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July 2004 - Vol. 6, No. 5
Please Note: As of July 1, 2004,
we have changed our name! The Center on Fathers, Families and Public
Policy is now The Center for Family Policy and Practice.
Food Stamp Income Eligibility Set To Change for Noncustodial
Parents
The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 (FSRIA) changed
the federal law regarding income accounting in the payment of food
stamps for noncustodial parents. Food stamp eligibility is based
on gross income; FSRIA changes the treatment of child support payments
when determining the amount of gross income. Comments on the proposed
federal regulations that will implement the law were accepted through
June 15. Once submitted comments are taken into account, the regulations
will become official federal policy.
One provision of the new law will particularly affect noncustodial
parent households:
- When determining eligibility for food stamp receipt for noncustodial
parent households, gross income will be calculated after subtracting
paid child support (considered an exclusion from income), rather
than calculating gross income before taking into account paid
child support (a deduction from gross income), as is done under
current law.
FSRIA allows states the option of continuing to treat child support
payments as an income deduction rather than an exclusion if a state
includes a statement to that effect in their State plan. The law
makes no change to the calculation of custodial household income,
counting any child support received as income.
The commentary in the proposed rules makes clear that the intent
of the law is to increase food security among low-income households:
“State agencies should note that if they provide households
an exclusion for legally obligated child support payments rather
than a deduction, households reap the benefit of both. The exclusion
would cause the household to have a lower gross income, making it
more likely that the household would meet the program’s monthly
gross income limit and, therefore, making it more likely that the
household would be eligible for the program. In addition, the excluded
payments would not be counted as part of the household’s net
income, in effect deducting the payments from income.
The Center for Law and Social Policy has prepared an analysis of
the regulations that includes some important concerns and issues
that are not directly addressed in the proposed regulations. These
include:
- There is no clear provision allowing noncustodial parent households
to challenge incorrect information.
- The treatment of families not using the state’s child
support system needs clarification.
- Some families use the state child support system of another
state to enforce their child support order and this is not addressed
in the proposed regulations.
- The proposed regulations are silent on what happens if a noncustodial
parent whose case is being enforced by the state child support
enforcement system declines to authorize release of information
to the food stamp agency.
- The treatment of large arrearage payments is not adequately
addressed.
- The regulations do not address the treatment of child support
payments for reunited families.
- Guidance is needed on what to do when a large, one-time support
payment is received.
The regulations can be obtained at http://www.fns.usda.gov/cga/Federal-Register/2004/041604.pdf.
The CLASP summary is available at www.clasp.org.
Update on State Child Support Legislation
The following are updates on the status of legislation related
to child support for several states. Some of the bills have been
summarized in previous policy briefings. Note that all original
summaries are available on our website at www.cffpp.org
under National Policy Briefing.
- In Rhode Island, advocates successfully fought
off a proposed elimination of the state's pass-through of $50
in child support payments to families who receive welfare benefits
(see February 2004 Policy Briefing). The Rhode Island General
Assembly restored the $50 payment to the budget, and the Senate
passed the measure the following day. In advocating for retaining
the pass-through, National Education Association Executive Director
Robert Walsh stated, "Robbing $50 a month from children in
3,100 of the state's poorest families will save a negligible amount
of money for the state. It doesn't even register it's such a small
amount. But it will take away up to 10 percent of the income from
some of our state's poorest families with children."
- Louisiana Senate Bill 633 was approved on June
21 by the House and Senate. The bill makes nonpayment of child
support a felony if a parent is more than a year behind on child
support payments or owes more than $5,000 in child support (see
April 2004 Policy Briefing for details). State Representative
Shirley Bowler (R-Harahan) is urging Louisiana Governor Kathleen
Blanco to veto the bill because she feels that it will not help
in the collection of overdue child support payments, but force
the loss of a job and make it harder for that parent to get employment
when released. According to Bowler, "No child's better off
with a parent with a criminal record." The House had earlier
passed a version of the bill with several amendments that would
have allowed a convicted parent to avoid jail by paying the child
support debt, and ensured that any fine that was paid by the parent
would go towards the child support debt. Both of these amendments
were removed by a House-Senate compromise committee, however.
