i'm late and for those of you who came to testify i apologize for us moving this back and our leadership is about to roll out a health care bill  here we've been hearing that for a long time and they called what they called a mandatory caucus low for democrats i don't know what that means because we don't line up very well but we're here today to start a new conversation about the role of tanna in providing assistance to struggling families especially during this time of great hardship for many americans the starting point is this question do poor children deserve our help as their parents struggled to find or prepare themselves for employment and i believe that the majority of americans would say yes to that question it may therefore come as unwelcome news to them that only twenty two percent for children receive assistance from the can a program of temporary assistance for needy families program in this country furthermore they be concerned here that seems far less responsive the growing need than any other safety net programs such as food stamps or unemployment insurance if you look at that graph there the top line is food stamps and you can see it's going up and then you can see unemployment is going up the yellow line the flat line at the bottom is a case load nationally in canada and very little has happened since the recession started in november two thousand and seven while the other programs obviously have been going up the number of households receiving food stamps which are now recession we're likely to hear today a host of reasons for this very poor low participation rate but i believe the main underlying causes the presumption that declining caseload is always a measure of success specific features of t for graham such as the case load reduction credit not to mention over a decade of rhetoric from every level of government is driven this contention into the human consciousness we all want to end up floats to go down because more parents working moving  into jobs a good idea but if the case loads go down or stay flat even as unemployment and poverty go up that should never be anyone's definition of success if it is we might as well completely eliminate th program right now we would then have a case sort of zero would be perfect success expecting a program for needy families to respond to a huge increase in needy families should be a bipartisan expectation nevertheless i know some of my colleagues on the other side of the may be tempted to say that helping more families through canada will reduce the program's emphasis on work or for the exact opposite is true there are six people out there looking for every job in this country and providing temporary assistance to more families in great need will also mean gauging more parents and work related activities services the alternative is to continue to ignore these families as they struggle to create a better life for their families and into the recovery act and we've now got some more money going into it shortly we hope which provides states money to respond to the rising needed assistance and to establish and expand subsidize employment  twenty three states are already using the contingency fund money for the sandwich made of programs of employment a broader discussion is needed and how other features of the tanah program affect this issue hopefully this hearing will protecting lower income families while fighting global warming democrat colleagues discussed their plan to create the largest welfare program in american history by called energy policy found as one of the energy passed the house passed energy tax hike thankfully has died in the senate so two and a half million more jobs disappeared our second hearing on democrats two thousand once to me this law was in april it was a bill promising to create three point seven million jobs since it was all about jobs jobs jobs as the speaker said johnson the number of unemployed workers is sword twenty one percent a record sixteen million a third hearing last year was a new eight billion dollar entitlement program their colleagues stuff into their trillion dollar health bill and unprecedented one point six million people gave up trying to find a job and dropped out of the labor force for tara last september was on foster care and adoption change where the task presumably foster and adopt mostly because they don't want to spend more money on their own washington fix that so now democrats propose billions more in welfare funds for states and making that money one hundred percent federally funded because unlike states that actually must balance budgets washington can spend any amount on anything provided we called it emergency as we'll hear from robert rector of the heritage foundation there are two real goals here first accelerating spending on welfare in the name stimulus check and repeal successful one nine hundred ninety six welfare reforms which lead to less welfare dependents and more work and earning chairman americans want to work together to solve problems not cause more problems sort of bribing states to enter into the record the letter from the national governors conference imploring the congress to extend the emergency agencies fund they are using the money and i think and it's not just republicans or democrats but then i think even haley we are witnessing dramatic results from these changes including that development of innovative subsidized employment programs that are giving thousands of out of work parents what they most want and need a job unfortunately unemployment remains high as  extension and makes important movements for the emergency fund based on the experience of the past year the six tension will provide a powerful tool for states to create jobs and reduce hardship on till they come to me  and the percentage for single mothers that did not work and did not receive assistance from sixteen to thirty five percent last year the president signed the recovery act which included significant legislat term needs and subsidized employment to help families during an economic downturn today forty one states and twelve tribes have received emergency funds for a wide range of programs just to highlight a few that might be of interest to the subcommittee michigan category from a job creation perspective is subsidized employment more than eighteen thousand jobs have been established and by the end of the fiscal year this number could grow to one hundred twenty thousand making it the most expensive of subsidized employment in the history of the tannic program san francisco's subsidized employment program has been expanding due to the paucity of response from potential employers and employees its original goal of one thousand placements last penny based the two thousand demonstration of proven and promising strategies to help fathers and mothers but see both the labor force an aspirant i appreciate