A Fresh Vision for Welfare Reauthorization
By Deepak Bhargava, Peter Edelman, Cindy Mann, and Charlene Sinclair

A slowing economy will throw many premises of the federal welfare law into question. Grassroots organizing successes at the state level, promising alliances among key constituencies and changing public attitudes also contribute to a new environment that gives us reason to hope that the TANF reauthorization debate will be far different than the 1996 debacle. Reauthorization could provide a historic opportunity to pivot out of tired paradigms, look at the world afresh, and develop creative solutions to old problems.

A New Environment

The tragedies of September 11th pushed the economy into what could be a long and deep recession. A new study, A Recession Like No Other, finds that we enter this recession with the weakest safety net in recent memory. Millions of unemployed workers will be ineligible for unemployment insurance. Millions more will lack access to welfare, food stamps and Medicaid because of restrictions on benefits for immigrants, a "work first" welfare office culture that will be slow to change even when there are no jobs for parents to take, and -unlawful practices that divert needy families away from the help they need. Welfare time limits have reduced or eliminated benefits for at least 120,000 families already - and more than two dozen states are poised to implement the five-year lifetime limit on benefits between the fall of this year and the summer of 2002. The task of articulating a clear and compelling vision for the TANF debate is more urgent than ever.

There are more and more people and organizations in communities around the country creating that vision. A wave of grassroots organizing over the past five years has put the key issues into sharp relief:

• a labor market that all too often fails to provide steady work at a living wage, the flexibility to attend to children's needs, health insurance or opportunities for advancement;
• the struggles faced by low-income parents trying to hold one or more jobs and care for and nurture their children;
• and the exclusion of immigrants from full and equal access to the opportunities and supports that other Americans enjoy.

The constituency for a fresh vision for welfare is far stronger than it was in 1996. Grassroots community organizations have joined with labor, women's, faith and civil rights organizations to launch a campaign to "Make TANF Work!"

Public opinion has changed too. One positive result of the 1996 welfare reform law was that it ended the tired debates about a system that no one - least of all low-income parents - liked. The resentment and anger that surrounded the old welfare system are largely gone, and the public supports greater investments in low-income families. A recent poll conducted by The Feldman Group finds remarkably high levels of public support for expanded education and training, stopping the time limit clock for families "playing by the rules," focusing welfare policy on poverty reduction, and reducing or eliminating work requirements for parents with young children.

Before talking about TANF, it's important to emphasize that good welfare policy is only one part of the solution to poverty in America. Other crucial issues include tax policy, health insurance, child care, food stamps, labor market policies such as the minimum wage and family leave laws, immigration and workforce policies. But what we do about welfare is in many ways the "canary in the coal mine" that signals the depth of our nation's commitment to low-income families. TANF raised questions about work, family and immigration but failed to provide convincing answers - and the questions are becoming more urgent as the economy cools down. Our vision proceeds from a sober assessment of the record since 1996, and the realities of how low-income families live and work in today's economy.

The Record Since 1996

In some states, welfare caseloads have shrunk to the vanishing point. Before the economic downturn caused caseloads to climb back up in some states, fewer parents with children received cash assistance than at any time in recent history. Labor market participation for low-income single mothers has risen dramatically since 1996, but too many families are still poor and lack the supports they need to keep their children safe. The appearance of success belies the fact that TANF has let some problems fester, and made others worse.

Caseloads are Down, But Poverty Persists
Welfare caseloads are down, but poverty is still with us. For the very poorest families, children and immigrants - the only demographic groups in America to lose ground during the last five mostly prosperous years - life is actually worse. Besides living in poverty, low-wage workers lack job security, health care, and opportunities to improve their job skills. Poor women caring for children are twice as likely to lack health insurance if they are working than if they are unemployed. Low-wage jobs typically do not allow for sick leave or other time off to care for children. Low-wage workers often lack the safety net of Unemployment Insurance that other Americans rely on, making them uniquely vulnerable to job loss and the effects of recession. If we want to do something other than shuffle poor people in and out of the job market, while leaving them poor and undermining their ability to care for their children, a new way of investing in low-income families is desperately needed.

