and putting it together as beginning of this year the economy was contracting really would be a better word jobs were being lost a right of seven hundred forty one thousand per month in the month of january and the democratic leadership congress to enact the american recovery and reinvestment the recovery act the economy by making public investments by raising the social safety net c b l recently asked me that as many as one point six million jobs have been creators of the recovery september of this year last week the november jobs report showed non farm jobs losses slowing to eleven thousand per month from seven hundred forty one well thank you chairman and ranking member ryan and members of the budget committee for two sedating in this important and timely hearing i also want to thank all of our esteemed panel as witnesses for being here today here from milwaukee to be with us here today in january of this year president president obama took office the nation was at the brink of an economic crisis due to massive layoffs of business closing involuntary part time employment many americans were forced to foreclose on their own and file for government assistance in order to provide for themselves and their families between june two thousand and seven and june two thousand and nine the economy lost roughly six million jobs in two thousand and eight nine point eight million people were counted as poor and eighty five percent of u s households were food insecure throughout the entire year the highest recorded rate of food insecurity since the measurement began in one thousand nine hundred across the country states were experiencing grave budget shortfalls and to make matters worse worse the social safety net had all but fallen through as more and more americans saw their food stamps childcare benefits and ten it's been if it's disappear the reality is that it is impossible to have a work based safety net without work than the greatest act the moron of all is like jumbo shrimp in my state of wisconsin employers cut nearly  hundred twenty nine thousand six hundred jobs since october two thousand and eight the steepest year to year drop in seventy years of data at ten of case loads of gone from nine thousand three hundred sixty six in october two thousand and eight to eleven thousand one hundred eighteen in two thousand and nine this is an increase nearly two thousand case loads and just one year faced with insurmountable odds and a cumulative three months job loss of two point one million in early february congress passed the american recovery and reinvestment act acra a bill that pumped nearly eight hundred billion dollars of emergency funds into states  localities to stimulate our elite calamy and job market and provide funds to low income communities experiencing dramatic shortfalls due to the economic downturn the recovery act created a new and temporary temporary assistance to needy families emergency contingency funds think of it a temporary temporary assistance to needy families emergency contingency fund me that you  talk about temporizing available to states for increased expenditures for basic assistance short term not recurrent benefits and subsidized and climate recovery act included twenty billion for the food stamp program our nation's most important food assistance program which helps the roughly thirty five million americans annually feed their families and certainly that thirty five million represents only a portion of those who are eligible and in the additional funds were necessary to meet the increased need as well as to fund the thirteen point six percent increase the maximum food stamp benefits which went into effect in april two thousand and nine an analysis done l and the council on economic advisors concluded that the recovery act saved or created between six hundred thousand and one point six million jobs as of august two thousand and nine and in september the center  budget and policy priorities released an analysis revealing that the recovery prevented more than six million americans from slipping into poverty the c v p p also concluded that the bill has help reduce the severity of poverty for thirty three more americans the truth of the matter is that the recovery act not only work to soften the blow of the recession on the nation's poor by giving direct assistance to households through increased funding for education health care childcare child support collection temporary assistance for needy families and homelessness is distance but it also created and preserved public and private sector job in october the department of labor estimated that the number of newly laid off workers seeking unemployment insurance fell by a thousand to a seasonally adjusted five hundred thirty thousand last week deal will also reveal that the number of people continuing to claim benefits meanwhile had dropped sharply by a hundred forty eight thousand to five point eight million below analyst expectations while i'm pleased with the drop in unemployment insurance claims there is still work to be done and we must continue to do all we can to continue to collide and come out of this recession as states continue to benefit from funding included in the recovery act it's my hope that congress continues to work to reduce poverty create jobs and stabilize our economy i really look forward to this distinguished panel and their testimony and i  chairman i also want to what welcome all of our witnesses i wasn't sure you're going to make it here i know what's going on back home so it's nice to be here i'm sure you probably came out of maybe about a half a day earlier than you probably otherwise planned on doing it and you've seen the impact of this recession up close which brings valuable insight on the effectiveness of the various government safety net programs i also want to welcome back to the committee ron haskins ron is as many of you know was the staff director of the ways i mean subcommittee and human resources he helped craft one of the most successful entitlement reforms in the federal government's history the one hundred six welfare reform law as it's painfully obvious to all american families have been struggling and they continue to struggle in this weekend economy since the official start of this recession back in two set december of two thousand and seven nearly six million jobs have been lost in regard regrettably the trillion dollar stimulus at a dramatically to the nation's debt but did little to improve the nation's dire economic situation unemployment hovers at around ten percent still and economists are forecasting a sluggish and mostly jobless recovery in the year to come so at this point even many formerly middle class families have found themselves relying on some degree of public assistance for the time in their lives clearly it is critical that we here in congress ensure the safety net remains available in strong for those who truly need and depend on them but in responding to these recession we had better remain mindful of the even greater economic crisis we will face if we don't get a handle on washington's ongoing explosion of spending and debt we must also reform our largest and least sustainable entitlement programs which are today on a path to grow themselves right into extinction these immense fiscal problems threaten to overwhelm the budget and smother any real hope for a strong economic recovery in the future incredibly only plans likely to go anywhere here in washington are those that will make these programs in problems dramatically worse i will again remind my colleagues that should we fail to get washington's fiscal house in order the biggest losers will be our nation's most vulnerable those who depend on the continuation of the very federal safety net programs that are going broke today we can and we must reform these programs to preserve the safety net and the sooner we get to work on these critical reforms the better again i want to thank you chairman and i want to thank my good friend congressman more for putting us hearing together and the witnesses  thank you and by for inviting me what i'd like to do today is focus my testimony on three points and the first point is what role are a has played in keeping millions of individuals out of poverty