this upcoming work in supporting possible fatherhood efforts and particularly the leadership of recession and have states maintain critical services but their job is not finished so many people remain out of work and too many families struggle to make ends i look forward to working with the subcommittee to ensure that states can throughout our society at many levels of government the opportunity to us these people with government funding are tax credits and these are just opportunities for us to got the new to serve the most vulnerable members of our society so who's to say how much is enough is anybody to say how much is enough well i think together the congress and the administration can work towards understanding the situation so that we can develop programs that really meet the needs of  comprehensive programs in terms of leader my understanding is that the increase that he's talking about largely is increased spending on medicaid medicaid funding is really the big item that has increased over the  in income limited people for medicaid that's almost half the money goes to the medical situation and i think that's would be good to have confirmation from the department and i was fairly i think about to withhold my questions mr chairman and members of the subcommittee thank you for inviting me here today to discuss our work on the tandem program and its assistance to low income families my remarks are based on our g a o report that is released today i would like to talk about four findings from this report first we studied the significant decline in the tanned if cash assistance caseload from one nine hundred ninety five the year before welfare reform to two thousand and five the most recent year for which we had data solid line on this graphic pics the number of families receiving cash assistance we found that a small part about thirteen percent of the decline occurred because your families were eligible for cash assistance either because of changes to eligibility rules or because of increased family incomes which resulted from the strong economy in hundred ninety s tanda focus on work increases in the minimum wage and other factors a much larger share of the caseload declined eighty seven percent overall resulted from a decline in the number of eligible families who participated in the program and these you can see in the shaded area in the graphic in fact well eighty four percent of eligible families received cash assistance in one thousand nine hundred five only forty percent did in two thousand and five this drop likely results from families responses to changes in state welfare programs such as mandatory work activities time limits sanctions and diversion strategies and the value of cash benefits second we asked what if the participation rate of eligible families was the same in two thousand and five as it was in one nine hundred ninety five that is what if the rate was eighty four percent instead of forty percent we found that if this were the case eight hundred thousand fewer children would be in extreme poverty with incomes below half the federal poverty level further an estimated three point three million families would gain tanna benefits and would experience an increase in their net income however this increase would not significantly change the number of children in poverty overall in part because ten the benefits are typically too low to raise the incomes of participating families above poverty third we compare the characteristics of families participating in tandem cash assistance in two thousand five to those eligible but not participating that year and we found that although all eligible families had low incomes those not participating in tennis generally worked more had relatively higher incomes and were less likely to receive other public support however we did identify a subgroup of eligible nonparticipating families who did not work or receive supplemental security income benefits these families were more disadvantaged with lower incomes than families participating in can f and as shown on the graphic before you is subgroup accounted for eleven percent all eligible families in two thousand five or about seven hundred thirty two thousand family  board we gather information on the changes twenty one states were experiencing in case loads and cancer free lated spending in the current recession in twelve of these twenty one states the number of families receiving cash assistance increased between june two thousand and eight in june two thousand and nine and we have are changes in caseload varied widely by state for example in one state the caseload increased by twenty two percent while in another it decreased by nine percent further we found no clear association between the change in tandem case loads in the state and unemployment rates in this time frame unemployment is one of many factors that may affect the state's caseload including the civic thank you including specific t n f program characteristics in the recession states reported drawing on their reserves funds can contingency funds which are now depleted as well as the emergency contingency fund created by the recovery act since the time of our state review conditions have continued to deteriorate and the full effect of changes in the economic climate on tant of cash assistance programs is unknown this concludes my prepared statement i would be happy to answer any questions you or other members of the subcommittee may thank you very much mr sikes i would ask you if you would yield for a second  for five minutes your whole statement will be in the record they would ever you like thank you so much mr chairman it is certainly my privilege to be here with this disc very distinguished panel and i will leave them my testimony as you mentioned in full should be entered into the record and i also like to ask your consent unanimous consent to put any other materials that i may refer to in the record as well ok thank you you know we're here today talking about the samyn is a sion of poverty i think you know many of you already know the history of welfare reform and i can say that i was at the scene of the crime in wisconsin when we ended welfare is we knew it critics of the a f d c program really talked about all the welfare queens that were on welfare the moral hazard involved in giving aid to people who were not working others a talked about how we were trapping people into a cycle of poverty by not forcing them to work and is some even went as far as to say we're driving males away from the home and alienating male participation in the household and one of the real clear focuses of indeed welfare was that was to declare that only work  benefits families that only work big it's work and they were very critical of education and training programs in which many women were engaged and indeed on the day we passed welfare reform in wisconsin ten