Protestants for the Common Good
Chicago, Illinois 60601
March 7, 2002

Hearing Clerk
House Human Resources Subcommittee
Washington DC

To the Subcommittee:

I wish to offer several concerns about work requirements and time limits related to TANF reauthorization on behalf of Protestants for the Common Good, a faith-based education and advocacy organization with a thousand members in the Chicago Metropolitan Area of Illinois.

Protestants for the Common Good has been involved in studying and analyzing TANF at the federal and state levels, and advocating for realistic policies that will help move welfare recipients not only into the workforce but also out of poverty.  Based on our knowledge of the welfare caseload in Illinois, and also a knowledge of the history of implementation in this state, we offer these comments pertinent to the issues before your committee:

Work requirements: (With special attention to the proposal that has been put forward by the President)

• Research shows, and our own state Department of Human Services concurs, that most of the remaining caseload  in Illinois (30,000 now available to work, compared with about 175,000 in 1997), has multiple barriers to work: illiteracy, lack of work history, mental illness, physical impairments, substance abuse, homelessness, caring for a disabled child or family member, living in an area where there are no jobs available or no transportation to get to employment.   Research also shows that TANF recipients can generally overcome one or perhaps two barriers, but finding and keeping a job with multiple barriers is very difficult if not impossible.
• Given the makeup of the caseload, it makes no sense to limit full-time services that could address only one of these barriers to three months out of 24 as is proposed by the President.  It will more likely take various full-time services for all 24 months to ready most of these welfare participants for employment, where employment is in fact an option.
• Similarly, it makes no sense to require these multiple-barriered people to work 40 hours when most have not been able to successfully find and keep 30 hours of work.  Some of the 30,000 available to work in Illinois are in fact working, about 36%, but have not been able to find enough hours or earn enough to work their way off the welfare rolls, but they are clearly trying.  And they should not be penalized, nor should the state.  Their continuance on the rolls is not for lack of insistence by the Department of Human Services that they must find a job or be engaged in work activities.  The Department has in fact been severe in its treatment of those who have not for whatever reason been able to follow the rules.  Requiring 40 hours of work a week does not change the nature of the caseload or alleviate the multiple barriers they face.
• Those who wrote the President's proposal may think they are doing people with multiple barriers a favor by requiring only 24 hours of the 40, or three days a week, to be "real" work, and the other two can be education or training or substance abuse treatment etc.  That plan might fit a few people who are lucky enough to find a three-day-a week job, where the three days will exactly fit the two days where they could find education and training programs or open substance abuse slots. This is highly unrealistic and extremely inflexible.  There are not enough substance abuse slots now, and education and training programs that can be combined with work have not been developed in Illinois.
• Many companies have a 35-hour or 37.5 hour work week.
• Where are the additional funds that will pay for the services that theoretically could be supplied during the two days a week of the 40 hours not required to be at work, provided such new programs could be set up with new funding?  Without an inflationary increase in bloc grant funding, providing extra services would be  impossible, especially when this state is already cutting its human services budget to meet a budget crisis.
• It makes no sense to require of the state that 70 % of that 30,000 is to be working, again a very inflexible and unrealistic requirement.  The present 50 % requirement is not only not being met, it is not currently a requirement, because there is now a credit for caseload reduction, which has disappeared in the president's proposal. To get more people working does not require a stiffer requirement, it requires more services.

Time limits

• The big need of the states is for flexibility.  The President's party is supposed to be the party that allows states to experiment, to innovate, to be leaders, to be a laboratory for developing good public policy.  What happened to that?   There should be great flexibility given to states to stop their time limits clock from running.  States should be able to do this by defining  work and work activities, and by allowing welfare participants to engage in full time education and training so that they can truly work their way out of poverty.

Conclusion

Protestants for the Common Good recommends that the work requirements be maintained as in the 1996 Act, preserving flexibility for the states, with two exceptions that add more flexibility: (1) more services that address multiple barriers should be allowed to count as "work" and (2) more flexibility should be allowed for education and training programs of all kinds and at all levels, both full-time and in combination with work.

Sincerely yours,

Nancy Brandt
Co-Chair, Board of Directors
Welfare and Poverty Issue Manager