and also in reducing hardship among others the second that what i'd like to do is to really talk about our program and contrast what has happened in those so that we understand which parts of the safety net are working and which are not and then what i'd like to do is talk about the need for continued on looking at our and its impact on poverty we looked at seven provisions of the recovery act that provide income directly to individuals or families and when we did that we found that there are six point two million fewer people who are in poverty and thirty three million who are have less poverty than they would have i think part of that is that not only did that have the impact of having less poverty but it also provides income to people who are most likely to spend it and what that does is it keeps the economy moving and it keeps people employed other than the people who are spending it so i think that's sort of an important part of it's not all it's really serving two things at the medicaid and through that this school stabilization fund which was targeted primarily to educate education and state to school relief help to mitigate the recession through several different means first it helps states to maintain critical services states receive the enhanced medicaid funding they were able to do two things one is they were able to keep people employed who are in the medicaid program and our health providers and they also were able to keep at the levels that it would have been so what we've seen is an increase or expected increase in medicaid and people receiving medicaid because there was a maintenance of effort to get that enhanced match they couldn't reduce eligibility so we see more people who are actually receiving assistance from that program than we would have otherwise the other is that it helps avoid layoffs of public employees and one thing i think that many of us ian are concerned about is in the education that has been especially true is that teachers have been there many teachers that would have been laid off that are not and are still in our schools and then the other is it prevents the curved traction of private sector it economic activity activity again because that activity that supplies goods and services continues and it keeps the economy moving and i think that it's important that economist mark zandi has found that state fiscal relief has a very high multiplier effect and for every dollar spent by the federal government it results in a one point four one  adult forty one increase in the gross domestic partner product department of education found that more than two hundred thirty five thousand education jobs in the sixty three thousand jobs in other areas have been retained i think one of the difficulties with  some of that happened in the stabilization it's hard to count what has been retained rather than what has been added but i think an important point of what our eye has done is things are far less worse than they would have been had those provisions not been in place targeted so that it does go directly to families in need it is to help states who have increases in their caseload meet those increased payments allows states to provide emergency assistance to stave off crises so that it can help families to avoid foreclosure if they're behind in their rent or the utility payments to avoid them from becoming homeless and then to creates a new subsidized employment programs so that states really have been able to use this to maintain a work vocus in their t n f programs which otherwise would have been my a difficult one ugh zambo that i would like to do is just to get just to give you a flavor of how states have used this is to use oregon as an example oregon has been hit very hard by the recession there's been a huge increase the number of people who are unemployed in their program they have been serving an additional six thousand families a month and they are expecting to draw down seventy almost seventy five million dollars from the tanach emergency fund for two thousand nine and two thousand and ten and when it out that additional funding organ would have eliminated their tianna program for two parent families and they would have reduced eligibility for employment related daycare and they would have potentially had some other cuts to a to account for some of the decrease the to be able to meet some of their budget gaps so they have been able to avoid all of those cuts families are continuing to receive assistance and again oregon is an example where the program  is very work focused was able to shift and provide a safety net for families who need it and it also did it very quickly on the subsidized employment so far we have more than a dozen states that have received approval to create or expand their subsidize employment programs and california i think is a good example being a very large state they're planning to draw down three hundred million dollars to greece subsidize employment alone is planning to provide ten thousand jobs to people who would otherwise not have them but there will be programs throughout the state new york state is also spending out fifty three billion dollars on subsidize employment and that is a combination what they've done is taken some of the our of funds they've added some of their state funds so that they can create funds to do health care outreach they can do green jobs and they can provide again subsidize employment people who otherwise would not be employed so that i think is a good example of the ways in which the contingency fund is actually playing out in the states and what i'd like to do is turn in talk a little bit about the safety net overall responsiveness to the recession so we had programs in place prior to our that were really intended to be a safety net for families so i think sort of thinking long term one now national enrollment is an all time high of increased by thirty percent since the beginning of the economic downturn and they have increased in every state so that the stamp program really has responded to the increased demand and again they have done so done so very quick the channel story is a very different story the t n f cases are starting to increase but what happens is if you look at t n f nationally there's been a very small increase if you look from we actually look from march what's going on in the states there are some states that have had very very substantial increases in caseload above twenty five percent so again oregon being one of those south carolina is another there are about six states that have had more than fifteen percent increases but there are more states that where the cases has either remained or is actually declining was declining at the start of the recession and has continued to decline the states that have  peace loads the clients that are at ten percent or greater and again those have continued so i think we need to sort of ask ourselves why has not been responsive given that we know there is greater need and i think there's a lot of reasons we don't know all the details but i think we can look and sort of draw some conclusions based on what we're seeing one is that states for thirteen years have been focusing on caseload decline and they have really been slow to shift that focus a measure of success for canada was that the cases went down the work participation rates really have discouraged states from serving people who can't get jobs quickly and the easiest way to meet those work which is the patient rate is not just or people who can't floyd even in this economy are still concerned about how they will meet those rates and it affects their behavior about who they are and how they actually operate their programs many states have policies and procedures in place that make it very very difficult for people to get onto assistance and especially difficult if they can't demonstrate that they can work forty hours a week and meet those work requirements the other is that damn it does have a stigma attached to it for many families and so there are some families who may need assistance who don't pursue it because of the stigma attached because they don't know that they're eligible and because time limits that they may have already reached the other thing that i think is