Poor face uncertain future as welfare rules change

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

Maureen Flamm and her staff see them every day: Single mothers, many with more than one child, struggling to get or keep jobs and meet the requirements of the welfare reform law passed in 1996.

Most do not have the kind of education and training they need to get secure jobs that pay a living wage. They end up working for minimum wage, or perhaps a little more, in service positions, like hotel housekeeping, that can evaporate when the economy slows down and they are no longer needed.

As Illinois terminated the first families who had exceeded a five-year lifetime cap on public assistance this month, thousands of parents work at keeping their jobs in an uncertain economy.

Now Congress is preparing to reauthorize the program that provides money for states to give cash aid to needy families, but those who work with and advocate for poor people wonder what some of the provisions in the House of Representatives-approved bill would do to their clients.

At the same time, as the Senate prepares to vote on its own version, some advocates see an opportunity for improvements in the 1996 law, although both proposals hold the level of funding at $16.5 billion a year for the next five years, exactly where its been since 1996, despite the sagging economy and increases in the cost of living.

Kathleen Curran, a public policy advisor with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in testimony before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources that the conference supports the idea of work, but work must enhance human dignity.

“Those who can work, should work,” she said. “Work is the means by which individuals support themselves and their families, participate in God’s creation, express their dignity and contribute to the common good of society. The challenge is to ensure that our nation’s policies support productive work with wages and benefits that allow a family to live in dignity.”

A full-time minimum-wage worker makes $10,712 a year before taxes, far below the $17,650 that is the official poverty line for a family of four. The Catholic Campaign for Human Development Web site, povertyusa.org, cites an Economic Policy Institute study that showed it takes nearly twice that amount—$33,511—to fill a family of four’s basic needs.

While the 1996 law undoubtedly moved people off the welfare rolls—caseloads have dropped 58 percent nationally and about 88 percent in Illinois from their peak levels in 1994—but the evidence as to whether the program has helped families out of poverty is less clear. Some studies show that people at the bottom of the economic scale are worse off than they were before, Curran said. Since many details are left up to states, the outcomes have varied.

More than 34 million people still live below the official poverty line, and one in six American children is poor,
according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. In 2000, 37 percent of poor children had a full-time worker in their households—a dramatic increase from before the 1996 welfare reform law.

The provision of the House reauthorization bill that raises the most concern increases the percentage of families that must participate in work activities from 50 percent to 70 percent over the next five years, and requires parents to spend 40 hours a week on work-related activities, up from the current requirement of 30 hours a week.

Flamm, program director of Family & Aged Services at Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago, said people who support that provision don’t understand the lives her clients lead.

As an example, she described the morning routine of a mother of three who lives in a suburban apartment and works in Chicago. To get to work by 8 a.m., she rises at 4 a.m. to get ready for the day. After awakening her daughters, she dresses them and herds them out the door and onto public transportation, which she takes to two different before-school care programs to drop them off. Then she gets back on public transportation to go to work. At the end of the day, the process is reversed.

“These are not eight-hour days,” Flamm said. “There are hours before and after work.”

A version of the bill that passed out of the Senate finance committee last month would amend the work requirements, bringing the 40-hour-a-week work requirement back to 30 hours, where it stands now, Curran said.

The version the Senate will debate does change some of the categories that work-related activities fall into, but it also would allow for more vocational training and education, substance abuse therapy and other activities to be counted, she said.

The conference did support some of the changes to the law proposed by the House bill, including a call for states to end any provisions that make it more difficult for two-parent families to get benefits, to include some funding for marriage education programs and to officially include poverty reduction as a goal of the program.

But because of the work provisions, the conference and many other advocates for the poor do not support the House bill.

People who have not successfully made the transition to work yet often are facing multiple barriers to employment, said Mariah Priggin, director of the Midwest field office of Bread for the World, a grassroots Christian advocacy and education organization.

The bishops’ conference, Bread for the World and other groups have applauded provisions in the bill passed by the Senate Finance Committee to include more support for people trying to enter the workforce: a $5.5 billion increase for child care, more access to food stamps and Medicaid, more allowances for education and training.

Many advocates also approve of the plan to give states the option of providing some benefits for legal immigrants, who most often come to the U.S. to work and pay taxes, and may find themselves out of a job because of circumstances beyond their control.

“Sept. 11 was the perfect example,” Curran said. “There were so many immigrants working in New York in service industries, and then all the sudden their jobs were gone.”

The bishops’ conference also wants to see an end to family caps, which allow states to refuse to increase public aid to families when they have more children, and full-family sanctions, which can end aid intended for children if their parents break program rules.

Flamm and her staff likely won’t see many changes soon, as the Senate may not take up the issue until after the August recess, and then the discrepancies between the House and Senate versions will have to be resolved before any new legislation goes to the president’s desk to be signed. After that, there will be a period of writing regulations and developing state-by-state programs to meet them, said Laurie Barretto, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago’s legislative affairs liaison.

Once that happens, Catholic Charities will continue to do what it does now for its clients: know the rules, often better than some of the state public aid workers, and help people get what they are entitled to so they can get decent jobs and help themselves, Flamm said.