- Minnesota began charging a fee of one percent
of paid child support to parents who receive child support payments
through the state. The fee will not apply to current welfare recipients.
An expected 56,000 families will be affected by the new fee which
is capped at $582 per case. It was established by the legislature
in order to make up for the governor’s budget cut of $370,000
to child support services. Non-TANF parents who are not willing
to pay the fee will have their child support case closed. Twenty-five
states currently charge a fee for child support services.
- HB 514 was signed into law by Alaska Governor
Murkowski on June 29. (See March 2004
Policy Briefing). The new legislation will make nonpayment
of child support a felony punishable by a sentence of up to five
years. It also makes aiding the nonpayment of child support a
felony subject to the same penalties as nonpayment. Alaska currently
has more than 14,000 cases where a parent is more than $10,000
in arrears or has failed to make a payment for more than 24 months.
The final bill includes a requirement that the child support agency
create an arrears forgiveness program as an incentive for the
noncustodial parent to make payments
House Passes Extension of TANF
On June 22, the House passed another temporary extension of the
TANF program that will leave current legislation in place through
September, 2004. The extension is the seventh since the welfare
reform law, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation
Act (PRWORA), which was first enacted in 1996, expired in 2002.
Low-Wage Employment Plagues Many Workers after Welfare
Reform
In a report prepared by Sheldon Danziger and Rucker C. Johnson
for the Russell Sage Foundation Forum on the Future of Work last
month, employment and wage rates of a large sample of 874 cash welfare
recipients in Michigan were examined to assess the status of workers
6 years after welfare reform and its work requirements were first
implemented. The sample was drawn from data from the Women’s
Employment Study (WES) conducted by the Michigan Program on Poverty
and Social Welfare Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public
Policy at the University of Michigan. Single mothers who received
cash assistance in February 1997 were interviewed in their homes
five times over the study period ending in Fall 2003 to ascertain
their employment status. Among the findings:
- The typical respondent who worked at some point between 1997
and 2003 worked for 10 months before experiencing a month of unemployment.
For women with a high school diploma, median employment lasted
12 months, but was only 7 months for a woman without a diploma.
- The percent of women in jobs that were characterized for the
study as “good jobs” increased from 8% at the outset
of welfare reform to 25% at the peak of the economic boom in 1999,
at which point the increase slowed but still increased to 28.4%
by 2003. However, the one-year probability of moving from a “low-wage”
to a “good” job remains about 15%.
- Just under half (47%) of all working respondents worked in jobs
that did not pay enough to keep a family of three out of poverty
in spite of working an average of 54 months during the 6 years
since welfare reform. Almost two-fifths of all respondents in
the study had no job in Fall 2003.
The report, From Welfare to the Low-Wage Labor Market,
is available at www.lowwagework.org.
Mid-Year Report on Prison And Jail Populations Released
The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics has released its May 2004
Bulletin, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2003. The
Bulletin reports on incarceration rates and follows trends in imprisonment
since 1995. Among the findings:
- In the fiscal year ending June 2003, the prison population (prisoners
in federal or state prisons or jails) increased by 40,983 to 2,078,570,
the largest increase in 4 years.
- Louisiana had the highest incarceration rate at 803 per 100,000
residents, followed by Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Alabama.
Maine had the lowest incarceration rate at 148 per 100,000 residents.
The other states with the lowest rates of incarceration were Minnesota,
North Dakota, Rhode Island and New Hampshire.
- The national incarceration rate has grown steadily since 1995.
In that year the rate was 601 per 100,000 residents. In 2003 the
rate reached 715 per 100,000 residents.
- At mid-year 2003, the number of adult female jail inmates rose
6.3 percent while the number of adult male jail inmates increased
3.7 percent. Nearly 6 in 10 persons in local jails were racial
or ethnic minorities.
- An estimated 12 percent of black males in their twenties were
in prison or jail in 2003, compared to 3.7 percent of Hispanics
and about 1.6 percent of whites. Among the more than 2 million
inmates at mid-year 2003, an estimated 577,300 were black males
between ages of 20 and 39.
