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Action Alert Archive
ACTION
ALERT Date:
March 24, 2004
Subject: ALERT: Senate to Consider TANF
Reauthorization (Call
your senators!)
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The
following update was added 4/13/2004:
Date: Wednesday, April 7, 2004 3:33 PM
Subject: TANF Reauthorization Update
Thanks to your help, there was a
clean extension of TANF funds through June 30th in both
the House and the Senate (the onerous amendments did
not pass). However, the Senate has tabled TANF reauthorization
at this time. What that means is that the Senate Finance
bill with the Snowe amendment for an additional $6 billion
for child care (which also passed, thanks again to your
help) will be reconsidered at a future date. Apparently,
Senator Frist outlined upcoming bills to be considered
after the Passover break and then weeklong spring recess
and TANF reauthorization was not one of those listed.
It is uncertain what this means. As the extension date
approaches in June, the House will be more insistent
on amending the current program with increased hours
and the marriage promotion as it threatened to do this
time around.
Now continues to be an important
time to contact Senators about necessary changes in
the Finance Committee bill. With the child care amendment
already passing, we can focus on many of the other issues
including more flexiblity with the work activities,
no increase in work hours, no superwaiver, etc. Attached
is a summary of the list of amendments that need to
be made to the Senate Finance bill to make it more reflective
of MP's policy positions.
Thanks for your continued work on
this issue. - Patti
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TANF reauthorization legislation is likely
to come to the Senate floor some time next week, perhaps as
early as Monday, March 29. Several important amendments that could
improve the bill will be offered as well as some amendments
that could worsen the bill. Key amendments that
would improve the bill include (but are by no means limited
to):
(1) Child care: A bipartisan amendment (offered by Senators
Snowe, Dodd, Alexander, Bingaman and Hatch) to add an additional
$6 billion in child care funding over five years. (This would
be in addition to the current $1 billion increase in child
care funding over five years that is already included in the
bill.) The cost
of this amendment will be fully offset and, thus, will not
increase the deficit.
(2) Immigrants: The Immigrant Children's Health Improvement Act
(ICHIA) (offered
by Senator Bob Graham and others), which "lifts
the five year bar" by giving states the option to serve
pregnant women and children who are legal immigrants through
Medicaid and CHIP in their first five years in the U.S. (This
cost of this amendment will likely be offset and will not increase
the deficit.) In addition, there may be an amendment
to restore SSI benefits to refugees who are no longer eligible
for SSI because they have lived in the United States for more
than seven years. There may also be other immigrant amendments,
including a state option to restore TANF benefits and services to recent legal immigrants
(offered by Senator Clinton).
(3) Services for parents with disabilities and transitional
jobs: Adding
a provision modeled on the bipartisan “Pathways to Independence
Act” (S. 1523, authored by Senators Smith, Jeffords,
and Conrad) that would give states the option to have individual
recipients with disabilities continue in half-time “rehabilitative
services” such as mental health counseling and substance
abuse treatment beyond the current 6-month limit in the bill.
There also may be an amendment to authorize and provide
funding for states and localities to provide wage-paying,
transitional jobs to individuals with barriers to employment. One or both of these provisions
may be accepted by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Grassley
as part of a "manager's amendment" to the bill.
(4) Education and training: Allowing up to 24 months
of vocational education to count as a work activity
5) Penalty relief: Protecting
states from financial penalties if they improve their work
participation rates by at least 5% over the previous year. This provision may also be acepted as
part of the Grassley manager's amendment.
Amendment that Could Worsen the Bill
Among the possible amendments that would worsen the
bill would be an amendment that would add food stamps and/or housing programs to the "superwaiver"
provision in the Senate bill, thereby making it far closer
to the House superwaiver provision. Unlike the House version of the superwaiver, which includes
food stamps, public housing, homeless assistance programs, job training, and several other programs,
the Senate version is limited to TANF, child care and the
Social Services Block Grant
(and only 10 states could apply for waivers under
the Senate version). It’s important that we defeat
such an amendment with a strong
"No" vote or, better yet, discourage such
an amendment by creating a strong negative buzz around the
notion of expanding the Senate provision. There
also are likely to be amendments to increase the work participation
rates further and increase the required hours of participation.
While we expect these to fail, if you are contacting
Republican Senators who might be interested in supporting
such amendments, please express your opposition to them.
Action Needed
Please contact our Senators within the next few days
and urge them to support the "improving" amendments
listed above. Senator Lugar is the former chair of the
Ag Committee and a strong supporter of a national food stamp
program which the "superwaiver" program would
harm.
Senator Lugar: (202) 224-4814; 1-888-280-6279
e-mail: senator_lugar@lugar.senate.gov
306 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington DC 20510-1401
Senator Bayh: (202) 224-5623; 1-800-289-0356
e-mail through the web: http://bayh.senate.gov/index1.html
463 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington DC
20510
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