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February 2000 - Vol. 2, No 1

• White House Proposes Fatherhood Initiatives
• Stringent Child Support Cooperation For Food Stamp Benefits Proposed
• Campaign Seeks To Help Workers Obtain Earned Income Tax Credit
• New Studies Examine Post-Welfare Experience
• News From Selected States
• Legal Immigrants' Denial of Public Benefits Upheld by Federal Appeals Court

White House Proposes Fatherhood Initiatives

In his State of the Union address on January 27, 2000, President Clinton announced several measures aimed at noncustodial fathers and their families, included as part of his proposed Fiscal Year 2001 Budget. The initiative, called the "Responsible Fatherhood Initiative" includes child support enforcement measures that would:

• Begin a national policy to immobilize ("boot") vehicles owned by parents who do not pay child support. The proposal promises safeguards to ensure that those legitimately trying to pay are not targeted, but does not specify how the safeguards would work.
• Intercept gambling winnings to collect past-due child support. This will require gambling establishments to check whether individuals with large winnings owe child support using existing procedures for withholding federal income taxes.
• Expand the current passport denial program to deny passports to individuals owing $2,500 or more in child support. Currently, passports are denied when individuals owe more than $5,000.
• Prohibit doctors and other health care providers who are behind in child support payments from participating as Medicare providers.
• Require states to review child support orders every three years for families receiving TANF.

The proposals also call for:

• Incentives to states to pass-through up to $100 of child support payments made by noncustodial parents on behalf of families on welfare and disregard the amount when determining the amount of the TANF grant; and to simplify distribution of child support collections so that families leaving welfare would be entitled to the entire child support collection with the federal government forgoing its share.
• $255 million in new money for two programs:
  1. "Fathers Work" would be funded with $125 million to encourage child support payments from low-income noncustodial parents by providing work opportunities
  2. "Families Win", with $130 million in new grants, would be targeted at providing existing programs with additional resources to encourage job retention for 40,000 low-income working families, including mothers and fathers. Families could be assisted in obtaining skill upgrading, child care, food stamps, housing and transportation

Other related budget proposals include:

• An expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit by $23 billion over 10 years.
• An extension of the Welfare-to-Work program for two more years.
• A reduction in the TANF program of $250 million.
• The 90% federal match rate for paternity testing is reduced to 66%.

Stringent Child Support Cooperation For Food Stamp Benefits Proposed

Thirteen provisions of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) that pertain to the food stamp program have been incorporated into proposed regulations by the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) and the Department of Agriculture. Some of the provisions could create further hardship for some custodial parents who do not comply with child support enforcement cooperation requirements and for noncustodial parents who are not currently meeting child support obligations. The regulations explicitly detail the amount of anticipated savings that would result from implementing each provision. The proposed regulations most likely to affect these families include:

• A prohibition on increasing food stamp benefits when a household has received a penalty in the form of a reduction in income imposed under a means-tested public assistance program for failure to perform a required action, including the failure of a Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipient to cooperate with child support enforcement.

States would be allowed to:

• Disqualify food stamp recipients from benefits if they have been disqualified from another means-tested program. For food stamp recipients who receive Medicaid, but are not TANF participants, they could lose both Medicaid and food stamps for not cooperating with child support enforcement if a state chose this option.
• Sanction households if minor children are not attending school, or if the adults do not have (or are not working toward attaining) a secondary school diploma. To date, no states are reported to be applying this sanction.
• Require food stamp recipients to cooperate with child support requirements as a condition of eligibility.
• Disqualify individuals who are in arrears in court-ordered child support payments.
• Limit food stamp program participation for most "able-bodied adults without dependents" to three months in a three-year period during times the individual is not working or participating in a work program.

The proposed sanctions would affect custodial parents who have a history of abuse, but have not received a good cause exemption. It has become increasingly clear that there are substantial numbers of TANF recipients who do not report abuse or do not receive good cause exemptions once the abuse is reported. The sanctions would also apply to TANF recipients who do not have enough information on the biological father to satisfy the cooperation requirement. The disqualification of noncustodial parents would affect parents who, for a variety of reasons including an inability to secure a timely modification to a child support order, a default order of which they are unaware, or difficulty obtaining employment, have existing child support payment arrears.

