Senate Finance Committee Holds Hearing On Welfare Proposals -- California Capitol Hill Bulletin -- Volume 10, Bulletin 6 -- March 13, 2003

On March 12, 2003, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on proposals to revise the welfare system entitled "Welfare Reform: Building on Success". Witnesses were invited to testify about the improvements necessary to be applied to the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, as the 108th Congress gears up to reauthorize the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families legislation.

Advocating the President's welfare plan, which includes reauthorization of the TANF, Child Care Entitlement and Child Support Enforcement programs, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson credited the 1996 Welfare Reform Act with a 54.1% drop in TANF caseloads, which in turn prompted soaring employment rates of single mother and a significant reduction in child poverty among other effects. Secretary Thompson specified that the President's proposal is aimed at building on this success by including the following four elements: strengthening the federal-state partnership, asking states to help every family achieve the greatest degree of self-sufficiency through a creative mix of work and additional constructive activities, helping states to promote healthy marriages, improving the management and quality of programs and services, and allowing the states to integrate welfare and workforce assistance programs.

Mr. Howard Hendrick, Director of Oklahoma's Human Services Department, testified about the success that his state enjoyed in using TANF money to promote healthy families, while Mr. Larry Temple of the Texas Workforce Commission testified about the success of the post-1996 implementation of the TANF program in Texas. Ms. Marilyn Ray Smith, Deputy Commissioner and IV-D Director for Child Support and Enforcement Division of the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, testified about the accomplishments of the nation's child support enforcement program since the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), and made several recommendations for further improvements of the program currently in place.

The last panelist that testified before the committee, Ms. Margy Waller, Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institution, has offered an alternative view on the TANF reauthorization proposal put forth by the administration. Ms. Waller asserted that the President's reform plan seems sure to undermine the success of the welfare law by effectively eliminating the ability of states to employ proven welfare-to-work strategies, thus virtually wiping out the progress made in the last six years.

For more information about this hearing or to obtain full witness testimonies, please visit Senate Finance Committee's website at: http://finance.senate.gov.

In December 2002, as part of their new series entitled Federal Formula Grants and California, the California Institute and the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) published a report on California's relationship with federal welfare programs. A link to the report is available at http://www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i=172 .

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