TANF Provides No Relief to Most Low-Income Families
T ANF is becoming irrelevant to most poor families. Families are typically denied help in one of three ways: they are ineligible for help under state policy; eligible but diverted or turned away from assistance; or given inadequate assistance, typically under demeaning conditions.

• Ineligible Families. Consider the great, unspoken irony of welfare reform: for all the bluster about work and marriage, many states have retained precisely the features of AFDC that shut out low-wage workers and discriminated against two-parent families. Walk through a poor community today. It doesn't matter much if the welfare system is "good" or "bad" because most poor families can't get the help they need from it - including parents who need more education and training and the "working poor" families everyone claims to want to help. With few exceptions, state policies under TANF have preserved the inequities in the discredited AFDC system that drew capricious distinctions among poor families and generated resentment.
• Eligible But Turned Away. The narrow segment of families who are possibly eligible for help will face such a maze of bureaucratic red tape (more appointments, more forms, more waiting and, often, no clear rules) that they are as likely as not to be turned away, no matter how desperate their situation. Instead of outreach, there is "diversion" - sometimes to services and one-time assistance, often out the door. An extreme example occurred in Oregon, where some caseworkers instructed families in crisis to go "dumpster-diving" for food rather than seek TANF cash assistance.
• Receiving Assistance, But Not Much, and at a Price. Cash assistance benefit levels have been increased in some states but are below the poverty line in every state and below 50 percent of the poverty line in many states. Low benefit levels and degrading treatment were explained in the bad old AFDC days as a way of punishing the "undeserving" poor and discouraging welfare receipt. In a world where the big sticks of work requirements and sanctions (along with the recent hot economy) mean that most recipients are working or on a path to a job, there is no excuse for treating people badly and leaving them and their children in destitution, or for imposing time limits on families who are fully complying with federal and state rules.

Work/Family Stress is a Defining Feature of the New Economy
Many families - not just those who are poor - are experiencing tremendous work/family stress as parents make hard choices between their jobs and their children. That's the high price we've paid in a "work first," work all the time culture.

While this stress is common across income groups, low-income families feel it most acutely. Low-wage jobs aren't family-friendly: they typically do not provide time off to care for family members, whether through flexible schedules or sick time, vacation, or parental leave. Transportation gaps leave low-income parents traveling hours to child care, to work, and back again. High quality, affordable child care is a struggle for all families, but particularly for parents living in poor communities. Low-income parents often face untenable choices between their jobs and income and their children's well-being. One state teaches women on welfare that they must feel comfortable leaving their sick children alone at home in order not to miss work. "Work first," the guiding principle of state TANF reforms, all too often has meant that a job is supposed to be more important than your children.

Immigrants Are An Increasing Share of Our Communities and of the Low-Wage Workforce
Our economy relies heavily on the labor and taxes of immigrants, who comprise a growing share of the low-wage workforce. If we are serious about designing a system that deals with the shortfalls of the low-wage labor market and that creates opportunities for all, there is no sound basis for denying help to parents based on where they were born.

The four realities described above add up to a sobering portrait of the low-wage labor market, acute family stress, and welfare reform. In short, TANF is to poverty reduction what a fork is to soup: it makes things messier and it leaves you hungry. Persistent poverty for families and children was and remains a national disgrace that can and should be addressed.

We should not and we cannot go back to AFDC. But TANF as currently constituted cannot solve the problems facing us. Therefore, we must ask ourselves: what is a compelling vision for TANF reauthorization that accords with broadly shared values, builds on ideas bubbling up from the grassroots, and can be accomplished?

