(Updated July 17, 2006)

H.Con.Res. 438
Expressing the Sense of the Congress that Continuation of the Welfare Reforms Provided for in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 Should Remain a Priority 

Floor Situation

The House is scheduled to consider H.Con.Res. 438, under suspension of the rules, on Tuesday, July 18, 2006. The resolution is debatable for 40 minutes, may not be amended, and requires a two-thirds majority vote for passage.

Summary

H.Con. Res 438 resolves that it is the sense of Congress that increasing success in moving families from welfare to work, as well as in promoting healthy marriage and other means of improving child well-being, as promoted by the welfare reforms in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, are very important Government interests and should remain priorities for the responsible Federal and State agencies in the years ahead for assisting needy families and others at risk of poverty and dependence on government benefits.

Background

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program established by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-193) has succeeded in moving families from welfare to work and reducing child poverty. There has been a dramatic increase in the employment of current and former welfare recipients. The percentage of working recipients reached an all-time high in fiscal year 1999 and held steady in fiscal years 2000 and 2001. In fiscal year 2004, 32 percent of adult recipients were counted as meeting TANF work participation requirements, significantly above pre-reform levels.

Earnings for welfare recipients remaining on the rolls also have increased significantly, as have earnings for female-headed households. Single mothers, on average, earned $13.50 per hour in 2004, almost three times the minimum wage. The increases have been particularly large for the bottom 2 income quintiles, that is, those women who are most likely to be former or current welfare recipients.

Welfare dependency has plummeted. As of September 2005, 1.8 million families, including 4.4 million individuals, were receiving TANF assistance, and accordingly, the number of families in the welfare caseload and the number of individuals receiving cash assistance declined 56 percent and 61 percent, respectively, since the enactment of the TANF program.

Since the enactment of welfare reform, the number of children in the United States has grown from 69 million in 1995 to 73 million in 2004, which is an increase of 4 million yet 1.4 million fewer children were living in poverty in 2004 than in 1995, a 14 percent decline in overall child poverty. The poverty rates for African-American and Hispanic children also have declined remarkably, 20 percent and 28 percent, respectively, since 1995.

Since the enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, child support collections within the child support enforcement system have grown every year, increasing from $12 billion in fiscal year 1996 to over $22 billion in fiscal year 2004. Child support collections were made in nearly 8.1 million cases in fiscal year 2004, significantly more than the almost 4 million cases in which a collection was made in 1996.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 gave States great flexibility in the use of Federal funds to develop innovative programs to help families leave welfare and begin employment, and to encourage the formation of 2-parent families. Annual Federal funding for under the new TANF block grant program have been held constant at the all-time highs set in 1995, despite unprecedented welfare caseload declines and despite the fact that States may spend as little as 75 percent as much as they spent spending under the prior AFDC program. Total welfare and child care funds available per family increased over 130 percent between 1995 and 2004, from $6,934 to $16,185. Child care expenditures have quadrupled under welfare reform, rising from $3,000,000,000 in 1995 to $12,000,000,000 in 2004;

Under the TANF program, States have enjoyed significant new flexibility in making policy choices and investment decisions best suited to the needs of their citizens. Despite all of these successes, there is still progress to be made.

Significant numbers of welfare recipients still are not engaged in employment-related activities. While all States have met the overall work participation rates required by law, in an average month, only 41 percent of all TANF families with an adult participated in work activities for even a single hour that was countable toward the State's work participation rate.

In 2002, 34 percent of all births in the United States were to unmarried women. Despite recent progress in reducing teen pregnancy in general, with fewer teens entering marriage, the proportion of births to unmarried teens has increased dramatically to 80 percent in 2002 from 30 percent in 1970.

The negative consequences of out-of-wedlock birth on the mother, the child, the family, and society are well documented. The negative consequences include increased likelihood of welfare dependency, increased risks of low birth weight, poor cognitive development, child abuse and neglect, teen parenthood, and decreased likelihood of having an intact marriage during adulthood, and these outcomes result despite the often heroic struggles of mostly single mothers to care for their families. There has been a dramatic rise in cohabitation as marriages have declined. An estimated 40 percent of children are expected to live in a cohabiting-parent family at some point during their childhood.

Children in single-parent households and cohabiting-parent households are at much higher risk of child abuse than children in intact married families. Children who live apart from their biological fathers are, on average, more likely to be poor, experience educational, health, emotional, and psychological problems, be victims of child abuse, engage in criminal behavior, and become involved with the juvenile justice system than their peers who live with their married, biological mother and father. Despite the strenuous efforts of single mothers to care for their children, a child living with a single mother is nearly 5 times as likely to be poor as a child living in a married-couple family. In 2003, in married-couple families, the child poverty rate was 8.6 percent: in households headed by a single mother the poverty rate was 41.7 percent.

Legislative History

H.Con.Res. 438 was introduced by Rep. Shaw (FL) on June 27, 2006. The bill was referred to the Ways and Means Committee, but was not considered.

For additional information or questions, please contact Rep. Shaw's office at 5-3026.