SUPPLEMENTING TANF'S WORK REQUIREMENT: A COMPROMISE

The first point to make about the Danziger et al.’s balanced and fair assessment of TANF on its 20th anniversary is that they focus largely on the work-based safety net. This fact in itself shows how much things have changed for progressives since TANF was enacted in 1996. Now nearly everyone agrees that work should be the major emphasis of the TANF program and that a major role of government is to supplement the income of low-skilled mothers who work but usually earn low wages. Since creation of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in 1975, Congress has enacted numerous pieces of legislation to strengthen the work-based safety net. The result is that low-income working families with children are eligible for SNAP (food stamps) and other nutrition benefits, the EITC, the Additional Child Tax Credit and their children are covered by Medicaid. In addition, these families are eligible for housing benefits, Head Start, state preschool programs, and day care subsidies, although not all families receive these benefits because Congress and the states do not appropriate enough money to cover all eligible families. Although there’s a gap between coverage and need, the work-based safety net still provides an impressive array of benefits to working families with children. Low-income working families with children receive more help from government than ever before—and there is bipartisan agreement that this is good policy. As I presented in Figure 1 of my original paper, these benefits cut the poverty rate among low-income working families with children, mostly headed by females, by a little less than half. Although the work rate of single mothers has fluctuated since reaching its peak in the booming economy of the 1990s, the recessions of 2001 and 2007 to 2009 temporarily lowered work rates. Still, just as would be expected from adults who are attached to the work force, the work rate among single mothers with children has tracked broader macroeconomic performance. Even when work rates decline during tough economic times, they are still higher than during the pre-welfare reform era and, equally important, poverty rates among black children and all children in female-headed families are lower. The emphasis on work from welfare reform and the work-based safety net both contribute to the increase in work and the decline in poverty over the last two decades. Danziger et al. would not necessarily disagree with this analysis, but they would argue that TANF could be greatly improved if more poor families received TANF cash benefits. Their main criticism of welfare reform is that TANF is no longer an entitlement under which everyone who meets the income and assets standards is guaranteed a cash benefit. They hold that the end of entitlement cash benefits means that the work-based safety net is “incomplete.” This criticism goes to the heart of what Republicans did with the 1996 welfare reform law. Their explicit intent was to end the entitlement, as stated flatly in Section 401 of the Social Security Act, which established the TANF program. The primary reason Republicans ended the entitlement was that they believed too many able-bodied adults were dependent on welfare. The most controversial features of their bill—the end of entitlement, the work requirements, and the sanctions—were all intended to encourage, cajole,