House passes welfare reauthorization bill, Maine delegation reacts

By Deirdre Fulton

WASHINGTON – The House Thursday passed a welfare reauthorization bill that includes more stringent work requirements, marriage promotion funds and increased state flexibility. Maine Democratic Reps. Thomas Allen and Michael Michaud both opposed the legislation, which they said could cost Maine $56 million and would not do enough to help those in need.

The bill, which passed 230 to 192, would reauthorize the 1996 welfare law that sought to revitalize and refocus existing welfare requirements by placing time limits on assistance, requiring recipients to find work and emphasizing the importance of marriage and family. According to Republican lawmakers and the House Ways and Means Committee, this year’s legislation, H.R. 4, seeks to build on the success of that 1996 reform – which lawmakers say led to a significant drop in welfare caseloads.

In Maine, for example, welfare recipients dropped from more than 55,000 in 1996 to 12,236 in December of 2002, according to the Maine Department of Human Services.

Last year, the reauthorization, supported by the Bush administration, passed the House but was stalled by negotiations in the Senate. Virtually identical to last year’s bill, the legislation passed Thursday proposes long-term changes that would be fully effective by 2008. It would require 70 percent of welfare recipients in each state to be working or actively seeking work – up from 50 percent – while work hours per week would jump from 30 to 40 hours.

To work so many hours might be beneficial to welfare recipients in some parts of Maine, Michaud said in an interview before the vote. But in some regions, like the Katahdin Region in northern Maine, work requirements like this are unrealistic, he said. It is “crucial that states have flexibility,” he said, to address regional differences like the one he described.

However, the Ways and Means Committee said, the “State Flex” authority included in the bill would give states the ability to coordinate funds from different programs in ways that most effectively meet state needs.

Allen and Michaud both cited a Congressional Budget Office study that estimated the welfare reauthorization would cost Maine $56 million in unfunded mandates – federal requirements for states that aren’t sufficiently funded and leave states with the bulk of the cost. Allen praised the reform measures of the 1996 bill but said Thursday’s legislation went in the wrong direction.

“H.R. 4 abandons that reform model, imposes a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach and shifts more of the costs onto already budget-strapped states,” Allen said in a statement.

Sen. Olympia J. Snowe was one of three Republicans to break from President Bush’s proposal last year. She and a tri-partisan group of lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee drafted a bill last year that would have placed more emphasis on increased child-care funds as well as vocational and higher education.

Education is the most effective way to bring people permanently out of poverty, Allen and Michaud agreed. The Republican bill, however, limits the number of hours spent in education that can count toward the 40hour work week – effectively “penalizing people for seeking education to improve their job skills,” Allen said.

Republican lawmakers disagreed. A Ways and Means Committee spokeswoman pointed out the provision in H.R. 4 that would permit welfare recipients to spend up to two days a week in education programs that would count toward the work requirement.

According to Dave Lackey, Snowe’s press secretary, the senator hopes a bill similar in focus to the bill she supported last year will come out of the Senate this year. “The principles that made sense last year…are outstanding ways to encourage self- sufficiency,” he said, adding that while the House bill would provide a good foundation, there would most likely be significant differences between the House and Senate bills.

Last year, the Senate debated varying degrees of increases in child-care funds.

“We need to ensure that parents making the leap from welfare to work won’t be forced to take a leap of faith that their children will have safe, affordable child care,” Snowe, who advocated a $5.5 billion increase in child-care funds, said in a statement.

This year’s bill calls for a $1 billion mandatory increase for child care. Helen Blank, director of child care at the Children’s Defense Fund in Washington, said this “could be a crisis.”

Though Republicans point to the fact that states would continue to receive the same amount of money despite decreasing caseloads – leaving more money for distribution – Blank said budget-strapped states still needed more funds.

“If we had such an excess of funding,” she said, “we wouldn’t see states cutting families out of child-care assistance right and left…. They ought to talk to the thousands of people on waiting lists.”

Chris Hastedt, a policy specialist at Maine Equal Justice, an advocacy group for low-income Maine citizens, agreed that more child-care funds were necessary – especially if workweek hours are increased. Single mothers required to work the additional 10 hours per week would spend a significant amount on child care, she said.

“In order to put people into that kind of work regimen, you need a lot of money – a lot more than there is in the system right now,” she said. “When you require people to work that additional number of hours, you need to give them more access to childcare.”

The Maine Department of Human Services and Democratic Gov. John E. Baldacci’s office said the existing ability to move funds between welfare and child-care funds is an integral component of the current welfare system. However, Newell Augur, director of legislative and public affairs at the Department of Human Services, acknowledged that changes in the federal participation requirements would raise overall costs – by increasing costs for child care, transportation and other services.

Allen was in Maine for his father’s funeral and missed the House vote. Michaud voted against the bill and supported a Democratic-backed amendment he said provided more resources to the states for education, training and child care.

Published in The Kennebec Journal and The Morning Sentinel, in Maine.