Senate Finance Committee TANF Bill Considerably Better Than House Bill

The Senate Finance Committee marked up its TANF reauthorization bill on June 26, by a 13-8 vote. This version is significantly better for low-income people than the measure passed in May by the House, but needs improvement in some areas.

Religious community advocates are urging Senators to:

• Support the TANF bill reported by the Finance Committee;
• Support increased funding for child care;
• Oppose efforts to reduce benefits for legal immigrants; and
• Oppose efforts to increase the work requirement or reduce activities counted toward meeting the work requirement.

Three Republican Senators -- Snowe (ME), Hatch (UT), and Murkowski (AK) -- voted with Independent Jim Jeffords (VT) and all but one of the Committee Democrats for passage. Majority Leader Tom Daschle (SD) opposed passage because of the inadequate child care funding in the bill.

The next step is Senate floor action, but it is not clear when that will happen. Given the press of other urgent business -- and the congressional vacation in August, through Labor Day -- no vote is likely before mid September. Passage will require 60 votes, and Sen. Daschle has indicated that he will not bring the bill to the floor unless he is sure it will pass without a lengthy debate. Assuming Senate passage, the House-Senate conference to resolve disagreements will be a difficult one, since the two versions vary greatly. Congress hopes to adjourn on October 4, to give members time for election campaigning.

This gives rise to speculation that Congress may simply extend TANF for a year and revisit the reauthorization issue in 2003. Another possibility is that Congress will reconvene after Election Day for a "lame duck" session to deal with unfinished work. The advocacy community finds both prospects troubling, given the uncertainties surrounding the election and anticipated budget shortfalls next year.

The measure approved by the Finance Committee would:

• reauthorize TANF for five years, at $16.5 billion per year in block grants to the states;
• retain the present work requirement of 30 hours a week (24 in a job, 6 in approved work-related activities), but increase the state work participation rate from 50% to 70% (the House bill requires 40 hours at 70%);
• keep the present requirement that parents of children under age 6 work for 20 hours a week (the House would raise this to 40 hours);
• increase the time a recipient can spend in vocational education and training from the present 12 months to 24 months (the House calls for four months); - expand the list of activities that count as work;
• allow states the option of giving TANF benefits to legal immigrants and providing Medicaid and State Child Health Insurance Program benefits to legal immigrants who are children and pregnant women;
• create a demonstration program in five to ten states (at $30 million per year) to test an At-Home-Infant-Care program for low-income families;
• increase the amount of child support collected from non-custodial parents by the government that actually reaches the children;
• eliminate discrimination against two-parent families in accessing TANF benefits;
• extend Transitional Medical Assistance for five years, to assure that TANF leavers keep their health care coverage;
• provide $200 million per year for wage-paying transitional jobs and programs to help low-wage workers advance in the work force; and
• guarantee that workfare workers receive at least minimum wage and do not displace regular workers.

Several beneficial amendments were adopted during the Committee's markup, including ones that would:

• require that additional child care funds supplement and not replace state child care funding (by Bingaman, NM);
• require states to review a recipient's Individual Responsibility Plan with the recipient before imposing sanctions(by Kerry, MA);
• allow states to count recipients enrolled in post secondary education as doing an "approved activity" for purposes of meeting the work requirement (up to 10% of the caseload, by Snowe, ME);
• allow states to exempt up to 10% of their caseload from work requirements if the recipients are caregivers for a person with physical or mental disability or chronic illness (by Conrad, ND);
• allow states to use their own funds for health services to undocumented immigrants, not currently allowed by TANF (by Bingaman, NM); and
• add $50 million a year for abstinence-first teen pregnancy prevention programs, to match the $50 million abstinence-only program also approved by the Committee.

Sen. Bingaman (D-NM) withdrew an amendment to increase child care funding from the $5.5 billion proposed to $7 billion over five years, when it became clear the amendment would lose in Committee. He will offer it instead on the Senate floor. The House bill increased funding by only $2 billion.

Members of Congress need to hear that the Senate Finance Committee measure is far preferable to the House-passed bill. Although the House has already acted on its bill, it will have to vote again on the conference report. The stronger the support is for the Senate measure, the greater the likelihood that its provisions will be in the conference report.

General Assembly: In 1997 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) reminded us of these words from section 9.32 of our Book of Order: "The church proclaims the love and justice of God, and effectively ministers to Jesus Christ (Matt. 25:40) as it welcomes and cares for the poor, hungry, and homeless persons and families." The Assembly continued, stating, "The basic necessities of life are essential human rights. Only government assistance programs with federally-set minimal national benefit levels can provide benefits adequate to meet basic needs and to sustain every person's participation, with dignity, in society… Government assistance programs should be available to all residents, regardless of residency status." The General Assembly statement reminds us, "The Reformed Tradition has a positive view of the role of government in society and of the church's responsibility for calling on government to extend compassion and justice to all people with a special preference for those caught in the web of poverty." (Minutes, 1997, Part I, pp. 554-555)