Last week, the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources held a hearing addressing an obscure regulatory loophole, known as “excess MOE,” that is gutting the work requirement of the 1996 welfare reforms. Most states are taking advantage of this loophole, which allows them to get credit for moving people into employment without having to help a single person. States began to take significant advantage of this loophole in 2005, when Congress reauthorized the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and tightened the work requirement. This reauthorization created …
The House of Representatives is poised to pass a budget reconciliation measure that would tackle increased spending in the food stamps program (or, as it’s currently known, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program). It would do this by eliminating “categorical eligibility” in the program, which ignores income and asset limitations in granting food stamps to people receiving cash welfare assistance. It also accelerates the sunset date for a temporary food stamp benefit increase provided by the 2009 stimulus bill. Since President Obama came to office, spending on food stamps has doubled, …
Legislators at all levels face a challenge in making sure that their legislation and policies represent good governance which utilizes reason, common sense and first principles. Some common sense goals of politicians should be to limit the control of the government over individuals, allow flexibility for bureaucrats to meet measurable results and to terminate programs that fail to meet their stated goals. If politicians could employ some simple criteria, the government would work in a manner more consistent with the consent of the governed. Below is a good, yet not …
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is attempting this week to schedule a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on a measure that would extend expiring tax breaks. But the “American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010” (H.R. 4213) would shut the door on the important success of welfare reform. That’s because the legislation includes is a one-year extension of the so-called “TANF Emergency Contingency Fund” with an additional $2.5 billion in spending. This fund was originally created as part of the 2009 Stimulus package and directly undermines the …
Last week, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) launched an innovative new tool in the fight to cut spending called YouCut. It allows regular American citizens to vote to cut wasteful spending in Congress. Its purpose is to challenge the culture of spending that has dominated Congressional thinking and replace it with a renewed focus on savings. Weekly, YouCut will post several wasteful spending programs and give citizens a week to vote on which they favor most being eliminated. The results are announced the following week and House Republicans will …
Today the U.S. House of Representatives will take up a new “jobs” bill, HR4849, that includes a $2.5 billion provision to expand the size of welfare rolls and pay states when they add people to their caseloads. The Senate defeated a similar amendment by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) earlier this month. However, it has been resurrected in the Ways and Means Committee and added to the “jobs” bill now before the House. The provision is actually a one-year extension of a new welfare program created as part of last year’s …
Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support held a hearing on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and its role in providing assistance to struggling families. The Obama Administration’s witness, Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, Carmen Nazario, included in her testimony a request to extend for a year the TANF Emergency Fund at a cost of $2.5 billion. This would extend a $5 billion program created in the Stimulus package last year that severely undermines …
Yesterday the Senate beat back an amendment offered by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) to the tax extenders bill that would have continued for another six months a policy aimed at undoing welfare reform. The policy was originally created as part of last year’s infamous Stimulus package in the form of the TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) Emergency Fund. It was supposed to be a “temporary” measure, however, the President in his 2011 budget and now Congress are actively looking for ways to extend it. This anti-reform fund pays states …
As Congress wraps up its final business for the year, there are at least a dozen detrimental policies included in the omnibus spending bill recently signed into law by the President. Taken as a whole, these policies devalue human life, weaken civil society, and undermine the family. Unfortunately, these provisions have largely gone unnoticed by the general public. The Dirty Dozen The Fiscal Year 2010 Omnibus Appropriations bill passed by Congress includes a slew of offensive items: 1. Elimination of abstinence education. Despite polling showing the vast majority of parents …
The front page of the Washington Post yesterday features a story by Paul Schwartzman about a couple in Indiana who were laid off from an RV plant and are receiving unemployment insurance (UI) benefits to the tune of about $700 a week ($268 for her and $390 for him). Buried deep into the story on the third page of the article it mentions that the wife, Kelly Nichols, actually got offered a job as a bookkeeper for a chiropractor. It paid $8 an hour for 28 hours a week. Kelly …
