PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, WORK AND FAMILY PROMOTION ACT (H.R. 4737)

As passed by the House of Representatives on May 16, 2002

Poverty Reduction and Child Well-Being

• Changes the current purpose of the 1996 law from "end dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage" to "end the dependence of needy families on government benefits and reduce poverty by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage."
• Also amends the introductory section to the four purposes to state that the overall purpose is "to improve child well-being" and amends the fourth purpose to emphasize "strengthening healthy two-parent marriages and encourage responsible fatherhood."

Universal Engagement and Family Self-Sufficiency Plans

• Replaces individual assessments with a requirement that every family have a self-sufficiency plan developed by the state and that a parent, caretaker, or family engage in activities in accordance with the plan.
• The Family Self-Sufficiency Plan requires the state to assess in a manner deemed appropriate by the state the skills, work experience, and employability of each work-eligible individual. The plan is to specify appropriate activities, including direct work activities; require, at a minimum, each member of the family who is work-eligible to participate in these activities; monitor the participation of these family members; regularly review the self-sufficiency plan; and revise the plan as appropriate.

Work Requirements

• Increases the current 50% work requirement by 5% a year until it reaches 70% in 2007. No separate calculation is required for two-parent families.
• Requires TANF recipients to be engaged 40 hours a week in work and activity. Twenty-four hours of that 40-hour total must be in work. Substance abuse treatment, rehabilitation services, work-related education or training, or job search for three months over a two-year period can be counted as work. Participants, on a case-by-case basis, may be granted an extra month for education or training if necessary to complete a certificate program. For the remaining 16 of the 40 hours, an individual must be engaged in activities defined by the state. There will no longer be a reduced work week (of 20 hours) for mothers with children under age 6.
• The bill proposes no changes to current law allowing states to exempt 20% of their caseload from the work requirements.

Sanctions

• Requires states to impose what is referred to as a full "check" sanction. In effect, these are "full family" sanctions. If individuals fail to meet certain work and TANF requirements, the entire family benefit must be eliminated at least for a period of time. This full family sanction provision requires states that currently impose a partial sanction on families (reducing their monthly cash assistance) for refusal to meet certain TANF requirements, to cut-off all benefits to the sanctioned family. If an adult fails to meet TANF activities and requirements partially or for one month, then there must be at least a partial reduction in benefits. If the individual fails to meet all TANF requirements for two months or more, then the entire family has to be cut-off from receiving any federal or state TANF assistance for at least one month.

TANF Time Limits

• The bill proposes no changes to the current law, which dictates that no adult may receive more than 5 years of federally funded TANF assistance.

Child Care

• Reauthorizes the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) through 2007. Mandatory, or guaranteed funding, would increase from $2.7 billion to $2.9 billion in 2003 and remain at that same level through 2007. Also increases annual authorization of discretionary CCDF funding by $200 million per year in fiscal years 2003 through 2007. Discretionary funding, now at $2.1 billion, could increase $200 million a year until it reaches $3.1 billion in 2007. These increases are discretionary and therefore subject to the annual appropriations process which means that future child care funding increases would have to compete for scarce dollars against other key child welfare programs, including the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program, Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, and the Child Welfare Services program.
• Requires states to devise a strategy to address child care quality and develop an annual report on progress. Increases the current 4% quality set-aside of a state's discretionary, mandatory and matching funds to 6%.
• Allows states to transfer up to 50% of their TANF block grant into the Child Care and Development Fund--an increase from the current 30%.

Child Support

• Allows states to increase the amount of child support funds they pass through to a family by allowing states to increase from $50 to $100 funds passed through to the family. States will not be required to reimburse the federal government for its share of this cost. To qualify, a state must disregard the increased child support passed through to the family in calculating a family's assistance grant level-not reduce the assistance grant by the amount of increased child support received by the family. Also encourages states to pass through all child support to families that have left TANF. The federal government will share in this cost.

Transitional Medical Assistance

• Allows for a one-year extension of the transitional medical assistance program (TMA) through FY 2003. TMA provides temporary health care coverage to families who have become ineligible for Medicaid, usually due to the move from welfare to self-sufficiency.

Abstinence Education

• Extends Section 510 of the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant, the abstinence-unless-married education program until FY 2007. Current funding for this abstinence education program is $50 million for FY 2002. To receive funding under this program, only an abstinence-unless-married curriculum can be taught. States are restricted from using these funds to teach both abstinence and contraception.

TANF Funding

• Maintains the current TANF funding level at $16.5 billion through 2007. Continues to provide $319 million a year in supplemental grants to 17 states.
• Creates a new a $100 million competitive grant, Healthy Marriage Promotion program. Funds can be used for: 1) ad campaigns on the value of marriage and the skills needed to have a stable and healthy marriage, 2) high school classes on the value of marriage, relationship skills and budgeting, 3) marriage skill classes for non-married women or men, 4) training for engaged couples, 5) training for married couples, 6) divorce reduction, marriage mentoring, and programs to reduce disincentives to marriage in means-tested programs. To receive funds under this new program, a state must provide a 50% match and can use its federal TANF funds for the match.
• Creates a new $20 million fatherhood program. Competitive grants are awarded to local entities with matches of at least 80% in federal dollars. Funds can be used for: (1) responsible parenting; (2) enhancing the ability of low-income unemployed fathers to provide support; (3) improving fathers ability to manage family business affairs through education, mentoring, household management, budgeting, etc.; and (4) encouragement of healthy marriages through premarital education, premarital inventories, marital therapy, divorce education, and mediation and relationship enhancement programs, including those designed to reduce child abuse and domestic violence. Applicants must describe how they will address child abuse and domestic violence and how they will coordinate with state and local entities on these issues.
• Reduces the existing TANF high performance bonus to $100 million and is renamed the Bonus to Reward Employment Achievement. This bonus is currently funded at $200 million per year with a complex formula set up to measure job placement, job advancement, and access to certain support services such as child care. There is no limit on the number of states that can earn a portion of this bonus.

Social Services Block Grant

• Retains current funding of $1.7 billion for the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG). Restores states' ability to transfer 10% of their federal TANF funds into SSBG.

Super-Waiver Authority

• Grants broad authority to the Secretaries of the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, Education, Housing and Urban Development, and Agriculture to waive various program requirements and laws. This waiver authority covers Child Care, TANF, SSBG, the food stamp program, housing programs except those under Sections 7 and 8, the Labor Department's Wagner-Peyser Act and the Department of Education's Adult Education and Family Literacy Act.
• This "super-waiver" proposal does not impose any significant limitations on the types of rules states that can apply to be waived, except that a waiver must not result in higher federal costs than would be incurred under standard federal law. This stands in stark contrast to most waiver provisions of current law, which include certain safeguards. States are only required to show that the waiver would further the purposes of all of the programs involved. If the Secretary of the Department did not respond within 90 days, the waiver would be automatically approved.
• Unlike past waiver policies that allowed states to operate demonstration projects to test the efficacy of new initiatives or alternative approaches, there would be no requirement that these waivers have a research objective or be subject to an independent evaluation.