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By Stephen M. Lilienthal
July 12, 2006
The cause of welfare reform took a great leap forward in 1996 when, after passage by a Republican Congress, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was signed into law by President William J. Clinton. This statute reinstated the importance of work as a means of uplift to the poor. It provided an affirmative answer to the litmus test cited by President Ronald Reagan in an August 1, 1987 radio address about effective welfare policy: “Will it help people become self-sufficient and lead a full life, or will it keep them down in a state of dependency?”
A decade after the enactment of the 1996 law it had become clear a midcourse adjustment was needed to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. Single parents are required to work at least 30 hours per week unless they have children younger than six years of age, in which case their minimal requirement for work drops to 20 hours per week. Two-parent families must work at least 35 hours weekly or more if they receive federally funded child care.
The Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) had refrained from issuing strict guidelines, mindful that PRWORA sought to promote flexibility among the states. Admirable as the restraint was, it allowed some states too much leeway. An August 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), “Welfare Reform: HHS Should Exercise Oversight to Help Ensure TANF Work Participation Is Measured Consistently across States,” revealed great variance in how states administered their programs, particularly as to work requirements of welfare recipients. Some states actually permitted bed rest as contributing to the work requirement. Others allowed physical rehabilitation or even smoking-cessation classes. GAO recommended that HHS tighten guidelines to strengthen state programs to ensure more recipients were participating in meaningful work activities.
Reauthorization of the 1996 law occurred earlier this year with passage of the Deficit Reduction Act. The new welfare regulations issued by HHS assert that, despite the success of the 1996 law, “there is still much to be done. Even with the dramatic results states have achieved, there are still far too many clients that are denied the opportunities of work and preparation for work.”
The welfare reform law had an interesting provision that provided a caseload-reduction credit. Fewer caseloads would bring about a corresponding decrease in the percentage of able-bodied adult welfare recipients on the rolls who had to satisfy their individual work requirement. Since 2002 most states have not operated under meaningful work participation requirements because the welfare rolls have declined so dramatically. States report 57.5% of all able-bodied adult welfare recipients have not done one hour of any federal activity – work, job search or job preparation – in over a month. “Because of significant declines in welfare caseloads that have occurred in most states since 1995, 33 of the 50 states were required to meet an all-family [work] rate of 10 percent or less in fiscal year 2003,” GAO stated.
Dr. Wade Horn, Assistant Secretary of HHS, explained that as the incentive for the states to reduce their caseloads has been adjusted meeting the 50% work rate will be more challenging. Welfare-rights organizations are balking at the definitions in the regulations that emphasize the centrality of work, calling such measures “very prescriptive.” Such charges were leveled at the 1996 law, which helped many recipients start moving up the economic ladder to achieving self-sufficiency. Elaine M. Ryan, Deputy Executive Director of the American Public Human Services Association, in a WASHINGTON POST story decried the new rules that would lessen the number of welfare recipients entering higher education programs, failing to realize that Americans want recipients to obtain work experience in exchange for benefits.
One loophole tightened in the new regulations allowed states to define work or work preparation activities. HHS regulations, published June 29, 2006, in the FEDERAL REGISTER, discuss how this could lead to some unusual definitions:
“Some states currently incorporate as part of job search and job readiness assistance programs that would fall outside our new definition. For example, at least one state incorporates activities ‘that are essential to the health, safety and welfare of families,’ including activities associated with a child’s dental checkups, immunization, and school attendance. Parenting skills training or participating in Head Start is part of the definition in more than one state. “
Another state includes activities that promote a healthier lifestyle, such as smoking cessation and exercise at home.
HHS readily concedes such activities address issues important to a family’s well-being but correctly asserts that “they do not constitute work or direct preparation for work. Thus, these activities may not count as job search and job readiness assistance.” Programs that do directly address the needs of finding and preparing for work are considered adequate to meet the new definition.
The same problem occurs in the definition of community service. “One state… considers shoveling a neighbor’s sidewalk or helping a friend with errands to be community service. Another state counts serving as a foster parent as a community service.” HHS argues that neither activity involves the structure and direct supervision that help move the recipient toward achieving self-sufficiency.
Horn contends that the purpose of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program is to “help people get oriented to work” and therefore “we should have better, common sense definitions of what work means.”
The new regulations tighten the definitions. Definitions of acceptable community service activities now include working as a teacher’s aide, assisting a Head Start program, preparing meals distributed by a church to the poor or providing clerical assistance to a nonprofit organization. “Community service programs must be designed to improve the employability of recipients not otherwise able to obtain employment,” state the June 29, 2006 regulations.
Another stumbling block has been the definition of “vocational education” which has been interpreted by state welfare officials to mean anything from obtaining a GED (General Education Development diploma for those who did not complete regular high school) to post-secondary education. “Congress purposely concentrated the TANF work activities on those focused on employment,” the new regulations remind state welfare department officials. “We are explicitly restricting these practices to prevent the use of the term ‘vocational educational training’ from covering virtually any education activity” such as unsupervised homework time as contributing to the monthly work requirement.
There is no doubt that the 1996 law had proven successful. Horn made that clear in his testimony before the Human Resources Subcommittee of the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, on July 14, 2005:
“Since enactment [of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act], welfare caseloads declined by 55% -- from 4.4 million families to just under 2 million families, the lowest number since 1970. Not only did single-parent labor-force participation reach historic levels, but the earnings of those households made significant gains as well. The child poverty rate declined from 20.5 percent in 1996 to 17.6 percent in 2003. Today, there are 1.6 million fewer children living in poverty than in 1996.”
Horn has stressed that the success of welfare reform so far has been the simple belief that welfare recipients were indeed capable of work. This view was not held universally. Wendell E. Primus, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Health & Human Services during the Clinton Administration, who resigned in protest over the signing of the 1996 law, commented in an October 23, 2003 NEW YORK TIMES article, “Are Those Leaving Welfare Better Off Now? Yes and No,” the “most disadvantaged mothers” were incapable of coping with the work requirements and therefore deserved “adequate assistance no matter what.”
The stumbling block to these mothers’ failing to succeed has much less to do with academic credentials than obeying the simple rules of the workplace: showing up on time, dressing neatly, comporting oneself with politeness. “It’s not Mission Impossible, it’s Mission Challenging,” insists Horn about the ability to make further progress in moving welfare recipients to work. “We want every state to run a good program because a poor program means more welfare dependency and more poor people.”
Georgia demonstrates what can be accomplished. B. J. Walker, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Human Resources, believes that “a TANF check is not good enough for any family. Our goal is to lessen dependency on government and strengthen family independence.” Caseloads have declined, work participation rates have increased. Georgia had an average of 24.8% of recipients working throughout 2004. In August 2005 nearly 64% of TANF recipients had met their work requirement.
Strict work requirements for welfare recipients represent a win-win situation. Taxpayers obviously benefit; their tax dollars are not subsidizing people to avoid work. Welfare recipients benefit because for many it is their first real job. They can take pride in breaking the cycle of dependency. Tightening the regulations governing work will help to further drive down the rate of welfare recipients. The new regulations are helping move America closer toward achieving the vision Ronald Reagan stated when he was Governor of California: “Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.”
Stephen M. Lilienthal is a policy analyst at the Free Congress Foundation.
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