The 107th Congress adjourned without enacting a multi-year reauthorization of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Block Grant (TANF) and related programs. The House of Representatives passed a bill in May, the Senate Finance Committee passed its bill in June and the Senate Health, Labor and Pensions Committee, which has jurisdiction over part of the child-care program, passed a bill in September. Concerns over child-care funding and the crowded Senate calendar, however, prevented the bill from moving to the Senate floor for a vote.
As a result, Congress included a short-term extension in the continuing appropriations resolution that is keeping the federal government running through the beginning of January 2003. In fact, there was much confusion about even that short-term extension. As originally drafted, the continuing resolution would have funded the program through the end of March. Instead, there was a last minute change that only extends the program through Jan. 1, 2003. The Office of Management and Budget, however, has said it will interpret the extension as allowing states to spend funds through the second fiscal quarter that ends March 31, 2003.
The short-term extension does not, however, officially extend existing state waivers. A number of states have waivers that allow them different definitions of work activities and exemptions from program requirements, all of which expire at different times. The administration has said that even though these waivers were not extended, they do not plan to sanction those states if they continue to operate under their waivers.
House and Senate bills differ significantly
There were major differences between the House and Senate TANF-related bills, especially in the area of work requirements and child-care funding.
While both bills required 24 hours of direct work activities, the House bill expanded the overall number of hours to 40 hours a week while the Senate Finance Committee left the overall number of hours at 30.
Under current law, single-parent families must be either working or participating in work-related activities, such as training, for 30 hours a week and two-parent families for 35.
The House also reduced the number of activities that count toward direct work from 12 to six, while the Senate expanded the activities. Under the House bill, vocational education and job searches, for example, would no longer count toward the 24 hours of direct work activities.
On the other hand, the Senate bill increased the number of activities that could be counted as direct work. For example, the Senate’s bill would allow more time to be counted for job searches and vocational education than under current law.
Both bills also treated child-care funding differently. While both increased the funding available for child-care, the Senate bill had a larger increase in mandatory funding than the House. The House increased mandatory spending to $2.9 billion a year. The Senate would have increased mandatory spending to $3.7 billion in FY03 and $3.9 billion in FY05. NACo and other national groups expressed concerns about state and local governments’ ability to sustain these mandated increases in work requirements, given their current budget pressures, without adequate increases in child-care funding.
A third major area of concern to NACo is the area of benefits to legal immigrants. Under current law, legal immigrants who arrived in the country after Aug. 22, 1996 must wait five years to qualify for Medicaid and TANF. As a result, they must often depend on emergency-room care and cannot receive the job training and other support services that TANF provides.
The Senate bill had provisions that would have given the states an option to provide TANF services to new legal immigrants and Medicaid to children and pregnant women. The House did not have these provisions.
The 108th Congress is expected to take up welfare reform relatively early, and to use the bills that were considered this year in the 107th Congress. There are rumors that the House may reduce the 40-hour work requirement in its bill because of concerns about the economy. It’s also been suggested that since the Head Start program is up for reauthorization next year, the program may be folded into the Child Care and Development Block Grant.
Finally, the change in Senate leadership will most likely bring an added emphasis on work requirements, but the Senate is still expected to be more expansive on allowable activities and child-care.
