The U.S. Senate will soon be taking up welfare reform legislation again and the new version is as bad as the one President Clinton vetoed in January. The new version in the Senate (S. 1795) eliminates Aid to Families with Children (AFDC) as an entitlement program. AFDC would become a block grant to the states, with proposed cuts in spending of $53 billion over a 7 year period. The legislation places a five year lifetime limitation on cash assistance and requires that everyone have a job within two years after applying for AFDC eligibility. States could choose to make these time limitations even shorter.
The Senate Finance committee adopted a bill which raises the required 25 hour work week to 35 hours; creates a limited exemption for parents of children under 11 who can't find child care, and imposes a 'family cap' provision [meaning that families who have more children while on welfare would be denied additional assistance, although states could "opt out" of this provision]. In addition, states can stop payments to unmarried teens if they don't remain at home and in school (even though the home environment may not be a good one) and cash grants will be given to states which reduce out of wedlock births without increasing abortions, thus giving an incentive to make abortions difficult to obtain. Welfare benefits will be denied to parents who don't cooperate in child support collection, compelling mothers to identify the fathers of their children even if it will put them at risk of violence. And poor women (and children under 13) who lose cash aid would lose Medicaid assistance as well.
NOW's criticisms of the legislation are too numerous to recount here; it is still a punitive approach to welfare reform and will mean that thousands of families who live in areas of high unemployment will suffer from hopeless, lifetime poverty. In addition, a significant proportion of poor women will become endangered by the welfare-to-work requirement --these are the 50 and 80% of poor women who experience domestic violence (as documented by studies of public assistance programs in 20 states). We know from many tragic examples that when battered women attempt to become more independent through job training or employment, the violence often escalates. The legislation's hardship exemption of 20 percent of a state's caseload is pathetically inadequate to meet the needs of battered women. Other requirements such as the 'family cap' punishes innocent children. Moreover, income to be earned from minimum and sub-minimum wage jobs is insufficient to support even a small family with today's cost of living.
Because the House will most likely pass a punitive welfare reform bill, the Senate remains our best opportunity to continue to slow and possibly stop the process. We must let Democratic Senators know that this bill is not acceptable and that they should not vote for it. Republicans are trying to back the President into a corner by having welfare reform be part of a larger budget bill...which would make it hard for him to veto.
The
message to your senator
should be: Republican welfare reform legislation contains too many provisions
which will mean hardship and even danger for poor women and children. Exemptions,
opt outs, and other efforts at providing some flexibility are still inadequate.
The flat block grant means that additional funding will not be available
when recessions create more poverty. Congress MUST realistically deal with
issues of education, job training, safe shelter and safe workplace, guaranteed
child care, and a living wage. Without these elements in place in every
community, any effort at long term welfare reform will fail.
Further, urge your senator to become a co-sponsor of Senate Concurrent Resolution 66, a resolution sponsored by Senators Wellstone, Murray, Wyden, Kennedy, Sarbanes, Simon, Akaka, Feingold and others which says that welfare reform must not endanger women on public assistance who experience domestic violence.