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November 2005 - Vol. 7, No. 8
Cuts to Welfare Programs and Increased Work Requirements
Approved by House
On November 17, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget
reconciliation bill, H.R. 4241 that incorporates President Bushís
TANF reauthorization proposal in its entirety. The presidentís TANF
proposal has been repeatedly unsuccessful over the last four years
as a stand-alone bill in Congress. As a part of the budget reconciliation
bill, however, it was the subject of little debate and was overshadowed
by the deep cuts made to other social programs including food stamps,
Medicaid and child support enforcement (see CFFPP October 2005 Policy
Briefing at www.cffpp.org for a summary of the proposed cuts to
child support enforcement). The House budget reconciliation bill
would make the following changes to the TANF program (these provisions
are identical to earlier House TANF reauthorization provisions):
- Require “universal engagement” (a requirement that
all non-exempt recipients begin work upon entry to the program).
- Require that 70% of a state’s caseload work outside the
home.
- Require that all adults with children under 6 years of age
work 40 hours per week.
- Increase child care funding by $1 billion, far short of the
anticipated increase in need and virtually freezing child care
funding over the next five years. The Congressional Budget Office
estimates that child care needs under welfare reform would cost
$11 billion over the time period.
- Require that states apply a full-family sanction to recipients
who do not comply with program requirements. States are currently
given the option to apply a sanction to just the adult in a TANF
case, maintaining benefits for the children in the family.
- Allow work-eligible individuals to participate in “qualified
activities” (limited education and training, substance abuse
counseling or treatment, etc.) for up to 16 hours per week, and
for only 3 months in any 24 consecutive months.
- Continue to bar legal immigrant parents from temporary assistance.
- Encourage states to pass through up to $100 (or $50 more than
the amount of the current state pass-through; whichever is less)
of child support payments to families receiving TANF, by eliminating
the requirement for payment of the federal share up to these amounts.
- Amend the purpose of TANF to include the encouragement of “the
formation and maintenance of healthy, 2-parent married families,
and [to] encourage responsible fatherhood.”
- Provide $1.5 billion over 5 years for programs that promote
marriage.
- Add to the list of state expenditures eligible for “maintenance
of effort” credit, “spending on non-eligible [not
just non-TANF, but non-eligible non-TANF] families” to prevent
out-of-wedlock birth, marriage, and responsible fatherhood.
- Provide federal waivers to allow for state demonstration projects
“to coordinate multiple public assistance, workforce development,
and other programs.” The language allowing for the waivers
is very broad, and it is therefore difficult to determine the
possible effects this kind of proposal would have on people who
need state social services. There is no limit on the number of
states to which such a waiver might be granted.
The bill specifies a limited number of activities that can be funded
through the “Healthy Marriage Promotion” competitive
state grants program. Among them:
- Public advertising campaigns on the value of marriage and needed
skills
- High school education on the value of marriage, relationship
skills and budgeting
- Marriage enhancement and skills programs for married couples
- Marriage mentoring programs that use married couples in at-risk
communities
The Senate budget reconciliation bill will be taken up at some
point after the Senate returns from recess in December. Whether
or not the Senate bill will also contain the TANF reauthorization
provisions will be determined at that point. There is some question
of whether the TANF provisions are allowed in a budget reconciliation
bill since they constitute policy changes and not budget allocations.
The Byrd rule (originally offered by Senator Robert Byrd of West
Virginia) allows a Senator to offer an amendment or raise a point
of order to strike or bar consideration of provisions deemed extraneous
to budget reconciliation matters.
The budget reconciliation cuts to other programs have been analyzed
by the Congressional Budget Office, and the Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities has published the following key points, based
on that analysis:
- Increases in Medicaid co-payments would be applied to 17 million
low-income Medicaid beneficiaries, resulting in delays in seeking
medical care or forgoing medical care or medications, ultimately
leading to increases in sickness and health-related problems for
these individuals. Over ten years, out-of-pocket co-payments required
of Medicaid beneficiaries and reductions in covered health care
services will result in cuts of nearly $30 billion.
- The proposed cuts to the Food Stamp Program are estimated to
result in a loss of food stamp benefits to more than 220,000 people
per month.
- Cuts to child support enforcement are estimated to reduce child
support payments made by noncustodial parents by $24 billion over
ten years.
- The increased work requirement for TANF participants, combined
with level funding for child care assistance will result in the
elimination of child care subsidies for over 330,000 children
by 2010.
CBPP points out that the $50 billion in cuts made to programs in
the budget bill could have been achieved in a number of other ways
that would not have placed the burden on the poorest families. These
include curbing excessive payments to managed care plans and lowering
the prices paid by Medicaid for prescriptions, and canceling two
new tax cuts aimed at households with incomes of more than $1 million
per year.
The CBPP report is available at www.cbpp.org.
Demonstration Yields Lessons For Father Involvement
in Programs
A recent issue brief based on an evaluation of twenty-one Head
Start Fatherhood Demonstration projects funded by the federal Administration
on Children, Youth and Families and the Office of Child Support
Enforcement describes lessons learned in the implementation of the
projects. The projects were funded for three years beginning in
February 2001 to create and implement innovative practices that
would increase father involvement in Head Start and in the lives
of their children. Among the “lessons learned” in the
evaluation:
- Participants felt more comfortable with male fatherhood staff.