A New Vision for TANF: A Ladder of Opportunity for All Low-Income Families

Welfare can be transformed from a punitive system cycling people in and out of the low-wage labor market into a ladder of opportunity for all low-income families - low-wage workers, unemployed parents, two-parent families and immigrants. If low-income people had access to the income, training and supports they need, in a manner that showed respect rather than resentment, most could lift and keep themselves out of poverty and take better care of their families.

Some states have adopted innovative policies that feed a vision for a new national framework for TANF.

• Opening Up Access. In a few states you can receive TANF services if you are poor whether you get cash assistance or not. Some states provide support to both single- and two-parent families. Others have allocated state funds to replace benefits that immigrants lost under the 1996 law.
• Increasing Family Incomes and Providing Opportunity. Some state programs, including the widely reported and praised Minnesota Family Investment Program, have shown that increasing family incomes through income supplements to low wages pays off for family and child well-being. The Parents as Scholars program in Maine and equivalent efforts in West Virginia, Maryland and other states have invested in the long-term prospects of low-income parents by allowing education and training to "count" as a work activity. Pennsylvania and other states have created transitional public jobs programs that provide wage-paying jobs and training opportunities to unemployed parents. Other states and cities have adopted higher minimum wages and enacted living wage ordinances. "Self-sufficiency standards" that measure the real cost of living for families of different sizes in different parts of states are now routinely used by some policy-makers to assess policy options.
• Supporting Family and Child Well-Being. Montana's at-home infant care program allows low-income parents to care for their own young children. A number of states have torn down some of the barriers to enrollment in food stamp programs. Some states and cities have adopted policies that provide health insurance, expand child care availability and quality, and extend family leave and unemployment insurance coverage to low-wage workers. Michigan has no time limit for families that comply with program requirements, thereby rewarding families who are trying to lift themselves out of poverty.

We have learned from these experiences, but only the federal government can build on these examples and send a signal about the goals of state TANF programs that results in consistent improvements in the lives of poor families. And with a souring economy and state retrenchment likely, the need for a federal signal is greater than ever.

Building on Precedents in Health Insurance and Child Care
The incomes and circumstances of low-income families are often in flux due to the nature of the low-wage job market and the fragility of their child care and transportation arrangements. Low-income people move in and out of low-wage jobs with frequent bouts of unemployment between jobs.

This reality is finally being taken into account in health and, to a somewhat lesser extent, child care programs. Eligibility for health coverage and child care subsidies has been opened to more low-income families. Some states are basing health coverage on income - for example, providing coverage to all children or parents below 200 percent of the poverty line. Similar (though less sweeping) changes have been made in child care programs since 1996. Some states are also simplifying application procedures and conducting outreach to inform eligible families about available benefits.

These changes are very important to low-income families because they take into account the fluid incomes and employment status of low-wage workers by providing seamless coverage. As these changes suggest, the line that was commonly drawn to divide the world of low-income families into "welfare families" and "working families" has been significantly blurred to reflect the reality of low-income people's lives.

To date, TANF's cash assistance and related service programs have not moved in these directions. In most states, a family must still have virtually no income and very limited resources to qualify for a TANF cash payment or TANF-funded education and training. Families who have been receiving TANF payments do sometimes qualify for cash supplements and services once they find employment (although in most states time clocks still apply to these families). But unlike health and child care subsidy programs, the benefits and services available through TANF are typically available to families with earnings only if they were receiving TANF assistance before they found work. Thus, many states have adopted or retained inequitable policies that encourage work for parents receiving welfare, but don't support families in the labor market who weren't receiving TANF cash assistance previously. Moreover, TANF is still administered in most states in ways - subtle and not so subtle - that are intended to keep people away from needed services and support.

A Policy Framework for TANF Reauthorization

Over the past five years, a wave of grassroots organizing has given voice to a new vision for welfare policy and facilitated low-income people's participation in shaping that vision and having their voices heard.

Three principles underlie a meaningful and winnable agenda for 2002: income support and education and training should be more widely available to low-income families; families and the government should each be responsible; and the well-being of families matters most.

Income support and education and training should be more widely available to low-income families.