thousand women across the state of wisconsin were thrown out of their educational programs even high school programs the promise of tanev of course was the in the entitlement at the block grant the funds locking in the maintenance of effort giving states flexibility which in the case of concent in the first year of those contracts it up with about eighteen million dollars of bonuses that were paid to c privatized welfare resisted it rewarded states and created a very perverse incentives to decrease the rolls it or severely restricted education and training and you will hear testimony here today mr chairman about how there is a tremendous increase in the snap program the food stamp program and even in this very harsh recession where we see childhood poverty excel or rating where we rescued states from the increase in medicaid and poor people that that the tennis rolls have remained flat and they've remained flat because in fact this program is not responsive to a recessionary problem so there are a few things that i want to emphasize number one i think when we consider reauthorization we should look very carefully at a few things first of all we have to look very carefully at the education and training programs here we're changing our academy focusing on energy jobs jobs of the twenty first century and the kinds of jobs that women were able to get  jobs that were temporary jobs the kinds of pink collar jobs and women always get they certainly were not jobs that were sustaining in any way so we should work very very hard to reauthorize  tan of program that will focus on eliminating poverty rather than just kicking women off the rolls at providing them with experiences that will give them a career ladder we should also  look at increasing the maintenance of effort both on the federal level and the state level the one thousand nine hundred six levels certainly is we can see from our experience have not been enough well to look at child care which is this bottomless pit of need there are many states that don't even keep waiting lists but but this is an area where we are forcing women into the workforce and not necessarily providing them with safe childcare we should reauthorize the tennis program and guarantee women childcare we also need to make sure that victims of domestic violence that states are required to provide options to women who face domestic violence and that there ought to be programming to help them escape domestic violence treatment not just the option of returning to their abusers i can see that my time is waning but i do want to point out that i very very much support many of the recommendations that have been made by the center for law and social policy also known as collapsed for body and i feel bad about giving you five minutes but i'm not going to give you two guys because you're local we'll get you back out another day so mr sikes who is the chairperson for the national association of state of tenn areas the critical need to extend and replenish the tanach emergency contingency fund try to answer a bit your question about has to have been responsive to the recession and is the question premature and how we should measure performance and finally states concerns with postponing a full reauthorization discussion this year emergency contingency plan was the right response at the right time and i will tell you that my state when the final quarter and september thirtieth of this year is up will access all one point two billion dollars available to us under both the regular and emerged be contingency fund great amount of that in fact a large amount of that is going to subsidized employment and one time payment to caseload reimbursement some have been concerned about the slower start and accessing these funds but candidly a start up in a new program such as this is helpful as h h s was guidance takes the time to come forward and program rules taking time to assimilate and states that have to put up twenty percent funding of their own at a time of huge deficits in order to access the fund i will cite to you that subsidized point particularly take startup time when we are trying to build five thousand slots in new york subsidize jobs at a time when our employment rate is almost ten percent we have put great infrastructure in place and i think there's a sense that why can't we wait till later for the c f to be replenished well none of our placements are for less than ninety days so in fact we will have to begin to dismantle some of these programs as of july first discouraging employers further and frankly the subsidized employment reinforces the work message at a time when when dollars are scarce and jobs are scarce we simply need an extension we were very disappointed that the action that was taken on procedural grounds in the senate two days ago mr mcdermott frankly we know un the administration both have proposals to it then the fine states are in desperate need of this money we spend it wisely we'll track it wisely we're really trying to help people through a difficult time the second point you've asked is how can it has responded to this recession let me say clearly that states if there is indeed a problem what to study it and want to know more about it we wan see further research and we want to help craft a solution if necessary but we ask three things these don't rush to judgment on access problems please don't assume that states are limiting access and please don't undermine the core message of tennis being work vocus it's a false choice because we can have both strong work rules and program access i can tell you in my state that when families provide necessary documentation comply with the rules of the program they get benefit i also want to tell you that i would posit at least this answered the existence of extended unemployment insurance benefits the supplemental nutrition assistance program soaring child support collections many of them for people previously provide a buffer before assistance is often needed from the tanach program the g a o report today shows the tanach can respond in many ways beyond offering permanent assistance clients themselves are often not seeking ongoing assistance as indicated by the explosiveness of onetime payments transactions to help with utility cost preventive action repair car secure transportation provide stopgap childcare and numerous other forms of help clients also want jobs help finding them or subsidized employment opportunities many clients would get very small benefit from the program and the transaction costs of navigating the program rules simply don't appeal to them when they have other avenues available others simply do not want to comply with work requirement the most important point i want to make is that i think can if is a lagging indicator of a recession i think we are too early in asking the question about its responsiveness i think we