important in looking at sort of what's happening in food stamp t n f one of the things we're seeing in food stamps is an increase in what we refer to is zero income households so they are households that have no other income those are many of those families or families who historically prior to reform would have been on hand and are not on tanna so again we have food stamp is providing a safety net but food stamp cannot help people to pay their rent it can help them to pay sort of some of  their basic meet their basic needs so again there is sort of a good side a bad side story to that finally what i'd like to do is to talk about strategies for how can we strengthen the safety net and i'm going to talk about three years more in my testimony and i would focus on two that are short term and one that is a longer term rather short term first is to provide additional funding to states to really help them with the administrative cost of providing food stamp benefits to individuals sorry one thing that has happened in states is trying to meet the demand and actually process those applications is creating just a huge problem ministre to state and because of budget crises people are being laid off even though there are more applications so one thing that we could do to actually help states to meet that demand and to get benefits in the hands of people quickly more quickly is to help them on the administrative side the other second is to provide is to phase state fiscal relief more gradually when we consider how to provide a safety never be we shouldn't lose sight of the long term consequences if you look historically what has happened in recessions unemployment generally recover slowly and poverty recovers even more slowly so that you so that if we really believe that what has happened historically will continue happen the need is going to continue for an extended period of time and we need to really sort of be prepared for thinking about that so despite improvements in the economy and sort of the fiscal relief that states have received the fiscal conditions in states look almost as bad in fiscal two thousand and eleven and two thousand and twelve as they did for two thousand and nine and two thousand and ten and the current recovery fronts help them to take part of their gap and close that  but it is not going to go away so our recommendation is to really to really think about how can we gradually decrease the amount of money that goes to states but not put them in a position where they will have to close those gaps quickly and be unable we know that states have already started to plan their budgets so that it's important to do something quickly and we know that without additional fiscal relief many of the services that have been helpful to families will be cut  have already indicated that if the map doesn't continue that they will start to cut back eligibility so that they can again meet their budget requirements finally on the longer term is really thinking about what can we how can we use t n f reauthorization which comes up next year to really improve response of this economic downturn and all to improve also to improve its performance as a work program i think that we have made we can it is a very different program than when we instituted reform and i think it requires a different discussion about what comes next and i think that i think we would be remiss if we didn't use the opportunity that is coming up to really take a step back and say where has it performed well and where is it insured and how can we make it a safety net that really is for the long term and really can deal with the ups and downs of people's lives as they as they happen so when the summary what i'd like to do is just to say that the stimulus has provided important help to both state and individuals and both of those mechanisms of a getting money in the hands of poor people who will spend it is an important way to help the economy to recover as well as states to help to provide important services and second is that we really need to be thinking this is a long term it is not going to go away in the short term and so we need to really be thinking about what's the path long term path to recovery so we don't lose ground from what we've already accomplished and i'll stop there  appleseed legal justice center and we provide advocacy on behalf of the low income community specifically working on safety net programs including snap welfare medicaid and also recently we've had the opportunity to work on unemployment insurance i worked with the legislature recently as it attempted to do a huge mistake that it made by failing to change certain state laws to allow us to take advantage of the generous programming that you that that congress has provided to the states for extended benefit and mr chairman i want to thank you and your staff for all well you did to help us in recognizing the great error that the state of south carolina made and the fact that which i found absolutely remarkable that they came in a special session to fix this to allow standard benefits for thousands of south carolinians who otherwise would have lost their unemployment insurance benefits which is something that just could not happen in our state especially during these hard economic times south carolina is like every other state in the in the nation experiencing incredible problems due to recession but i think our state is facing them just slightly harder than many other states with an unemployment rate that is right now hovering at about twelve point one percent we've been double digit for the most of the year and it is now predicted that starting next year we will probably be at around thirteen percent unemployment i can't tell you what this does to families who are already in distress but also to middle class families who are now finding themselves faced with joblessness during the past year our need for our safety net programs have dramatically increased in the state unfortunately at the same time our state is facing a huge fiscal crisis while the one billion dollars that we have had to cut from our state budget probably seems like a small amount of money relatively speaking to congress when you think about approach a state that its budget was only seven million and it is almost one sixth of our budget that has been cut and i can't tell you what it has done to dramatically hurt so many of our safety net programs state agencies have steep cuts like arce department of social services of up to twenty five percent of its state dollars and this is going to ultimately impact the number of families that are being served as a vet he said in south carolina unlike some others we have seen a dramatic increase in our can of program we've seen eleven thousand recipients increase eleven thousand recipient increase since last year at this time and that's after this program had been relatively flat in its growth for the past number of years i think what's even more telling is that in the snap program the formerly food stamps we've had a participation rate increase of one hundred thousand individuals in the last year our unemployment has increased four percent over the last year and unfortunately our medicaid rolls have remained relatively flat well i don't think it's because of a lack of need and we're now looking into seeing what our agency and our current administration is doing to suppress role we think that while our number of uninsured are increasing in fact this program should be seeing huge increases as well what this shows is that the safety net programs are the lifeline to assist families in need and that can't be even more so than during these times of recession and that all these benefit programs provide critical help to our states poorest and most vulnerable citizens and that these dramatic program increases show that the need for the needs of our states the needs of our citizens are being have have dramatically increased and that the funding that's been provided to the to the states has never been more needed of course one of the most important provisions that was passed  our the you i provision which have helped thousands of individuals in our state and over a million people in our country in february are funded a comprehensive set of protections