A range of programs and tax expenditures assist individuals and families. Programs under the jurisdiction of the Subcommittee on Human Resources can roughly be grouped under three missions for children and working-age adults: providing income support, providing child care, and providing child welfare services. Other key programs address other needs of these households, such as Medicaid, housing, nutrition assistance, and Workforce Investment Act (WIA) employment and training programs. These programs fall under the jurisdiction of four other House committees. In addition, a wide array of tax expenditures assist individuals and families in these areas. Figure 1 shows an illustrative set of programs and tax expenditures. ■ Dependent Cre Tx Credit ■ Promoting Safe nd Sable Fmillie■ Workforce Invetment Act progr (WIA) ■ Erned Income Tx Credit (EITC) ■ SupplementSecrity Income (SSI) Various federal agencies are responsible for the oversight of these programs and tax expenditures, as shown in figure 2. In addition, while the federal government is involved in some aspects of the design and funding of each of these supports, state governments are sometimes responsible for directly administering the benefits and services. For example, while SSI is directly administered by federal employees within the Social Security Administration, UI, TANF, subsidized child care, and various other programs are overseen by state governments and directly administered by state and, in some cases, local government employees as well as by nonprofit and for-profit entities. Across some of the programs and tax expenditures under the jurisdiction of the Subcommittee and Committee, key characteristics such as the population eligible for each and funding design vary. (See table 1.) For example, individuals and families are sometimes eligible for specific federal tax expenditures based on their employment or family-related circumstances, such as with an adoption. Further, SSI and TANF both provide monthly cash benefits to low-income people, but for SSI, individuals must be aged, blind, or disabled, and for TANF, a family must include dependent children. In terms of funding design, SSI benefits and the tax expenditures are provided to all who apply and meet eligibility requirements. So too is the case with the EITC, which has a refundable portion for those without enough income to owe income taxes. Similarly, federal funding for monthly payments to support children in foster care, adoption, and kinship guardianship placements is also not capped and is dependent on the number of children eligible for such assistance. On the other hand, the federal funding level is fixed for programs such as TANF and subsidized child care and does not increase with the numbers of eligible people who apply. With this array of human services programs, a family and its members may receive benefits or services from one or more of these programs. Interactions between the programs vary, and in some cases, the programs are specifically designed to provide multiple sources of support for individuals and families. For example, a low-income family may be eligible for and receive income support through TANF, EITC, and Child Support Enforcement, as well as subsidized child care assistance. However, at the same time, another family may be eligible for only one of those supports, such as EITC, due to income or other eligibility requirements. Also due to varying eligibility criteria, a family may have several members who are receiving income support through TANF while another member receives such support through SSI. While these programs provide important supports and services to millions of households each year, they comprise a patchwork of support developed over time and under different circumstances. Some programs were begun under the original Social Security Act passed in 1935 and have evolved over time. Congress has added other programs to meet emerging needs. For example, to encourage more low-income women to move into the workforce, Congress created child care subsidy programs designed to support parents’ work efforts. Today, our work has shown this patchwork of programs to be too fragmented and overly complex—for clients to navigate, for program operators to administer efficiently, and for program managers and policymakers to assess program performance. People seeking aid often must visit multiple offices and provide the same information numerous times. The routes by which people access services varies by program, state, and sometimes locality, and can be cumbersome for those seeking aid from more than one program. Low-income individuals and families often receive aid from multiple programs to meet their income support, health, nutrition, employment and training, and housing needs. Typically, clients may access several programs through one office that administers TANF, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Medicaid. However, clients may need visits to other offices to apply for housing assistance and SSI, while they must file a tax return with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for the EITC. Typically, clients have to provide the same basic information and required documentation multiple times if they are trying to access more than one program. Some states and localities have moved toward more use of call centers and online applications, though this varies among the programs and states. The complexity and variation in eligibility and other rules and requirements among the programs have contributed to time-consuming and duplicative administrative processes that are inefficient and add to overall costs. Separate eligibility processes for some programs result in considerable duplication of administrative activities because caseworkers in different offices collect and document much of the same personal and financial information. Even when programs are administered jointly, each has its own eligibility rules and reporting requirements, limiting the extent to which joint administration reduces administration costs. In our previous work, state and local officials reported that this complicated the work required of caseworkers to determine eligibility and also contributed to errors. Excessive time spent working through complex procedures can consume resources and diminish staffs’ ability to focus on other activities that might improve service quality or improve program integrity. In addition, other complex processes occur to meet federal cost allocation requirements. For example, we heard from some local staff that they track the amount of time they spend working on different programs and report this information to financial managers. Local financial managers then determine what portion of staffs’ time is defined as administrative costs in each of the programs and charge the programs appropriately. Providing similar services through separate programs can lead to additional inefficiencies. We recently reported on the potential overlap and duplication in employment and training programs. Specifically, we found that TANF, Workforce Investment Act Adult (WIA Adult), and Employment Service (ES) programs often maintain separate administrative structures to provide some of the same services, such as job search assistance, to low-income individuals. Some individuals may be receiving similar services from each program, although the extent to which this is occurring is not known. We recommended that Labor and HHS disseminate information on state efforts to consolidate administrative structures and colocate services. Both agencies agreed with our recommendation and we will follow up on their efforts in the future. While we have not reviewed all of the accountability measures for the relevant programs, we have identified some information gaps that hinder oversight of some programs. For example, our work on the TANF program has shown that work participation rates—a key performance measure for TANF, as currently measured and reported, do not appear to be achieving the intended purpose of encouraging states to engage specified proportions of TANF adult recipients in work activities. In addition, although states have shifted a large share of their TANF funds from cash assistance to other programs, supports, and services such as child care subsidies and child welfare, existing oversight mechanisms continue to focus on cash assistance. As a result, there are gaps in the information available at the federal level on how many families received TANF services and on how states have used funds to meet TANF goals. While a key feature of the TANF program is flexibility in the use of federal funds, this flexibility must be balanced with mechanisms to ensure state programs are held accountable for meeting program goals. Information gaps hinder decision makers in considering the success of TANF and what trade-offs might be involved in making any possible changes to TANF through the reauthorization process. In addition, in our work on potential duplication of TANF and WIA, we noted that lack of data hindered our ability to assess the extent to which individuals may have received services from both programs. We also identified information gaps that make it difficult to assess fully the federal role in supporting child care assistance for families. Such an assessment is also complicated by the use of tax expenditures in supporting families’ child care needs. With the flexibility allowed under TANF, states have used a significant portion of their TANF funds to augment their child care subsidy programs. However, states do not need to report on the numbers or types of families provided TANF-funded child care, leaving an incomplete picture of the numbers of children receiving federally-funded child care subsidies, which would be useful information for policymakers. In addition, because tax expenditures do not compete overtly with other priorities in the annual budget process, policymakers do not typically consider tax expenditures along with other programs when making budgetary and programmatic decisions. Nevertheless, considerable resources are provided to families through the Dependent Care Tax Credit for their child care and other dependent care needs. A more complete picture of the federal role in child care subsidies and who benefits would include tax expenditure information. We identified the importance of paying more attention to tax expenditures in our recent work on opportunities to reduce duplication in federal government programs. The need for improving the administration of these programs has been voiced recurrently for the past several decades. Stretching as far back as the 1960s, studies and reports have called for changes to human service programs, and we issued several reports during the 1980s that focused on welfare simplification. Over the years, Congress has taken many steps to simplify programs and procedures.