The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a new initiative in July 2012, under which it would be willing to waive certain federal work participation standards under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant to permit states to experiment with "alternative and innovative strategies, policies, and procedures that are designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families." HHS announced this policy through the release of an Information Memorandum on July 12, 2012. The work participation standards are numerical performance standards that each state must meet or risk being penalized through a reduction in its block grant. These are standards that apply to the states, not directly to individuals, though they influence how states design their welfare-to-work programs and apply requirements to individual recipients. Such waivers will be the first "new" waivers to test welfare-to-work strategies in more than 15 years, since the enactment of the 1996 welfare reform law that created TANF. Some in Congress have opposed the Administration's waiver initiative. The House has twice (once in the 113 th Congress; once in the 112 th Congress) passed measures to bar HHS from moving forward with granting waivers of the TANF work participation standards. In the 113 th Congress, the House passed H.R. 890 on March 13, 2013. The bill would prevent the Administration's waiver initiative from being implemented, while also barring any future waivers of the TANF work participation standards. Thus, TANF work standards could only be changed by Congress. Senator Hatch (the ranking Republican member of the Committee on Finance) has also introduced measures in both the 113 th ( S.J.Res. 9 ) and 112 th Congress ( S.J.Res. 50 ) to block the waiver initiative. Opponents of the waiver initiative question both its legality and the process used in forwarding the initiative, and claim that granting waivers of the participation standards would weaken the work requirements. In some respects, the discussion about "waivers" is a continuation of a decades-old controversy about whether welfare-to-work efforts should emphasize quick attachment to work and working off welfare grants or whether they should focus on education and training. This report is not a legal analysis of the Secretary's authority to waive TANF work participation standards. Rather, it describes and provides context for this HHS initiative through discussing the current TANF work participation standards; the HHS initiative to waive TANF work participation standards; the history of welfare waivers; and factors that might be considered in assessing the initiative to waive the TANF work participation standards. This is not a comprehensive review of TANF or even welfare-to-work issues. For an overview of TANF, see CRS Report R40946, The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Block Grant: An Introduction , by [author name scrubbed]. For a more comprehensive discussion of welfare-to-work issues, see CRS Report R42767, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF): Welfare-to-Work Revisited , by Shannon Bopp and [author name scrubbed]. TANF is a broad-based block grant that provides funds to states, the territories, and Indian tribes to help them finance cash welfare programs for needy families with children as well as provide a wide range of other benefits and services to either ameliorate the effects of, or address the root causes of, child poverty. The basic federal block grant for the 50 states and the District of Columbia is funded at a total of $16.5 billion per year. States are required, under a provision known as the maintenance of effort (MOE) requirement, to expend from their own funds a minimum total of $10.4 billion per year in addition to federal funds on TANF or TANF-related programs. The statutory purpose of TANF is increasing state flexibility to achieve goals to 1. provide assistance to needy families so that children may be cared for in their own homes or in the homes of relatives; 2. end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage; 3. prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies and establish annual numerical goals for preventing and reducing the incidence of these pregnancies; and 4. encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families. States may use TANF funds to finance any activity "reasonably calculated" to achieve these four TANF goals. This gives states broad leeway in spending TANF funds. In general, state MOE funds can be used for these same activities (there are some technical differences in the use of federal and state funds). Cash welfare accounted for less than 30% of all TANF and MOE funds in FY2011. TANF provides states with a great deal of flexibility in designing their cash assistance programs. However, there are federal standards and requirements that apply to states with respect to providing cash assistance, including time limits and work participation standards. TANF sets minimum work participation standards that a state must meet. The standards are performance measures computed in the aggregate for each state, which require that a specified percentage of families be considered engaged in specified activities for a minimum number of hours. A state that fails to meet its work standard is at risk of being penalized through a reduction in its block grant. The TANF statute provides that 50% of all families and 90% of two-parent families included in the participation rate are required to be engaged in work. However, few states have ever faced this standard because the percentage is reduced for caseload reduction or state spending in excess of what is required under the TANF MOE. Additionally, not all families receiving cash assistance are included in the participation rate calculation, as some families do not have a "work-eligible" individual or are otherwise disregarded from the rate. Work-eligible individuals must participate in specific activities during a month for a state to count them as "engaged in work" and have the activities count toward the work participation standard. Work-eligible individuals must also participate in activities for a minimum number of hours per week in a month to be considered "engaged in work." In general, single parents with a pre-school aged child (under the age of six) must participate for at least 20 hours per week in a month; other single parents must participate at least 30 hours per week in a month. Two-parent families must participate for more hours to be counted as engaged in work. Most welfare-to-work activities are on the list of 12 activities that count toward the participation standards, including educational and rehabilitative activities. (For a listing of the twelve activities, and their definition, see Table A-1 .) However, there are limits on the ability of states to count participation in pre-employment activities such as education, rehabilitative activities, and job search toward the work standards: For work-eligible individuals age 20 and older, participation in a GED program counts only if the recipient also participates in activities more closely related to work for at least 20 hours per week. Since single mothers with pre-school children—the largest group of adult cash assistance recipients—are required to participate only 20 hours per week, states do not receive credit for engaging them in GED programs. Vocational educational training may be counted only for 12 months in a recipient's lifetime. The combination of job search and rehabilitative activities (e.g., rehabilitation from a disability, substance abuse treatment) is limited to a maximum of 12 weeks in a fiscal year. The work participation standards described above apply to states, not individual recipients. Work requirements applicable to individuals, and the financial sanctions on families with individuals who fail to comply with them, are determined by the states. States may engage recipients in activities that do not count toward the federal participation standards, require fewer hours than the federal standard, and exempt categories of recipients from work or participation in activities altogether. If granted discretion under state rules, a caseworker might determine that a federally-countable activity is unsuited to a recipient given their circumstance. For example, a state might determine that, given economic conditions, extended job search beyond the maximum 12 weeks might better serve a work-ready individual than alternative, countable activities. A caseworker might also determine that an individual would be best served by obtaining a GED or be in a rehabilitative activity (e.g., substance abuse treatment) before entering the labor market. States that allow participation in activities that cannot be counted (e.g., job search or education in excess of their time limits) do not receive credit for that participation. Depending on the circumstances in the state, lack of credit for certain types of participation or exemptions from requirements might put the state at risk of failing the work standard. Thus, though the work participation standard's counting rules do not apply directly to individual recipients they may influence how a state designs its welfare-to-work program. Though the 1996 welfare reform law created the TANF work participation standards, it was silent on whether and how states would be required to verify hours of participation that are counted to that standard. A 2005 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that some states lacked methods and systems for accurately reporting actual hours of participation. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 ( P.L. 109-171 ) required states to establish procedures to count and verify hours of reported work or engagement in activities. HHS regulations implementing this requirement required that participation in all activities be supervised, many on a daily basis. Additionally, states are required to file "work verification plans" with HHS outlining procedures to verify participation in activities. States that fail to comply with these work verification requirements are subject to a penalty of between 1% and 5% of the state's block grant. As mentioned, few jurisdictions have faced the full TANF 50% or 90% work participation standards.