to help unemployed workers throughout the year and i should say that a similar approach will be necessary in two thousand and ten as long term unemployment continues at record levels with are we seeing emergency unemployment compensation program which was just extended in november to provide forty years of benefits to workers who run out of their basic twenty six weeks of assistance and this can range from thirty forty fifty three weeks depending on the level of unemployment in this day and needless to say in south carolina with our high unemployment we're taking advantage of the maximum amount of federal funding of the extended benefit program which means another thirteen to twenty weeks of benefits that normally would be paid fifty percent by the state now is paid one hundred percent by the federal government an increase of twenty five dollars per week to both state and federally funded u i benefits and nearly nine million workers are now collecting either the state or federally funded benefits that are now qualifying for this additional benefit each week and also the cobra subsidy sixty five percent cobra subsidy which was to last for nine months this means that for individuals who are finding themselves unemployed and would otherwise find themselves uninsured are able to afford to keep their health care insurance and this this benefit has not only an economic benefit to the individuals it has been a huge economic benefit to our state south carolina have has really seen a huge increase a huge benefit as a state from this money unfortunately because of our high unemployment rate one hundred twenty six million dollars has been made available to families because of that twenty five dollars a week benefit and also the from the benefits that benefit three hundred twenty seven million additional dollars our state unemployed numbers are growing not just in amount but in length the time that they're staying unemployed the extended benefit programs that are up particularly helpful to states with substantially higher unemployment rates but also longer unemployment rate our recovery many unemployed workers are still on able to find assistance and i should say that the calls that we received after the extension of the emergency benefit program to our office was tremendous we received calls from individuals who have worked their entire lives but found themselves laid off and one story that really resonated with me was from a woman in charleston who called to thank us to thank our office because she had read that we had been involved in working with the legislature to tell me that she didn't everything she had done to try to find a job was still unemployed and because it was partly because of her age it was hard for her to find employment and she probably really felt that it was going to be continue to be difficult in the environment that she was facing and that without this extended benefit she and many other people who are in the same position would have found themselves without any way to to support themselves and would be falling off a financial cliff i should also say the cobra subsidy also is critical while we haven't have had a huge an uptake in the cobra subsidy as we would like to see we have seen double the number of people taking advantage of it and keeping their health insurance and just the numbers show why that's important while the average monthly benefit in south carolina is about one hundred one thousand and sixty dollars the average cobra benefit is about one thousand nine hundred dollars the map shows that if you're on an employment you cannot keep your health insurance and with this subsidy it is allowed many people to keep their health insurance while facing unemployment and i have also talked with individuals actually an interesting young man who never thought he'd find himself in a position of being unemployed didn't know about the cobra benefit initially but when he realized that it was available has been able to keep his health insurance not have to worry about the stressors of looking for a job while also being uninsured and we receive many calls from individuals from around the state who are facing the problems of recession we know that this twenty five dollars a week while it may seem minimal makes a huge difference to individuals for many people and in our country about eight hundred thousand people according to the numbers from the center on budget and policy priorities we know that has kept them out of poverty we also know that people on unemployment insurance are less likely to find to to face food insecurity the national employment law project  survey recently well last year of unemployed individuals and many of them the majority of them have stated that without unemployment benefits they would probably be faced with skipping meals something that we know is not an option for any of them so what i ask for you today is to consider the extension of the unemployment provisions are a while what has been done for the states has been remarkable and incredibly helpful are not out of the woods yet and our workers still depend on both the you see the money that is needed by the state for that you see benefits extended benefits the full federally funded extended benefits as well as for those who are facing  insurance insecurity because they will not have the cobra benefit and that needs to be done sooner rather than later our state is probably already sending out the notices to those who are into the extended benefit program and as we know states are working with antiquated computer systems and are under great stress now trying to keep up with all of the benefit programs and keeping up with the extensions and in order to solve the problem of gaps for service for the individuals we need congress to act on this as soon as possible i can't thank you enough for what you have done for the states in the fiscal relief that you provided to a state during this very difficult time but more importantly to the individuals that we serve the thousands of people who are who have been served by all of these programs are being able to keep their body and soul together because of the snap program because of hanna and because of you are and as we feel the calls from people who are facing losing their homes keeping the lights on trying to make sure that they can feed their families we can direct them to these programs i want to be able to continue to direct them to these programs but also recognize that our state that is also struggling needs the fiscal relief i thank you once again for the opportunity to to speak to you about like morning chairman congresswoman moore a member of the thank you for the opportunity to speak here today i have to admit that when i was first contacted by congresswoman mars office i was a bit hesitant i was certainly honored by don't you really want someone who knows a little bit more about economics or funding streams or statistics and they convinced me that they didn't and so i'm here today to talk for the men and women who come into our office at legal action where the legal services office a federally funded legal increasing two parent families people who have recently lost their jobs and increasingly calling from outside the city of milwaukee from our suburbs and our surrounding counties they are as varied as the people of wisconsin white earnings which in turn increased income and then if you look at the last chart down there what happened to poverty and as you can see poverty declined throughout this period up until two thousand lines for both kids and female headed families that's a e so now we come to another challenge which is a recession the recession of two thousand and two thousand and one was not very deep it didn't have that much of an impact on employment it had a lot more impact on males and it did on females so the poverty went up a little bit  or two thousand and nine and i think that's going to change substantially some of the things i've shown you there so i think the first thing we should say this is a problem this is a problem and we need to figure out what we should do about  we're in agreement on and we should be frank about this and now if you look at the next chart is that it is not a very good safety net if you can see the