The report is available at www.ojp.usdoj.jov/bjs/.
U.S. Has Highest Child Poverty
Rate of Industrialized Countries
In a summary of data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) and the Luxembourg Income Study, the Economic
Policy Institute compared 16 countries that belong to the OECD and
face similar global economic conditions. The countries were compared
for their expenditures on social programs as a percent of their
Gross Domestic Product and their child poverty rates. Not surprisingly,
there was a strong correlation between social expenditures and poverty
rates. Among the 16 countries, the U.S. stands out as the country
with the lowest expenditures and the highest child poverty rate
among all of the countries studied. The U.S. spends the least on
social programs and has a child poverty rate five times the rates
of Sweden, Finland and Norway. The short analysis of the data is
available as the June 23, 2004 Economic Snapshot at www.epinet.org.
The information will be incorporated in a forthcoming book from
EPI, The State of Working America 2004/2005.
Faith-Based Initiative Subject
of Legal Challenge But Continues to Grow
A lawsuit filed in federal court represents the first such legal
challenge to President Bush's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.
The lawsuit has been brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation,
based in Madison, Wisconsin. The complaint names Jim Towey, Director
of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives and other federal
department directors as defendants. It claims that their actions
violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by using
federal taxpayer funds to support activities that endorse and give
faith-based organizations preferred positions as political insiders.
In addition, the lawsuit asserts that the defendants' claim to be
leveling the playing field for access to federal funds by faith-based
organizations is false, and that in fact the initiative gives preference
to and endorsement of faith-based organizations as preferred providers
of social services. The complaint is available at www.ffrf.org/legal/faithbased_complaint.pdf.
Other Faith-Based Initiative developments in the past month:
- President Bush created new Centers for Faith-Based and Community
Initiatives in three federal agencies—the Department of
Commerce, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Small Business
Administration, bringing to 10 the number of agencies with a designated
center for encouraging federal funding of faith-based organizations.
- Final rules have been implemented that make the following changes:
- Clarify that faith-based organizations are eligible to participate
in programs funded through the Departments of Education, Justice,
Health and Human Services and Veterans Affairs on the same
basis as any other private organization.
- Remove the regulatory prohibition on religious organizations
that prevents them from making employment decisions on a religious
basis if they receive federal funds to provide services. The
rules lift the prohibition for the Departments of Veterans
Affairs, Education, Housing and Urban Development and the
U.S. Agency for International Development.
- Amend Executive Order 11246, which prohibits government
contractors from discriminating in employment, to exempt religious
corporations, associations, educational institutions and societies
from the order, allowing these entities to make employment
decisions on a religious basis when contracting with the federal
government. The amended executive order, Executive Order 13279,
applies to Department of Labor contractors and subcontractors,
and federally- assisted construction contractors and subcontractors.
- Change Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regulations to
lift the prohibition on participation in certain programs
by primarily religious organizations and to lift a prohibition
on “religious influences.”
- A proposed rule would revise the Department of Labor Workforce
Investment Act to allow participants to use their individual training
accounts, or similar training accounts created at the state or
local level, for religious training.
In developments related to funding for faith-based services:
- The Department of Labor has awarded nearly $1.2 million in grants
of about $25,000 each to 48 faith-based and community organizations
to provide employment and training services to ex-offenders, immigrants,
at-risk youth, single mothers, individuals with disabilities,
foreign job seekers with language barriers, battered immigrant
women, low-income workers and the economically disadvantaged.
For a list of grantees, see http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ETA20041225.htm.
- The Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Housing
and Urban Development (HUD) have provided over $1 billion in competitive,
non-formula grants to faith-based organizations during the fiscal
year 2003, an increase from previous years of $144 million.
- A Philadelphia church whose pastor has been a vocal supporter
of President Bush’s faith-based initiative received nearly
$1 million in federal funding through the initiative to support
the establishment of individual development accounts for low-income
Philadelphia families. The pastor, Herbert H. Lusk II, has stated
openly that he hopes the administration’s grants to inner-city
religious groups will win over black voters in the November presidential
election.
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