Coalition Letter Opposing Passage of the Personal Responsibility, Work, and Family Promotion Act

Dear Representative:

On behalf of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR)—the nation’s oldest and most broadly-based civil and human rights coalition—we write to urge you to oppose HR 4700, “Personal Responsibility, Work, and Family Promotion Act of 2002,” the majority welfare bill that is expected to receive a floor vote shortly. The Leadership Conference believes that any welfare reauthorization proposal must adhere to fundamental principles of equality, fairness and social justice, and that achieving this goal depends on identifying effective strategies that offer welfare clients the best chance to find and keep stable jobs, provide support to themselves and their families, and achieve some level of economic independence. As it stands, little is known about the effect of recent welfare policy changes on different racial and ethnic communities. More fundamentally, the extent to which welfare policy choices are affected by longstanding stereotypes about women receiving welfare, particularly women of color, remains largely unexplored. Being mindful of these considerations and of our goals, we urge you to reject HR 4700 because it will exacerbate problems facing many families; and instead we urge you to take meaningful steps to ensure that all clients are treated fairly and have access to the supports they need.

1. Provide families with real work supports not unworkable requirements

LCCR believes work is key to economic security, but we also recognize that proposals to raise TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) hourly work requirements to 40 hours and work participation rates to 70% are unrealistic, unnecessary, and unresponsive to the real needs of families. Requiring welfare clients to work more hours while ignoring the practical implications, such as increased need for child care or education and training, will do little to help families. Rather, it will place new pressures on states to meet higher work participation rates without increasing funding for the supports clients need to stay on the job. In addition, simply imposing new requirements without addressing underlying barriers to employment will only exacerbate problems facing many minority clients who need better access to critical services.

As observed by a respondent from Minnesota in the April 2002 joint survey of governors and state TANF administrators conducted by the National Governors Association and the American Public Human Services Association, “More stringent work participation requirements… [would necessitate] a shift away from investments that are aimed at reducing poverty and helping hard-to-employ families. Instead, [states] would have to invest in public work programs and focus on keeping families involved in many hours of activity, regardless of individual need.” An Oregonian respondent in the same survey notes, “Under the President’s proposal, states would have less flexibility to help clients access needed domestic violence counseling, vocational rehabilitation services and family stabilization resources that are sometimes necessary in successfully finding employment.”

The focus of TANF reauthorization should be to ensure that families have access to the supports they need to keep their jobs and sustain their families – access to quality child care, particularly during non-standard hours; the ability to take off time to handle family or medical needs; access to transportation; and access to health care. Reauthorization must maintain flexibility to enable states to best serve their clients. Ensuring that families have access to these supports, while retaining the current work requirements, will do more to increase the number of clients working than would imposing tougher requirements that limit flexibility for families already struggling to make ends meet.

2. Promote real work not workfare

Current proposals to impose increased work requirements on states and oblige immediate work will, as noted above, also have the unfortunate effect of reducing state flexibility to respond to client needs. Under current law, states have employed a wide range of strategies to help clients ultimately move into the workforce. Some states have helped clients find specialized training programs, others have permitted clients to acquire additional education, and still others have supported collaborations with employers to provide services that help smooth the transition from welfare to work. Research on welfare-to-work programs has shown that the most effective programs combine a range of services such as job search, education and job training, and work experience. Well-known examples include the Steps to Success program in Portland, Oregon; Parents as Scholars program in Maine; and OPTIONS program in Baltimore, Maryland. These programs result in increased job security, higher hourly wages, and greater access to employer-provided benefits than programs that simply push people into the first job they can find.

Removing flexibility and, instead, requiring states to push clients quickly into jobs with stringent work requirements may force many states to create new workfare programs that have limited effectiveness. For example, the National Employment Law Project recently reported on a Washington state study that found workfare only resulted in a modest $45 increase in quarterly earnings of participants, while jobs skills training increased quarterly earnings by $456 and publicly-funded jobs (“Community Jobs”) increased quarterly earnings by $792. Welfare clients do not need make work, they need real work that pays a living wage, and states need the flexibility to create individualized programs that help prepare clients for these jobs. Investing in strategies to help minority clients find real jobs with living wages is particularly important. A recent report by the Urban Institute showed that on average, minority clients leaving welfare earn lower wages than their white counterparts.

3. Ensuring fair treatment in welfare programs

Too little attention has been focused on examining welfare implementation from a civil rights perspective. Questions about the impact of changes in the delivery of welfare programs and services on different racial and ethnic communities have remained largely unanswered. Comprehensive analysis of the experiences of welfare clients, such as exploring racial, ethnic, and gender differences in the types of services clients receive, has been limited. It is essential that welfare programs operate in a manner free of discrimination. To ensure fairness and respond to the needs of different communities, TANF reauthorization must include provisions promoting better data collection and accountability, better training for caseworkers, more vigorous enforcement of anti-discrimination and workplace laws, and better access to services for clients with specific barriers, such as limited English proficiency or disabilities. We urge you to support proposals to strengthen TANF’s data collection provisions to ensure that quality data about TANF programs are produced and made publicly available. Such information is crucial to gaining a better understanding of the challenges facing welfare clients and their families, and determining whether there are unique problems – such as lack of transportation or higher sanction rates – that are having a particular impact on certain communities. We also believe that improving training for welfare caseworkers is essential to ensuring that program rules are communicated effectively, and that clients understand their rights and obligations. Further, vigorous enforcement of civil rights and workplace laws must be a priority at both the federal and state level to ensure that programs are administered fairly and that all clients have equal access to the full range of programs and services. Finally, because it is unfair to bar hardworking taxpaying families from access to vital benefits in times of need, benefits to legal immigrant families should be restored.

4. Maintain programs targeting low-income families

HR 4700 will not only jeopardize state TANF programs, but a broad range of other federal programs designed to serve low-income individuals and families. The bill would give sweeping authority to cabinet secretaries to override Congressional funding decisions and program requirements in a wide range of programs, including Food Stamps, child care, TANF, various education and training programs, housing and homelessness programs, and the Social Services block grant. This so-called “superwaiver” provision would permit the diversion of resources from people and communities targeted for assistance by Congress and the elimination of important protections for people and communities served by these federal programs.

CONCLUSION

If our commitment to helping families escape poverty is real, then our solutions must be grounded in a realistic understanding of the challenges faced by different communities. Welfare reform must be about helping to lift families out of poverty – through meaningful work opportunities that can sustain families with adequate access to the supports they need. We must advocate work, but we most do so in a manner that truly helps clients retain jobs without putting them or their families in jeopardy. TANF reauthorization must focus on the issues that matter most – sustaining supports for working families, minimizing barriers to employment, improving access to child care, expanding opportunities for education and training. These are the elements that we already know can make a difference in the lives of families in need. Your support for these measures can make the difference in creating TANF legislation aimed at helping all families in need move permanently out of poverty.

Sincerely,