NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund Hosts Progressive Strategies for TANF Reauthorization
Feature Story by Michelle Russell - 2/25/2002
Washington, D.C., February 7th—Today the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund hosted a Grassroots Lobby Day on Capitol Hill in support of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) Reauthorization Act of 2001, H.R. 313. In 1996, Congress passed TANF, a federal welfare program. This 1996 law includes a five-year lifetime limit, which mandates that families who receive welfare for a total of five years are exempt for any other federally funded assistance. Among other restrictions, the 1996 TANF program also excludes immigrants from receiving welfare until five years after they enter the United States.Although TANF was considered a boon to welfare reform, by January 2000 the assistance given to a family of three had fallen below the poverty line in every state but six. Over half of all welfare recipients reported having serious hardships, while over a third cited critical hardships. These hardships include being evicted, having utilities turned off, or not having enough food to eat.
Due to the failure of TANF to drastically improve the living conditions of welfare recipients, and also because by September 30th 2002 Congress must reauthorize TANF, on October 12th 2000 Patsy Mink (D-HI), along with 30 co-sponsors, introduced the TANF Reauthorization Act of 2001.
The reauthorization bill would maintain TANF’s structure, including the five-year lifetime limit on federal assistance, the program shifts focus from reducing welfare rolls to reducing poverty. This would be achieved by supporting child caregivers, promoting education and job training, and safeguarding access to child care and work supports, among other things.
At the conference today, Mink stated, “my bill will strengthen TANF’s attention to families in poverty by redefining its foremost purposes as providing assistance to families in need so that children can be raised in their own homes and reducing poverty.”
Along with Representative Mink, Senators Paul Wellstone (D-MN) and Jon Corzine (D-NJ) and Representatives Hilda Solis (D-CA) and Julia Carson (D-IN) also spoke in favor of H.R. 313, citing the need to reduce poverty by focusing on education.
Dr. Jacqueline Pope, Associate Professor at Richard Stockton College, also attended today’s conference. Pope, a former welfare recipient and author of several books documenting welfare reform in the United States, spoke to the assembled group of her life while on welfare. She stated that without access to education she would not be where she is today, and she said she strongly supported the TANF reauthorization bill because of its emphasis on education.
In closing, the original sponsor of the bill, Representative Mink, stated that the bill should be ready to introduce in mid-September. She concluded by saying that TANF reauthorization will “empower individuals to reach economic security.”