• Eliminate the inequities and disincentives of the old AFDC system. Offer TANF education and training benefits to parents who may have some earnings, so they can advance in the job market. Similarly, a family's ability to qualify for cash assistance supplements to earnings should not depend on whether the family received TANF before getting a job. Time limits should not apply to families who are "playing by the rules."
• Qualify two-parent families as well as single-parent families for TANF income support and services.
• Drop the federal rules that discourage education and training.
• End discrimination based on where a person was born. All people who are in the country legally should be treated equally, whether or not they are citizens. Special attention should be given to the provision of culturally appropriate services and translation services.

Families and the government should each be responsible.

• Don't impose time limits on assistance for people who play by the rules but continue to need some support, and encourage the education and training of parents who need it to get or retain jobs that will support their families.
• Provide options to people with limited work experience and when the economy (generally, or in a specific community) doesn't offer job opportunities. Establish public job programs to ensure that work and training are available to parents with limited work experience, and to provide a safety net for families when work isn't available because of economic conditions.
• Examine the sufficiency of TANF's cash assistance grants. Even though people who are receiving TANF are by definition playing by the rules (otherwise they would be sanctioned), the low level of aid they receive consigns them to abject poverty. At a minimum, require states to measure and report on the sufficiency of their TANF cash assistance grant levels against a fair standard. In addition, suspend time limits and maintain aid in times of recession when it will be most needed, particularly in light of Unemployment Insurance rules that keep so many low-wage workers out of the UI system. Guarantee sufficient federal funds to states and TANF assistance to individuals as the economy sours and joblessness rises.
• Require states and localities to follow their own rules. Federal rules must penalize states that create a wild-west culture in the welfare office, inappropriately divert or arbitrarily sanction families, or fail to appropriately screen and serve families in crisis, including domestic violence survivors.

The well-being of families matters most.

• Accommodate parents with sick, disabled or very young children, or infirm relatives. TANF rules should be structured to reduce or eliminate work participation requirements and suspend time limits for these parents.
• Require employers to expand family-friendly policies that allow parents to care for their children, and create incentives for states to establish paid family leave and other programs to fill the gaps.
• Don't measure state performance under TANF by caseload reduction or by success in meeting arbitrary process standards like work participation rates that are skewed by bonuses based on caseload reduction. Instead, measure state performance against outcomes that matter, including the reduction of family and child poverty. States should be required to collect and make publicly available data on their performance, broken down by race and ethnicity to ensure that services are provided equitably.

Conclusion

We've ended welfare as we knew it; now it's time to end policy-making by bumper sticker as we know it.

A new vision for welfare will require profound cultural change at every level. Policymakers and the political elite will have to acknowledge that TANF needs to accommodate the realities of the low-wage labor market and low-income families today. States and welfare administrators will have to change the orientation of the system from "beat them down" and "get them off" to "lift them up."

The culture of the welfare office must not make it difficult and degrading to seek income support and education and training, and must make it possible for families to live decent lives. Federal and state resources will have to be sufficient to meet the scale of the need. And low-income people and their allies will need to articulate a bold new vision for poverty reduction and create the public will to make the needed changes happen. This is a daunting set of tasks. The price of inaction, however - for low-income people and society - is simply out of reach.

This article is excerpted from "From Caseload Reduction to Poverty Reduction: A Fresh Vision for TANF Reauthorization," August 2001. The complete article is available online at www.nationalcampaign.org. The study and poll referred to in this article are available at www.makeTANFwork.org.

The National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support is a national coalition of 1,000 grassroots community organizations in 40 states that has developed a vision for TANF reauthorization grounded in the realities of how low-income families live and work.

Deepak Bhargava is Director of Public Policy at the Center for Community Change and Director of the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support.

Peter Edelman is a Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center.

Cindy Mann is the former Director of Family and Children Health Programs for the Health Care Financing Administration, US Department of Health and Human Services.

Charlene Sinclair is Organizing Director for the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support.

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