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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 - The battle over welfare reform is entering its most important round.
In one corner of the ring are legislators, hoping to craft a bill that will spell out how families in need will receive assistance from the state. In the other corner is the Social Services Department, struggling to understand the reforms with no guidance from the federal government.
In the meantime, about 76,000 Missouri families who depend on the programs to survive await the results.
When President Bill Clinton signed into law the welfare reform bill -- officially known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act -- he effectively wiped out the assistance program American families have depended on for decades.
The federal law eliminated the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program and has replaced it with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).
The emphasis is on temporary.
An adult can receive assistance for a maximum of 60 months throughout the person's lifetime. After two years, the recipient must be involved in a work-related activity in order to continue receiving benefits.
"We must remember that this is no longer an entitlement program," said Sen. Joe Maxwell, D-Mexico and one of the leading welfare experts in the state legislature.
Under the old AFDC program, the federal government spelled out the requirements and rules people receiving the funds had to follow. Now, the state will receive a $217 million block grant and it has to decide how to allocate the funds - so long as the state complies with the federal restrictions.
"States can have cash programs or other types," said Lynn Fallen, director of Missouri's Division of Family Services. Other programs that could be funded with the funds include employment services, job training or wage subsidies.
Everyone agrees that there are two primary goals: protect children and move people to work. Who will dictate the structures of the programs and how they will be implemented is a matter that still must be settled.
Three state senators have introduced proposals to implement welfare reform, each with a different focus. A special Senate committee has been appointed to mesh the three and come up with one welfare reform proposal.
"The goal is to come up with one comprehensive bill," said the chairman of the new committee, Sen. Harry Wiggins, D-Kansas City.
Fallen said the department hopes the legislature will leave a majority of the decisions up to the Social Services Department.
"The best provision is to have leeway and go in different directions if necessary," he said. "If they want to prescribe everything we do we lose that flexibility."
But that approach has been undermined by a recent state Supreme Court decision that stripped the legislature of power to veto administrative rules.
"Because of the decision I am sure the legislature will be more specific than they originally were," Fallen conceded.
Indeed, Maxwell said the legislature has to spell out the program's details.
"The Department of Social Services may be great at child support, but I'm not sure they understand how to create jobs," he said. "I don't think Social Services should get all the money. We need to be very specific about some aspects."
The Social Services Department seeks control of several large sums of money: the $217 million block grant from the federal government, the $125 million the state spends on AFDC programs, and additional money being set aside for day care.
There are a myriad of issues surrounding how the state can spend the money and who receives what services.
The state is required by the federal law to spend no less than 80 percent of the $125 million previously used to support AFDC on the TANF program. Fallen said he recommends spending 100 percent of the funds so that Missouri would be eligible to receive federal contingency money if the economy were to worsen.
It is still unclear if the federal government can dictate where the state spends its TANF funds.
"We don't think they can prescribe what we can do with the money," Fallen said. He said the federal government has not yet issued a determination on this aspect of the program.
For example, the federal law prohibits legal immigrants from receiving TANF funds. However, if Missouri wanted to use state money to support legal immigrants it is unclear if the state will be penalized when the next block grant assessment is made.
Sen. Roseann Bentley, R-Springfield, said the purpose of the new law was supposed to be to give states more flexibility.
"We as a state might be willing to spend more money on children," she said. "We need to spend the money the way we want."
Everyone agrees that Missouri's own version of welfare reform that was implemented in 1994 has put the state ahead of the game. But the jump start, which helped reduce Missouri's AFDC roles from 93,000 to 76,000 in the past four years, also means the next steps will be harder.
"A lot of the welfare recipients who were taken off the roles - those were the easy ones," said Sen. Jim Mathewson, D-Sedalia. "Now we have to figure out new ways of getting people to work."