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Article Excerpt
NOW LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATION FUND
1522 K Street, NW, Suite 550, Washington, DC 2005 (202) 326-0040 Fax (202) 589-0511
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[Under the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act,] the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) must be reauthorized after five years. On October 10, 2001, Patsy Mink (D-HI) and members of the Progressive Caucus introduced a bill to reauthorize TANF (HR 3113). [By spring 2002, the bill had more than 90 co-sponsors.] The Mink bill is an aggressive effort to combat poverty in America by offering genuine paths out of poverty and addressing individuals' barriers to economic security. A summary of the bill follows.
In General
The Mink bill retains the basic structure of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, including an emphasis on work and a five-year lifetime limit. The bill has been drafted with careful attention to the challenges that have prevented welfare recipients from escaping poverty during the last five years under TANF The bill directs work efforts to permanent, sustainable, high-wage employment opportunities through education, training, and targeting high-wage jobs. The bill also focuses on providing work supports like child care and addressing barriers to economic self-sufficiency such as domestic violence, mental or physical disability, and substance abuse. Finally, the bill restores full access to qualified immigrants.
TITLE I--GENERAL PROVISIONS
Purpose of the TANF Reauthorization Bill
The Mink bill has refined the purposes of TANF to focus on poverty reduction. While welfare reform was successful at getting millions of individuals off the welfare rolls, it has failed to significantly reduce poverty in America. As TANF continues, the emphasis must be on programs and policies that will accomplish the sustained reduction of poverty in America. Consequently, the bill replaces the old purposes with a new purpose to end child and family poverty by--
* Supporting caregivers so that their children may be cared for in their own homes;
* Promoting education, training, work supports, and access to jobs that pay a living wage;
* Assuring access to Medicaid, Food Stamps, child care, and other such assistance;
* Assuring access to services to address barriers such as mental illness, physical disability, substance abuse, and domestic and sexual violence; and
* Reducing poverty of families with children.
State Plan
> Addressing Barriers--The Mink bill revises and expands the Family Violence Option, changing it into a requirement that states address domestic and sexual violence, mental illness, and disability and substance abuse issues by certifying that they have established standards and procedures to ensure that prior to imposition of any sanctions or penalty for noncompliance, trained caseworkers (or at the individual's option, qualified professionals) will screen individuals for one of several work/life barriers: domestic or sexual violence, mental illness, substance abuse or disability. If one of these problems is identified, the state must have a system in place for referring the individual for treatment if she so desires. The state must also certify that it has coordinated, contracted with, or hired in qualified professionals in these fields, and require those professionals to provide coordinated services. The provision includes a requirement that all such information will be kept confidential. Finally, states must certify that they will waive any program requirement that unfairly penalizes an individual addressing one of these barriers, or makes an individual unsafe.
> Planning for Jobs That Lead out of Poverty--The bill requires states to help survey the regional economy to identify jobs that will lead an individual out of poverty.
Funding
> Reauthorizes funding through 2008.
> Child Poverty Reduction Bonus--The bill strikes the Illegitimacy Bonus and replaces it with a $150,000,000 annual Bonus that rewards the states that significantly reduce both the amount and depth of child poverty.
> Supplemental Grant for Population Increases--The bill amends the supplemental grant for increases in low-income population and reauthorizes at $2,000,000,000 through 2008.
> High-Performance Bonus--The Mink bill specifies criteria for measuring state performance for purposes of qualifying for high-performance bonus rewards. Bonus criteria include a work measurement that rewards states that assist individuals in obtaining and maintaining employment at jobs that lift individuals out of poverty and provide benefits. It also rewards states that provide families with work supports, specifically food stamps, Medicaid, and child care. Although in many cases, the high-performance bonus uses criteria developed by HHS, this provision eliminates the portion of the bonus that rewarded states for increasing the number of children living within married, two-parent families.
> Bonus for Overcoming Barriers--The Mink bill adds a new $60,000,000 annual bonus to reward the three states that do the best job of training caseworkers to screen individuals for domestic or sexual violence, mental illness, and substance abuse or disability, notifying individuals of their option to be assessed and receive services to address those barriers, and working with qualified professionals in the field to ensure individuals are receiving coordinated, holistic services.
TITLE II--WORK REQUIREMENTS
Work
The Mink bill retains the work activity requirement established...
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