increase in unemployment and unemployment insurance lot more about how this is responded but the first on the first blush it is a big problem so why is it that canada has such a different pattern and these other programs given some very good reasons i do think the this happened now don also has given away my main point which is i think that this committee and ways and means committee and the education committees in both houses and the finance committee should focus on this next year we're supposed to reauthorize welfare reform  provisions in there as well so that's the place to begin why did it take so long for those to work and now in addition we put a new provision in which you didn't which was five billion dollars for emergency in effect fund and stage are using that money as well so that that's where to begin why aren't those programs working better why did it take so long to take advantage of i think it's a big challenge and i want to my last comment is i want to that basically we have a kind of a safety net for people who are unemployed who have been working and they go on unemployment insurance but we don't have a safety net for people who basically don't have a job  scene of the crime in wisconsin we ended welfare first state to do that and describe her struggle with job ready and lack of educational opportunity and perhaps settled some of the points that you raised haskins as to kins what you know i don't understand there seems to be a difference in whether or not poverty was reduced there's a claim that women who were that there was a reduction in poverty among children but i really question those metrics since i know in the case of wisconsin we really didn't track people who were just one off the rolls and what happened to them and so when you look at your chart dr  see that even those snap programs of increase you see is increased there are zero income families that are using snap the fact that can if didn't increase it would indicate to me that we don't have a true metric of how many children are truly living in poverty and women who are living in poverty so could you respond to that part of the part of the problem in trying to this out is has to do with looking at averages because what happened is that there were winners and losers when we did welfare reform so there are people who did go to work and who were moved out of poverty and then there were a group of pm malays who are really have their a low incomes who are far worse off so i'm sorry i don't have it here but i can provide it where we have charts where we look at the time of what has happened and you can see that there are parts of the safety net that really have increased in the number of people that they've moved out of poverty and you see a huge gap in what has so what we're seeing is a story where there is a group of people who have not as great needs who have been able to make that transition who are doing better so you see them moving out of poverty and then you see this group at the bottom whose incomes have just plummeted and are doing far worse so it is a story that is more important to look at the poverty and what is happening there so i think that averages are not a good thing there are damn statistics that are haskins let me let you weigh in on this because you have claimed and i haven't seen where we have reduced the there we go thank you mr chairman and thank you members of this panel it's a great discussion considering the importance during this time this these recessionary times mr haskins first for you  analysis of the president's budget forecasts a debt spiral with debt levels not seen since world war two and a tripling of net interest payments on the debt over ten years are you concerned about the impact of a death spiral and its potential consequences for economic growth on the health of our safety net programs we know we need programs overall health of our economy putting our safety net programs at risk  coordinating with these programs affectively the town of program with the job training program i think there's been some disconnect in our state and i wouldn't want to use south carolina right now as an example of what's going on a state level between the state agencies there have been some concerns with our employment security commission and what they've been doing to assist people in job searches and in with job training i will tell you that our can if agency has been attempting to do what they can to help individuals identify better paying jobs and to increase their their income i would almost want to respond to something that that dr said when he was talking about whether or not the tanach program well if people are working whether it's actually taken them out of poverty and i would say that in looking at what has happened with the state agencies and the pressures that have been put on them with the threat of sanction if people are not put to work is what we're doing is is we're finding jobs for people that are not paying living wages that they're able to actually support their families and work the majority of the people that i have counseled with over the years want to work they don't want to be dependent on that hannah program the bigger problem for them is whether or not with with work and with the other social safety net programs they may be able to access whether that's going to be allow them to be able to afford to work but more importantly as to whether or not they're going to be making money to take them out of poverty and in south carolina while our who started to fold had gone down tremendously prior to this current recession it really was not taking children in families out of out of poverty so i think that we need to be doing a better job we need to be more responsive and helping that particular population with accessing better paying jobs can i just sort of add something that i think one thing that's important is that the same disincentive in t n f to serve people who have who need more than just job search to get a job exist in the we have a system and even to a degree or degree so often what you hear when you talk to we have people is that they are not set up to be able to provide the employment services they feel that t n f recipients need they just don't they have so many issues going on in their lives and they need a different kind of support that we have struggled to provide as well and again both in t n a and in we are a huge part of the issue is the way we set up performance standards that really reward states for serving people who are most able to get jobs on their own and until we change those and sentence about how we measure our performance we're not going to be able to provide the work supports that people need to be able to get into the labor market so i think that's sort of where some of the disconnect comes is neither program is set up to deal with the reality of what people's lives are what their needs are to actually make that transition and i'd like to give dr haskins an opportunity to respond to that little round and while you're doing so could you also address perhaps some of the  may occur within safety net programs and is there a way to consolidate them and make them more efficient and perhaps more flexible so they could respond to the kind of needs in a recession airy time that may be different from think that by allowing a couple of things that perhaps time limits is a barrier to really hoping people get out of poverty and also limiting the type of education and training  that we can provide for people in order to to to lift them out of poverty and to really help those people develop the skill sets that are important for our economy there seemed to be a lot of focus on the  ninety six reform to limit the amount of education and training and we've sort of shot ourselves in the foot in my opinion by doing that thank you i would just it's not just limited to limiting education and training is a part of it but i think the limit is far greater than that and it goes to the issue of the coordination what we've done in t n if if we if we have created a very narrow definition of what the propre of pass to work is and it is a definition that doesn't really respond to the range of needs on people on tanna so even states that are trying to coordinate