TANF legislation brought about sweeping changes in the welfare system, and the "work first" emphasis of the new programs resulted in a significant reduction in welfare caseloads. While welfare reform advocates claim that the new system has lifted former welfare recipients out of poverty and into gainful employment, critics argue that changes have pushed those who left welfare for work deeper into poverty.
A five-year reauthorization of TANF was scheduled to take place in 2001. However, by late 2003 funding was being extended without a major revision of the law having been enacted. A comprehensive TANF bill, H.R. 4, was passed by the House of Representatives and sent on to the Senate Finance Committee, which reported that a substitute bill for H.R. 4, bearing the same name, was adopted. The House bill would increase the workweek for TANF recipients from thirty hours to forty hours and require states to increase work participation from 50 percent to 70 percent of all TANF recipients. The Senate version of H.R. 4 proposed a tiered approach to work participation requirements. A single parent with a child under six years of age would be required to work a twenty-four-hour week to maintain TANF benefits; a single parent with children over age six would need to work a thirty-four-hour week; two-parent families would be required to work thirty-nine hours per week; and two-parent families receiving federally funded child care would have to maintain a workweek of fifty-five hours. By early summer 2004 a comprehensive TANF reauthorization plan still had not been adopted, but funding of current TANF and related programs was extended through September 2004.
FIGURE 1.2
State expenditures for temporary public assistance for needy families, by fund source, fiscal year 2002
FIGURE 1.3
State expenditures for Medicaid, by fund source, fiscal 2002
FIGURE 1.4
Actual and projected state Medicaid spending, 1970–2003
(in billions)
User Comments Add a comment…