expect in the next twelve to twenty four months to see the caseload continue to grow as unemployment benefits begin to expire even though other programs will remain available i think that we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg so i would hope we would look at some of these things not create invalid measures into we have a little maturation of the process finally i'll also say as my time's waning that we were very disappointed frankly as state that we're not having a full reauthorization discussion this year because it's only in that context that we can answer some of the questions that you  your plates are pulled but their issues around town up including the erosion of the real dollar value of the block grant flexibility that has been greatly taken away program focus on rules that make it difficult to new done realistic ninety percent t parent work rates and i could go on and on but i won't because in my time sending i'm happy to take any questions you may have thank you very much for your testimony testimony will be in the record mr adelman and mr rector i would ask you three minutes welfare caseload actually fell in twenty states in two thousand and eight and it seems to me that that's just something wrong with that picture when we're in the middle of a recession this is about women and children about women and children and women and that welfare rolls are now down from the peak in nine hundred ninety four from about fourteen million to under four million people that's one in the third percent of the population of this country that's only a tenth of the number of people who are counted as poor in this country of course some of those are elderly and so on but still it's a tiny fraction  in nine hundred ninety one while percent of poor women in this country had no job and no welfare it's now thirty four percent and at the same time we've seen really a very disturbing increase in extreme poverty poverty below half the poverty line which is now up to seventeen point one million people in again it's very disproportionately families headed by single mothers and disproportionately people people of color so that's what we need to be looking at to me as a lawyer that's a race that's a low quarter that speaks for itself and we need to get and look at every state in wyoming in two thousand and eight they were down to two hundred eighty one family the entire state who are receiving welfare again what what is it about that picture we need to know about that but it's it's very troubling we have ten states that have  i'm sorry six states that have under ten percent were children in their states on welfare again very troubling we have fifty one stories to look at because this is a block grant some of them are good and some of them are very disturbing in terms of what i just said what the too many states are doing and it is state by state we need to look at are not letting people on in the first place forty two states have rules that discourage enrollment sanctioning people off twenty two states use a full family sanction for the first offense time limits increasing effect as time passes more and more families hit by them seventeen states initial time limits of under five years recession comes and we have this lack of responsiveness we need to look at this we want to pursue two ng i would suggest one is helping people get jobs and get out of poverty that's absolutely true but we need to do it right we need to do  better as ms moore said more emphasis on education and training and we need to have canada be a safety net and the conversation here is about program the sixteen point five billion dollars not nine hundred fifty billion those are other things and when we have so many women and children who are in poverty without welfare without a job we really need to figure out why that is and we need to to question you mr rector is a senior research fellow at the heritage institute the director thank you mr chairman when you're talking about increasing welfare spending it's important that you have to look at this picture holistic there are over seventy different means tested programs and if you simply look at one program in isolation you can create a image of need when in fact you have extravagant spending and the simple reality is they didn't two thousand and eleven government will spend around four hundred seventy five billion dollars on means tested assistance to low income families with children that is over thirty thousand dollars for each family with an income below two hundred percent of poverty i have spent twenty five years on the budget of welfare i cannot even begin to fathom we are all that money is going so i would think before we increase spending we ought to at least figure out where the four hundred seventy five billion is going we just heard the administration say they didn't know how much was enough but they certainly knew they wanted to spend more money and that's the way the congress operates here most of the statistics that you hear in this hearing and here today are the result of not counting almost all of that assistance hanif is only pain if cash is three percent of total spending on means tested spending on families with children so if you focus on that three percent and ignore the ninety seven percent then you can create an image of need but what we know for exist one example is a c r s has told us that if you look over the first years of reform up through to two thousand and eight every single level of single parent families showed an increase in income if you can out all their sources of income ok what if you ignore major sources of income such as income from relatives or c or food stamps or something then you can create this picture of decline similarly most of these numbers concerning hanif receipt are based on the current population survey which misses half of the taste than a caseload is just not there and then we pretend that that's some kind of valid number it simply isn't the whole point of reform was to reduce the dependence on t n f increased things such as earned income tax credit earnings support by relative support  and when you look in that holistic manner what you see is not only did single mothers advance but every category of single mothers advanced under this program in complete contrast distinction to what happened prior to reform again the simplest thing is we're going bankrupt as a nation and before we side to spend a billion here a billion there you have to have some kind of sense of how much we're spending is like going into a store and looking well i'd like that i'd like this like that and you never add up how much the whole bill is when you come to come to the checkout counter well the bill is very very large spending has increased by fifty percent over the last four years and it's almost like you say well all the other seventy means tested programs they got a