lake City)
International Rescue Committee, Salt Lake City, (statewide)
JEDI for Women, Salt Lake City, (statewide)
League of Women Voters of Salt Lake, Salt Lake City, (Salt Lake County)
Legislative Coalition for People with Disabilities Salt Lake City, (statewide)
Mental Health Association in Utah, Salt Lake City, (statewide)
Multiple Sclerosis Society, Salt Lake City, (statewide)
New Hope Refugee and Multicultural Center, Salt Lake City, (Salt Lake City)
Options for Independence, Logan, (Northern Utah)
Peace & Justice Commission, Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake, Salt Lake City, (statewide)
People Helping People, Salt Lake City, (Salt Lake County)
Salt Lake Community Action Program (SLCAP), Salt Lake City, (Salt Lake and Tooele Counties)
Tri-County Independent Living Center, Ogden (Weber, Davis, and Morgan Counties)
United Way Executive Directors Association (UWEDA), SLC, (Salt Lake County)
Utah Children, Salt Lake City, (statewide)
Utah Community Action Program Association (UCAPA), (statewide)
Utah Issues, Salt Lake City, (statewide)
Utahns Against Hunger, Salt Lake City, (statewide)
Ute Tribe Social Services, Ft. Duchesne
Valley Mental Health, Salt Lake City, (Salt Lake and Tooele Counties)
Walsh & Weathers Research and Policy Studies, Fruitland
Your Community Connection, Ogden, (Weber County)

For more information about UREAP, including correspondence with Utah's Congressional Delegation and other elected officials, we invite you to visit our website at www.slcap.org/UREAP/ureap.htm. There are also links to Utah research at that site.