MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG
Mo. Digital News
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Mo. Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG
Mo. Digital News
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Mo. Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
JEFFERSON CITY - Like a body that keeps on twitching after it is dead, efforts to soften federal welfare reform remained a possibility in Missouri's legislature Wednesday, despite the House sponsor giving up on bringing legislation to the floor.
On a day when the House continually stalled under the threat of filibusters and series of amendments, supporters of the legislation said there is simply not enough time to debate welfare reform. The legislative session ends at 6 p.m. Friday.
"At this late date, if we took up welfare we would be on it so long that it would keep a lot of other legislation from going through," said the handler of the House legislation, Rep. Russ Gunn, D-St. Louis. "There are a lot of people who would like to do it, but we don't want to block other legislation."
Without a bill, the federal welfare reform legislation will automatically take effect. It requires welfare recipients to find work within two years and imposes a five-year lifetime limit on benefits.
Gov. Carnahan's spokesman, Chris Sifford, said no decision has been made on whether to include welfare reform in a special session.
"Right now we are focused on the appropriations decisions," Sifford said. "We will probably wait until after the end of the session to revisit other issues."
The only remaining way for welfare reform to pass is for the Senate to amend a House bill in order to include the provisions. The House would not be able to amend the bill and it would face an up-or-down vote.
The Senate author of the bill, Sen. Joe Maxwell, D-Mexico, said he is leaving that possibility open.
"I think that that would be something I would consider if there are no other options," he said. "I was really hoping the House would move on the issue, but it doesn't seem like that will happen."
Maxwell said there are about 800 families that might lose benefits because they are already receiving benefits under a plan set up by the 1994 welfare reform.
The session-long effort to implement federal welfare reform hit its first major roadblock last Wednesday when the House Budget Committee defeated the bill with a combination of Republicans and members of the Black Caucus. Despite lengthy negotiation, a reconsideration of the vote was defeated Monday when not all members of the committee were present for the vote.
After the defeat of the Senate-approved bill, House leaders drafted a substitute to the pending child support enforcement legislation that included welfare reform. However, Gunn said there were not enough votes to get that version through. If the state does not pass child support enforcement, it stands to lose millions of federal dollars.
The Senate debated the welfare bill for two days and worked out a series of compromises before approving it 33-0. Once the bill reached the House, however, it ran into strong opposition from Republicans and some members of the black caucus.
Gunn said he blames legislators for not working with the committees to iron out differences.
"The bill died and unnecessary death because people didn't do through the process," he said. "People decided they were going to hijack this legislation."