with the query have for their recipients who have disabilities what they find is a conflict because the narrow definition of t n  means that they cannot meet through the requirements by going to vocal rehab so i think what we need to do is to acknowledge that there are very many different paths and the best path to work for one person is not for the other and for some the only way they're going to move out of poverty and even need less of the supports that we provide if they are working is to go to education and training and states really sort of do all of these gyrations of trying to make those opportunities available so i think what we need to do is to think about a broader range of activities that really will lead people to work and it was us a lot of issues including the education  to believe that we need to get our budget deficit under control but i don't want to do it by balancing the budget on the backs of the force in this country and so i hope that we can find other ways dropped twenty percent my home state of massachusetts and i think the increase speaks to the extraordinary need in massachusetts as well as the hard work by the state to be able to deliver benefits to eligible people the increased demand for food stamps is happening at a time when state budgets are in crisis states across the country are cutting their human service agency staff at the very time that they need more staff to be able to manage the flood of new applications and parts of texas  applicants for food stamps must wait sixty to ninety days to get an appointment this is the case and despite the fact of the federal law mandates the benefits be processed within thirty days and while texas is the most extreme case delays are common all across the country even in my home state so congress has provided three hundred million dollars in additional administrative funds as part of the recovery act thanks to congress where rosa de lauro but there was no maintenance of effort tied to the funds or requirement that states continue to spend what they were spending and not just use federal money to to facilitate cut so in some states the funding provided much needed relief at other states the funds delayed staffing cuts and in other cases the money was people right now need help and people are not getting these benefits there are people who are unable to pay their rents or the electric bills or buy clothes for their kids so i guess we need to look to the future i guess my question would meeting the work participation rates because those along with states believe that they have to meet the work participation rates they are going to continue to make it difficult for people to get onto the rolls who cannot meet those rates is a different time and to think about that differently and i don't think you have to eliminate a focus on work to do that but i think that's an important piece the other is i think we need to look at whether or not the maintenance of at the twenty percent funding requirement in r is constraining states from being able to access those funds so that we have heard that states just don't have the money to come up with the match so we have been working with foundations who have been willing to try and sort of figure out whether they can help states to leverage to bring those so i think that's another thing is looking about in a very short term whether there is a way to do that the other thing i think that we could do is to use the increase in snap to really trying to encourage states can identify the families who are in dire straits and whether you can do something to really encourage families to take advantage of those the other thing is the same thing on the unemployment insurance what has happened is that there are many work is a part of most people's lives on hand if it is no longer an issue that people are not working or haven't worked but only half of the people who have worked and who may be eligible are applying for unemployment insurance so we may need to be doing some outreach to get more people to take advantage of those benefits and then the other thing is i do think the additional relief to states to help them to meet the demand in moron and ministry to level with some of the with some of the maintenance of effort ever that were left out i think is an important step that will help you know states just want to think about more people i mean they're just they're so stretched with having to do that so i think we need to make it feasible for them to do that i just want to echo a little bit the state of by the notion that we're not going to help people who are desperately in need because we have a budget crisis i think as i said so we have to respond well it wouldn't have enough to eat people are hungry in this country and we should be ashamed and so i guess i get the deficit stuff and i the food stamp program which is responding appropriately and you even increase the program people get more money from food stamps the unemployment insurance program which responding probably we're now spending something like seven billion dollars a month on food stamps and we dramatically expanded food stamps or you have and now the match benefit is fifty three weeks we entice the states to give more than if dollars we dramatically expanded the reimbursement rate for medicaid the congress i don't know what else you could do you could do more of the same suggestion about the about the ten percent matching emergency fund i think is a good idea but the congress has already done a lot so those two considerations give some people pause about how much more the congress should do well i just conclude by saying i think what the congress needs to do is to make sure that there is a safety net and that the safety net works and i think what we're hearing today is that notwithstanding good intentions there are some holes in the safety net that we need to deal with and these are real people not statistics not abstractions and i appreciate all your testimony thank you thank you mr chairman and thank you congresswoman moore for for hosting this and calling this hearing together and i've appreciated very much your testimony the stories are obviously very very compelling and i have one of my own and we heard the statistics but and i don't need to repeat them but this november i held around table event with social service agencies in a community that's experiencing eighteen percent plus unemployment in my district just to hear how they are dealing with the downturn and how i could help as we look at legislative solutions even with the incredible resources going toward the snap program as a result of the recovery act too many in my district are still going hungry just simply to  reiterate what congressman mcgovern has said i was overwhelmed by the number of agencies and nonprofits that reported hunger as the number one problem facing their client as one example of many at the last are as house in lawrence they distribute eight tons of food each week up from three and a half times this time last year and even that's too much and is still not enough so clearly in spite of our best efforts hunger is a tremendous problem in this country but i have a slightly different question that goes to more structural issue looking forward and that has to do with acid limitations in our souls in our programs our safety net programs through categories that through categor eligibility and some acid exemptions we have addressed some but not all of the asset limits in the food assistance programs but not in a very uniform way among federal anti poverty anti poverty programs more broadly assets are treated very differently creating a lowest common denominator effect for low income families who may depend on more than one federal program to survive the downturn these low asset limits require low income families to spend down any modest savings including retirement savings they may have before they receive assistance this is in my view this is a penny wise but pound pound foolish strategy that ultimately cost the federal government more by forcing families perhaps facing temporary needs to permanently lose the assets they would that would help them once again again escape from poverty once the economy in improves and to deal with that in a narrow