Campaign Seeks To Help Workers Obtain Earned Income Tax Credit

The Center on Budget Policy and Priorities (CBPP) has initiated its Earned Income Credit Campaign 2000, an effort to ensure optimal participation in this important tax benefit for low-income workers. The tax credit has become increasingly critical to workers as they leave welfare and attempt to contend with low-wage work. This year the credit is worth more than $3,800 for some families, yet many workers are unaware of their eligibility or are not sure how to apply, and so fail to take advantage of it. The campaign seeks organizations willing to provide materials to educate workers regarding their eligibility for the tax credit. Organizations can participate at various levels, including posting notices or brochures, running a full-fledged campaign, and stressing the importance of the credit to program participants. For more information, contact Donna Cohen Ross or John Wancheck at 202/408-1080.

New Studies Examine Post-Welfare Experience

Three recent studies document difficulties low-income women face as they seek employment in the post-welfare reform era. One study, Details on the Road to Employment: Obstacles Facing Low-Income Women, conducted by the National Partnership for Women and Families, surveyed programs that provide employment services to low-income women between August and October 1998, to determine barriers women face in their efforts to secure and keep employment.

Among the primary obstacles they identified were:

• Insufficient transportation, child care, and education and training;
• Unwillingness on the part of employers to accommodate women's family obligations (e.g., care for sick family members, etc.);
• Discrimination on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, pregnancy, disability, and sexual/racial harassment;

These barriers, though somewhat more severe for women who receive welfare assistance, were found nonetheless to be daunting barriers for low-income women who are not receiving public assistance. The report can be downloaded from the web at http://www.nationalpartnership.org

Two additional studies are available from California:

The Broken Promise: Welfare Reform Two Years Later (available on the web at http://www.equalrights.org/) presents information from a series of focus groups conducted with welfare recipients in California in late 1999 by Equal Rights Advocates. Six focus groups were held in Sacramento, Tulare, and Los Angeles counties, in which women were asked about their employment experience under CalWorks, California's welfare reform program. The report presents information and insights from the focus groups and identifies specific policy recommendations for improving California's program.

Remember the Children: Mothers Balance Work and Child Care under Welfare Reform (Executive Summary and information for ordering the full report are available on the web at http://www.pace.berkeley.edu) presents the first wave of a four-year study of 948 families with preschool-age children who are participants in new welfare programs, with the goal of learning how the emphasis on work and the need for child care is affecting the upbringing and development of children. Early descriptive results find that: 1) the welfare-to-work push on single mothers is resulting in growing numbers of children in mediocre and disorganized child care settings; 2) child care subsidies reach unequal fractions of poor families and encourage the use of unlicensed care, and 3) the incidence of maternal depression was up to three times higher for participating mothers compared to the national average.

News From Selected States

• Kansas Governor Bill Graves has proposed an elimination of the state's current $40 pass-through of child support in his current budget. A spokesman for the Governor stated that the pass-through was no longer efficient since welfare reform ended the federal provision of 60% of the federal share of child support to cover its cost. More than half of the states have eliminated a pass-through since welfare reform was enacted.
• Beginning January 1, 2000, the State of Wisconsin initiated a requirement that all convicted felons must submit to a DNA test prior to release or probation. The DNA "profiles" will be stored for the purposes of future crime solving. State Senator Brian Burke (D-Milwaukee) estimated that more than 12,500 felons will be subject to the new requirement in its first year. Wisconsin is an aggressive state in the enforcement of child support, with state laws that make nonpayment of child support for 120 consecutive days a felony.

Legal Immigrants' Denial of Public Benefits Upheld by Federal Appeals Court

The City of Chicago was plaintiff in a case challenging provisions of the 1996 welfare laws that exclude legal permanent immigrants from receiving public benefits, including cash, food and medical assistance. The federal appeals court in Chicago ruled, however, that the federal government does have power to set the terms and conditions placed on immigrants, including their eligibility for benefits. The plaintiffs had contended that the receipt of benefits should not be tied to immigration status, and that the law establishes a lifetime exclusion from benefits for some immigrants. Similar legal challenges have been attempted in New York, Florida and Minnesota, but all have also been unsuccessful.