SEIU Local 535

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Welfare Reform: How bad can things get?
August 22 marked the 7th anniversary of the enactment of the legislation that ended Aid to Families with Dependent Children, our nation's former cash welfare system, and created TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). In the first years of the TANF program, more than a million parents moved from welfare to work, aided by a booming economy, plentiful jobs, and rising state/federal funding for work support such as child care. Unfortunately, the year 2001 marked the first economic downturn since TANF began and the program was unable to help the neediest families among us, according to a recently released Children's Defense Fund report.

Single Mothers Not Working
"No Work, No Welfare" finds that the number of single mothers without work and welfare income has reached its highest level in recorded history. The number of jobless women with children not receiving welfare rose by 188,000 in one year, leaving a record three-quarters of all single mothers without public assistance and causing a sudden surge in extreme child poverty. The income gap in the United States has widened at an unprecedented rate and the labor market is severely threatened. Nearly one of every five children lives in poverty. Single parents and their children entered the 2001 recession with less protection from a failing economy than in any recession in the last 20 years. The full report is available on our website at: www.childrensdefense.org.

Welfare Revisited
Congress is working on a revision of the 1996 welfare reform law that could make things even worse. Earlier this year the House passed their version of a bill to reauthorize the TANF program that would make it even harder for low-income families to raise their children out of poverty. The Senate needs to address this issue as soon as they return in September and produce a bipartisan bill that helps parents get more education and training, child care, child support, and other work supports so they can qualify for decent jobs and provide for their children's needs.

The bill has been stalemated by Republican demands for additional work hours and Democratic demands for more child care funding. The 1996 law was set to expire on September 30, 2002, but has been extended four times. The latest extension expires September 30, 2003. It is now being suggested that a bill, S. 1443, introduced on July 22 by Senators Thomas Carper, Ben Nelson, and Susan Collins could serve as a basis for compromise. The bill would increase the work requirement for most recipients to 32 hours a week and provide an additional $6 billion in child care funds over the next five years. The measure also would allow vocational education to count as work for two years.