context i will be introducing a bill in january to address asset limits and i and peg them to inflation to begin to raise the lowest common denominator bar my question though to all of you is will families entering poverty as a result of the downturn be able to return to their former status once the economy recovers or are we seeing a new generation entering chronic poverty the recovery is having a larger impact on lower middle income families that many are still struggling what what impact would higher asset limits have had on helping some families on the cusp of long term poverty of way that i think again this is probably an issue where there are there are different fact parts of the spectrum so the families that have been successful in moving into the labor market have had success in creating their incomes i think that building up the assets is what they'd all like to do and would help them i think for people at the bottom it wouldn't but i think the other end would help them as much but i think that the simplification across programs is just a smart way to do business for governments it will save time and resources that can be used in other ways as far as the sort of are we said what are the long terms i think we need to acknowledge that the unemployment rate is going to be high for some periods of time and i know there is you know ron sort of worries that you know we're going to move away from this focus on work but i think if we think more about long term opportunity it is a perfect time for people on tanach or on other programs to take advantage of education and we need to make that more of a more viable opportunity for them and so i think that yes i when concerned of the long term but i also think there are things we can do to fix some of the constraints that would allow people to use some of this time to just create a better future for themselves and we should do that with anybody else like to respond  the program we have a separate one for the low income families and i think that there's been a real problem with families being able to have one stop shopping for lack of a better word but what we're seeing are people applying and one state agency and the other state agency not wanting to take the information from the first aid agency because of the differences that causes a lot more administrate of costs it causes depression in going from one program to the other and i think that it would be wonderful to see one asset test for all of the different programs and recognizing that for some things we need to eliminate certain assets completely my time is  you thank you mr chairman i like to thank the panel congresswoman more for making this possible today i certainly subscribe to the idea that if we do not deal with the exploding budget deficit and the resulting and my response is to forget about what the republicans did when they were in the majority and what you have done since you were in the general it would be happy to work with you to solve the problem i would love ya to point spending which is something that neither republicans nor democrats have taken you serious promoting the tax cuts expire or i do not favor cutting spending i favor cutting spending thank you well just to make a point to people who concern themselves with the deficit that was two hundred thirty four billion dollars not  percent of the people in this nation so let's not talk about deficits out of both sides of our mouth let's talk about a current crisis that we have i'll just give you an example from my state of connecticut twenty four percent increase in the use of this year fifty five thousand people it's risen by fifty five thousand people went from two hundred thirty one thousand to two hundred sixty thousand the unemployment rate in the state of connecticut went from four point nine percent to nine point eight percent in less than eighteen months now the numbers have consequences because the numbers reflect people's  wages health care no ability to take care of what people view as their responsibility is taking care of their families and one of the things has always been very interesting to me is listening to people who would say that if we extend unemployment benefits and if we provide training and we provide food stamps that in fact people will stop looking for a job that is the way that individuals are regard that's how they are demean when fundamental to most human beings and their self description is about their job and what they do and what contribution they make to society and their wherewithal so that they can take care of the economic security of their family and if we want to live in a world of numbers and statistics and refuse to look at the plight of the people behind those numbers and statistics then we're going down the wrong road whomever serves here democrats or republican this nation is in a crisis do office hours every week look in people's eyes with the fear that they have that they can't make it and there isn't anybody out there to support them we all do pretty well in this institution and all of the panel members as well we take good care of ourselves but they don't have anywhere to turn and frankly when they turn here in the last several years there's been a deaf ear well i hope to god that our ears are open in this administration and that we are going to do something about this and mr chairman if you give me a second to ask a couple questions i would do it i didn't intend to make a speech but i will be day and excuse me if we don't call the shots for what they are right now and what's happening in this country let me ask about refundable tax credits which and i don't know if it's been discussed because i wasn't here for the whole hearing child tax credit in particular is available to families with earnings of at least three thousand addresses sort of what i talked about of having sort of people at the top and the bottom again so many families end up on tanna for end up on our work or who have lost their job for whatever reason and we need to be able to figure out how do we support all families who work so i think it is a reality that not everybody can work all the time jobs for lots of different reasons and so i think really trying to figure out ways to provide more support is a good idea and i think making that available to what should we move in that direction it is refundable that you have to have an income to get it so what would what do you what would happen to those families that that are that they have lost it so is there anything that you would  going back to what my colleagues said here not one single vote from the minority not one and that's a story to be told to people whose livelihoods these folks purport to represent not one single person who believes in that effort i'd be happy to yield if i have the time that is typically a program you know like a f d c there is available to women single women and children and unemployment insurance is typically available to men we've seen a lot of men lose construction jobs and those kinds of jobs or recover but unemployment insurance and women are very heavily employed in as hotel workers restaurants and not covered by unemployment insurance do you see any difficulty or have any recommendations for us with respect to the disparity in in the safety net for those people for men who are covered by unemployment insurance and women who despite their work efforts are not on average they don't accumulate the amount of time they need and especially the reason that they leave their jobs i would say the number one donna may have more information but several years ago the number one reason that people did not qualify for unemployment was not that they didn't earn enough money and enough quarters but they voluntarily left their job so you may want to look at that or the way they want to look at that but that's always been a criteria i'm just talking about pink collar jobs where women can't get i'm telling unemployment the reason that they often are not covered is not that they're in pink collar jobs they make plenty of money to meet the quarter requirement in the dollar requirement they often have voluntary separation from their jobs yes thank you thank you i thank the chairman at the panel one of the one of the concerns i have