Male staff were able to counter the impression that the Head Start
program was for women and children, and allowed for more trust.
Retention of male staff was problematic, however, with more than
half of the programs losing their lead father involvement position
during the demonstration period.
- Staff training was cited as the most important element in a
successful father involvement program. Programs reported that
for female staff, the training allowed an opportunity to dispel
negative attitudes toward working with men that were based on
the personal experiences of female staff.
- Recruitment and retention of fathers was a challenge for the
following reasons:
- Their work schedules
- Mothers were sometimes reluctant to have the father of their
children involved
- A general perception that Head Start is for women and children
- The following strategies helped to overcome challenges in recruitment:
- Inviting fathers to all activities of the Early Head Start
program;
- One-on-one contact and relationship-building with fathers
who were present at the program building. Staff also encouraged
mothers to bring fathers to the program, and
- Increasing the presence of men in person or visually in
materials.
- Fathers showed a preference for activities that included their
children. Attendance at father-only activities declined over time
and these activities, such as peer support and father-and-staff
outings were less popular than home visits, group socializations
with children and simple activities with their children.
- Program partnerships with the child support agency primarily
involved disseminating information to staff and fathers on the
child support system. Many of the partnerships experienced challenges
because of the differences in agency missions and the fathers’
hostility toward child support agencies, as well as confidentiality
issues that made it difficult to address individual cases.
- At the end of the demonstration period, nearly two-thirds of
the programs planned to keep staff devoted to father involvement
activities. About half of the programs sought separate additional
funds for providing services to fathers, but most had been unsuccessful.
- By the end of the demonstration period, most program directors
felt that their programs had experienced a significant shift to
becoming more father-friendly.
The issue brief, Creating Paths to Father Involvement: Lessons
from Early Head Start, August 2005, is available at www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/.
Marriage Surveys Provide Mixed Messages; Research
Clearinghouse Returns Federal Grant
Two recent reports provide some information on attitudes toward
marriage and government efforts to promote marriage. The first was
conducted by the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI), a nonprofit
organization that advocates marriage, with funding from the U.S.
Department of Justice. Wade Horn, currently the Assistant Secretary
for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services was formerly the President of NFI. Horn has played an important
role in creating and advocating for President Bush’s “Healthy
Marriage Initiative”.
NFI conducted interviews with 1,503 respondents over the age of
18 to determine attitudes toward marriage. The survey found that:
- In response to such statements as “Fathers are as important
as mothers for the proper development of children,” and
“All things being equal, it is better for children to be
raised in a household that has a married mother and father,”
NFI found widespread agreement (97% and 89% respectively agreed
or strongly agreed with the statements), which it interpreted
as broad support for the concept of marriage.
- More than 56% strongly disagreed or disagreed that, “In
the absence of violence and extreme conflict, parents who have
an unsatisfactory marriage should stay together until their children
are grown.
- Thirty percent of divorced respondents cited domestic violence
as a reason for the divorce. NFI analyzed the relationship between
reasons for divorce and domestic violence, and found that among
the reasons proposed to respondents, "too much conflict and
arguing" very strongly predicted a citation of domestic violence.
The author states in the report:
This finding suggests, but by itself does not prove,
that a great deal of the violence that was cited as a reason
for divorce grew out of a pre-divorce escalation of conflict
that was not long-term. It is likely that, as the conflict
increased, one or more incidences of violence, perhaps often
fairly minor ones, pushed the marriage beyond the “point
of no return” on the way to divorce.
- Just nine percent of ex-husbands, but 44% of ex-wives, gave
domestic violence as one of the reasons for their divorce.
The report considered responses to such statements as “Divorced
parents can be as effective as those living together” and
“Couples with children ought to be married” as measures
of pro- or anti-marriage sentiments.
The NFI survey did not attempt to assess attitudes toward government
programs to promote marriage, but a recent survey of 1,130 adults
conducted by the PBS Religion and Ethics Newsweekly did include
this question and found that:
- 82% of Americans say the government should not be involved
in programs that encourage marriage.
On a side note, the PBS survey also asked respondents about their
concerns in general, and found that 18% felt that “moral values”
was the concern that worried them most, roughly the same proportion
as was the case in polls conducted after the 2004 election. In this
survey, however, when respondents were asked what was meant by “moral
values”, the largest number (36%) named personal values such
as honesty and responsibility. Just 10% felt that “moral values”
referred to social issues such as abortion or gay marriage.
The NFI report, With This Ring, is available at: www.fatherhood.org.
The PBS report is available at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week908/analysis.html
In a development related to the marriage promotion initiatives,
the National Council on Family Relations has ended its contract
with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). NCFR had
been awarded a $900,000 grant to establish a National Healthy Marriage
Resource Center in September 2004, but its board refused to politicize
its role and risk its tax-exempt status when required by the Bush
administration to put a photo and statement from the President on
the clearinghouse website, and to exclude same-sex marriage from
the clearinghouse.
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