WASHINGTON, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- Both advocates and opponents of a bill that would change Clinton-era welfare laws, approved Wednesday by the Senate Finance Committee, say the measure doesn't go far enough in addressing the welfare program's problems.
The 1996 reforms to the federal laws that oversee state-level welfare programs have in many ways been a success, leading to record numbers of individuals moving off the welfare roles, many into jobs.
But analysts and policymakers across the political spectrum contend that much more can be done to ensure people leave the welfare rolls with adequate jobs or at least are working while they receive benefits.
In addition, some critics of the effort to reauthorize the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or TANF, program say that the effort to reform the bill in Congress has ignored important downturns in employment and increases in poverty levels during the economic downturn.
"The two key improvements to the 1996 act that I believe the Congress has an obligation to act on are: strengthening the work requirement and improving healthy family formation provisions," bill sponsor and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said during a hearing on the bill Wednesday.
Those two issues, however, are highly contentious with some conservatives arguing that the bill does not require welfare recipients to work enough hours in order to receive benefits, nor even ensure that they work at all.
Some Democrats and liberal policy analysts believe that the measure goes too far in adding to the existing work requirements and spends too little on child-care funding for working families and too much to promote marriage.
Grassley's bill would maintain various provisions in current law, including the five-year time limit for receiving welfare benefits. The level of block grants provided to the states would remain stable through 2008 at $16.5 billion and $77.9 million for territories.
Among the new provisions being promoted by Grassley is the increase of work participation rates for states by 5 percent, the same as the already approved House version. Proponents say this would require states to meet a mandated level of 50 percent of welfare beneficiaries working in 2004, increasing to 70 percent by 2008.
Work requirements for beneficiaries would also be increased from 20 to 24 hours a week with job training or vocational education counting toward those hours.
The new initiative most supported by conservatives is the efforts to promote marriage and families. The bill would provide $100 million a year in matching grants to states for marriage promotion programs and an additional $100 million for research, demonstration projects, and technical assistance.
Senate Democrats and policy experts are dubious about these programs, which they say are not backed up by adequate data to demonstrate their success. A large fight is expected over the measure on the Senate floor.
Although conservatives generally support the controversial marriage funding provisions, some contend the bill does not go far enough to ensure people work while they receive benefits.
Robert E. Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that in some ways the bill is much less stringent than the 1996 laws because of various loopholes, including one that allows states to count those who only work part of their required hours as meeting the state's overall work requirements.
"Overall when you cut through all the numbers, it (the bill) is requiring only about 45 percent of TANF recipients in the final year (2008), to be participating in some form of countable activity (work, job training, etc)," Rector told United Press International. "That is not a lot higher than participation rates today, which average 40 percent."
Under current law, states are required to reduce welfare caseloads to a specific level or have a certain percentage of recipients working or in work preparation programs, or a combination of both.
The average state no longer faces any federal work requirement because they have met the caseload reduction requirements, said Rector. Because of this, states have little incentive to push people into off caseloads and into work, something not addressed in the Grassley bill.
"This is the greatest success is a government program in the post-war period," said Rector. "It is remarkable that instead of going forward and expanding it and adding related programs like food stamps and public housing, we are having a hard time passing legislation as strong as the original."
However, liberal analysts believe the measure goes too far in requiring people to work more hours in order to qualify for benefits while not providing enough funding for child care needs of poor families.
Shawn Fremstad, deputy director of the welfare reform division at the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said that although Grassley's measure is a modest improvement over the House-passed bill, it is largely unworkable because of its inadequate funding for support services.
"It needs to change in significant ways to be helpful for states and families," Fremstad told UPI.
He said that the Senate bill, like its House counterpart, has inadequate funding for child care.
The CBPP predicts that 360,000 children will lose access to child-care funding by 2008 under Grassley's bill, which provides an increase of $1 billion over current spending over five years for child care.
Even with the increase, states will be unable to maintain current program spending levels due to their budget deficits. In addition, the increased work requirements increases child-care needs.
Attempts by Democrats to increase that funding failed during Wednesday's mark-up of the bill. An amendment offered by Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., failed largely along party lines with Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., crossing the isle to vote with Republicans against the measure.
Conrad stressed at the hearing that while he approved of efforts to increase child-care funding, Bingaman's $11.2 billion allocation was too much in light of the government's current budget crunch.
Although some conservative Republicans, like Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., oppose any further increase, Grassley indicated Wednesday that the issue of increasing child-care funding would be addressed during Senate floor debate.
Fremstad and other critics of the bills say that one major problem with both the House and Senate bills is that they do nothing to address the problems with TANF brought to light by the economic downturn.
Recent data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources shows declines in welfare rolls corresponding with significant increases in child poverty in 2002 and likely through 2003. In addition, there was an over 2 percent increase in unemployment among single mothers from 2000-2002.
Urban Institute data shows that fewer unemployment recipients are getting jobs.
Fifty percent of those that collected unemployment insurance got jobs and left the welfare rolls in 1999, but that number dropped to 40 percent in 2002. Critics argue that neither the House nor Senate bill attempts to address these concerns, which show that the system is failing to reach some of those it is intended to benefit.
However, Rector and other conservatives dismiss the economic changes as cyclical movements that are unimportant to a measure that would fund TANF over six years, and not have a significant impact on the program in the first two years.
As to the prospects for passage of welfare reform reauthorization this year, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., did not include it on the list of his biggest legislative priorities for the fall legislative session and committee staff indicated they have received no indication of when it may be addressed.
Both Democrat and Republican Senate staff also agreed that the contentiousness of the bill might keep it from being voted on by the entire Senate this year, but that the work done on the measure should set the stage for debate next year.