somebody who spent fourteen years in local government is that when we talk about the safety of course of understandably been talking a lot of federal programs but i'm worried about the fraying of the safety net at the state local level if you look at what's happening in state after state to their respective budgets their somewhere north of four hundred billion dollars in accumulated budget gaps that by the constitution or by statute must be closed that has a direct effect and i wonder whether the panel might want to o point you braises important part of why the center has been advocating for one of the policies that we think is most important in the short term is to extend fiscal relief to states because the y have a huge role and they do have to balance their budgets if they do not have additional resources to help them during these difficult economic times what we have been talking about today is going to get much worse for many polled by the three members of minority party in the other body who were willing to negotiate but the price of their support was that we substituted the middle class for those two provisions without coming then they are going to be proposing both tax increases and cuts in their budget so critical i mean we estimate that if there is not additional stimulus that you could have a lo one hundred thousand jobs because again if they don't get the money they have to close their budget gaps and they will cut and they well and they will have to do that and they will do it quickly a question my time is running out i was very heartened to hear you say that in your paper a sense you've gone to brookings leaving here you call for a combination of spending cuts and tax increases obviously a sentiment not shared a ranking member i'm islamist i wonder just having worked up here is it your impression that members of the minority party would in fact ever be ready to support that proposition that that is to say be willing into any circumstances to in fact vote for revenue increases that involve new taxes i know i'm not a fortune teller i'm a scholar i don't know what they will do but we will not get a that you are an intellectual and and you're dealing with the subject straightforwardly i think i assume you would agree that those who take a pledge a priority that no matter what no matter what i will never ever ever vote for any kind  of tax increase or anything that smells looks or walks or quacks like a tax increase frankly precludes an honest discussion about that issue if i've already sold my soul and my vote in advance look i'm a republican i was loyal staff why the benefits effect economic growth continuing are expanding the benefits belong in job creation legislation it does and the reason why it does is that there is a multiplier effect basically what happens is that particularly in food stamps t n f unemployment insurance those benefits are very well targeted they are targeted to people who are going to spend what they get they don't have the extra resources not to spend them so basically what happens in using food stamps as an example is that when somebody goes to the store to buy it do to buy food basically what you have done is you create this chain where the store needs to hire people to be able to serve you the disperse the suppliers stay in business because they need to supply the food that you're going to buy i mean the distributors and then the suppliers who actually are producing the food so there is a whole chain of people who benefit from that money that is going to food stamp recipients or people who are going to spend it in the economy on the other hand while there is some benefit from tax increases they're just not well targeted some of it a replacement for things that would have happened anyway and there's no guarantee that it ends up actually being spent in the same way that money is where very well targeted so it is this multiplier effect of what happens when you target benefits and there are jobs that are  that well i would just add that the money that has been invested in south carolina through food stamps through unemployment is money that is able as as dr betty said it's money that allows businesses to exist hire new employees and stays in our  economy i can say that without the additional infusion of federal dollars in our state while we're facing incredibly hard times we would see a much higher unemployment right and more people in need so in fact your you communities can't really see you will fail without the increase in the benefits we're seeing these benefits concluded at the end absolutely i think that right now is our status formulating a budget and we're looking at everybody keeps talking about the cliff when the federal dollars and everybody is trying to figure out how are they going to do how are they going to project budgeting for the next year and while we're already looking at additional budget cuts because of the weak khana me there's no question that if there's going to be a ripple effect if there are not additional dollars that are appropriated and sent through fiscal relief to the states and there's no question that that will more than likely have a disparate impact on safety net programs on the lower income  what we will see is massive layoffs in education because states will have to make a determination of whether to deal with health care and laying people off or where to go to deal with the cause there so we will see that there will be massive again layoffs of teachers that are so that's why that's my view relief to the states it's critically important i make a final comment and i didn't get involved in the  to women and what they do get to with the in their retirement years with regard to social security yes women have have had in the past responsibilities as caregivers for children or for elderly parents and yes it's a voluntary separation if there is anybody home to take care of your kid on the other hand what we don't do is to make sure that women are in the same exact jobs of as men as we are in this body we get paid the same amount of money not the case for women whether they're bus drivers waitresses engineers news anchors college professors get paid seventy five or seventy seven cents on the dollar that has an enormous impact on what happens them as they're making their way through their lives and the loss of income but the and credible effect it has on their retirement as well which is why one of the highest cohorts of people in poverty today are women over  unemployment compensation program if you are eligible for unemployment compensation if you've worked if you are if you make a certain the child tax credit if you if you make a certain amount of money you're treated very differently than if you are just drop dead poor and have no no skills so with respect to the reauthorization of tan if i do think dr hansen's you you point out very clearly in your testimony that that there is a lag time which i think could be very deadly for some people when i consider the possible blizzard that's going on in my area right now to think about you know someone requiring you to do a thirty day work search before you can access any benefits or the administrative barriers that are put in front of you because the state is indicated is terrified of the sanctions that they may receive or the stigma of receiving ten of funds versus rushing down to get your unemployment and even being able to  unemployment line quite frankly making it very convenient for you and there is a disparity in in men and women who qualify for unemployment compensation and so it occurs to me that while we may not abandon the work based program as many of you have already indicated it's going to be a long time before we have full employment and that is only five percent unemployment nationwide so had better look at reauthorizing can i have with the recognition that we need to reduce some of the strictures for people getting aid when they need it thank you so very much for your appearance and thank you so very much have definitely benefited from this here and we appreciate once again your purpose for causing with me as you know this concern the member who wishes and does not have the opportunity to submit questions may have seven days to submit questions for