Statement of NETWORK

NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby, has been involved in the welfare reform debate for many years. As an organization made up of more than 11,000 groups and individuals, many of them faith-based social service providers, NETWORK expressed early concern that provisions of welfare law were demeaning and unjust, and in need of reform. NETWORK is on record as opposing The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, however, since we believed that it was more focused on reducing welfare rolls than eliminating poverty and the suffering it causes. We also expressed grave concern about the demonstrable harm done to people living in poverty when government assistance programs lose entitlement status.

In 1996, NETWORK initiated a multi-year, nationwide study to monitor implementation of welfare reform legislation in order to evaluate both its effectiveness and its limitations. Working in partnership with four member organizations (The Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, the Federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph, Pax Christi USA and the Daughters of Charity United States Provinces), we utilized the resources of affiliated social service agencies to personally interview almost 4,000 people receiving services at soup kitchens, homeless shelters and other facilities.

Extensive statistical information was collected and analyzed by Professor Douglas Porpora of Drexel University. Preliminary data were published in NETWORK's 1999 report entitled Poverty amid Plenty: The Unfinished Business of Welfare Reform, which also included anecdotal information collected during the study. NETWORK will publish a follow-up report in the summer of 2001, based on newly collected data. This report will be disseminated to Congress, the media, and the general public. It will also serve to inform NETWORK's Economic Equity Campaign, a nationwide effort to mobilize citizens to become involved in the welfare reform reauthorization debate and to educate public officials about the needs of people who are still living in poverty.

Welfare reform supporters are quick to say that welfare reform is a success because national welfare caseloads are down by more than half. NETWORK acknowledges that welfare rolls are down, but the NETWORK study paints a troubling picture of what happens to many people who continue to suffer the effects of poverty.

Since this hearing is addressing issues around current work requirements, we would like to focus our remarks on some of our findings concerning working families and individuals.

As indicated in NETWORK's 1999 report, many people leaving the welfare rolls are not moving into jobs that provide economic security. Unstable work histories, along with low-wage and part-time jobs with inadequate benefits, are forcing many people to turn to faith-based and community facilities to help meet their most basic needs.

Particularly striking, our findings showed that employed people who turn to social service facilities are just as likely as people without jobs to report that their children suffer from inadequate food, inadequate health care and unmet dental needs. Specifically, 22% of employed parents reported that their children had less access to food in the previous six months than formerly, compared with 25% of jobless parents. Fourteen percent of both employed and unemployed parents reported that their children lacked adequate health care, while 24% of employed parents indicated that their children's dental needs were not being addressed, compared with 25% of those who were unemployed.

Among the adults, fully 41% of those with jobs had experienced hunger during the previous six months.

We also found that Latinos were disproportionately suffering under welfare reform, especially in light of other immigration-related legislation passed in 1996. This finding is particularly troublesome when we note that the population of Hispanic women in need of aid has been growing since 1996.

NETWORK has just completed a new survey of people receiving services at approximately 100 soup kitchens and other facilities across the nation. Although our results aren't yet fully tabulated, we are conscious of increasing numbers of working families, some with incomes above the official poverty line, who are showing up in soup kitchens and food pantries to feed themselves.

There is clearly a disconnect between those who believe that welfare reform is working and people we have met who are forced to turn to soup kitchens to help feed their children. One of the important aspects of our study is that a substantial percentage of the people we have surveyed lack both stable addresses and working phones. They are, as Senator Paul Wellstone has called them, the "disappeared," people who fall between the cracks and are not counted in most official surveys or studies.

Until and unless our nation has connected with the "disappeared" and provided the services they need to move themselves out of poverty, we should not consider diverting TANF funds to other purposes. This is especially true at a time when an economic slowdown may make it harder for people to find and keep jobs and when many people left on the welfare rolls need additional resources because of multiple, serious barriers to employment.

Obstacles to employment such as inadequate child care, job training and transportation, unstable or unaffordable housing, language barriers, and poor health care and nutrition also need to be more fully addressed. Time limits must be extended for working people who do not earn enough to support themselves without TANF benefits. More exceptions to the five-year limit are necessary for people unable to move from welfare to work. Justice also demands that we increase the minimum wage until it is a living wage.

There has been much talk in recent weeks about turning more to faith-based social services to help people in poverty. In keeping with Catholic Social Teaching, NETWORK believes that the role of government is to promote the common good and to provide for basic human needs when they are unmet. This is done both by ensuring assistance to people who are poor and by creating social and economic structures through which the basic needs of all are addressed. Although faith-based and other community organizations can play a partnering role in meeting the needs of people struggling in poverty, they are not a substitute for the central role of government.

Our government can and must do more to enable people to move successfully from welfare to work and to support themselves and their families in a dignified way when employed. NETWORK asks that Congress authorize and fully fund programs to achieve these goals.