Statement of Administration Policy: H.R. 4 - Personal Responsibility Act of 1995

(House)
(Shaw (R) FL and 122 cosponsors)

The Administration strongly supports enactment of real and effective welfare reform that promotes the basic values of work and responsibility. Last year, the President proposed a sweeping welfare reform package that embodied these values. It would have: established tough work requirements while providing opportunities for education, job training, and child care to working people; imposed tough child support enforcement measures; required teen mothers to live at home, stay in school, and identify their child's father; increased State flexibility and accountability; and maintained protections for children.

In all its welfare reform efforts, the Administration has emphasized the basic values of work and responsibility. The President's economic plan expanded the earned income tax credit, which cut taxes for 15 million working families to reward work over welfare. Last month, the President issued an Executive Order to crack down on Federal employees and military personnel who owe delinquent child support. In the past two years, the Administration has granted waivers from Federal rules to 25 States to try innovative new ways to promote work and responsibility.

The Administration remains committed to working with the Congress in a bipartisan way to pass bold welfare reform legislation this year. In its current form, however, the Administration opposes H.R. 4 because it falls short of the basic goals and values that most Americans want welfare reform to promote.

WORK

Republicans and Democrats alike agree that the central goal of welfare reform must be work. Unlike the legislation proposed by the Administration last year, however. H.R. 4 would not end welfare as we know it by moving people from welfare to work. The bill provides neither the resources nor the requirements for States to prepare welfare recipients to become self-supporting. H.R. 4 would not ensure that adequate child care, education, and training are provided to make work pay and give welfare recipients the skills to hold a job.

In fact, H.R. 4 would give States a perverse incentive to cut people off welfare. It would allow States to count people as "working" if they were simply cut off the welfare rolls, whether or not they had moved into a job. It also would cut back on child care both for people trying to leave welfare and for working people who are trying to stay off welfare. Finally, it would repeal the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills program, removing any real responsibility for States to provide job search assistance, education, training, and job placement to move people off welfare and into work.

In addition, H.R. 4 would eliminate the child care guarantee for families moving from welfare to work and would cap overall funding for child care at a level that could force large numbers of working families to lose child care assistance. The bill also would eliminate child care quality, health, and safety protections that are critical to children's well-being.

RESPONSIBILITY

The Administration believes that welfare reform must promote individual responsibility and responsible parenting. The toughest possible child support enforcement is central to getting people off welfare and helping them stay off. Although the Administration appreciates that many of its proposals to increase child support collection have been included in H.R. 4, the bill must be strengthened to ensure that non-custodial parents uphold their responsibility to help support their children. The .Administration supports requiring States to deny drivers' and other professional licenses to parents who refuse to pay child support. This approach has proven very successful in States that have already implemented such requirements.

Welfare reform must also send a strong message to young people that they should not get pregnant or father a child until they are ready to take responsibility for that child's future. The President has called for a national campaign against teen pregnancy that sends a clear message about abstinence and responsible parenting.

The Administration believes that minor mothers should receive benefits when they make a serious effort to be responsible and turn their lives around — by living at home, staying in school, and identifying the child's father. In contrast, H.R. 4 would automatically punish innocent children by denying benefits to those born to unwed parents under age 18 — regardless of whether the mother has made an effort to turn her life around and provide a stable environment for her child.

The Administration has serious concerns about other aspects of H.R. 4 that would:

• Jeopardize the health and nutrition of children, families, and the elderly. H.R. 4 would cut the Food Stamp program dramatically and cap spending levels. The bill would further erode the nutritional safety net by cutting funding and creating block grants to replace existing child nutrition programs, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, infants, and Children. These programs have produced significant and measurable improvements in health outcomes among the many who participate in them. H.R. 4 would eliminate national nutrition standards and the funding mechanisms that permit these programs to expand to meet the increased needs that occur in times of economic downturn. These changes would leave working Americans vulnerable to shifts in the economy and.to changes in nutrition standards that could be driven more by budgets than the health of children and mothers.
  
  
• Punish innocent children. H.R. 4 would deny cash benefits to over 150,000 disabled children. The bill also would cut off children whose parents have received welfare for more than five years, whether the parent is able to work or not. Rather than letting States decide whether to deny benefits for additional children born to a mother on welfare, H.R. 4 would impose a one-size-fits-all Federal mandate. Benefits also would be reduced for 3.3 million children whose paternity is not established, even if the mother is cooperating fully and the State bureaucracy is at fault.
  
  Many of these children could well be pushed into the child protection system. Rather than protecting these children. H.R. 4 would cut funding for foster care, adoption assistance, and child abuse prevention activities. It also would virtually eliminate Federal oversight of State child protective systems) many of which are acknowledged to be functioning very poorly. As a result, thousands of children will be at increased risk of harm. The Administration is strongly committed to providing protection to the millions of children who are abused or neglected each year and to promoting programs that prevent abuse or neglect.
  
  
• Leave States with inadequate resources. H.R. 4 would replace existing programs with capped grants to States. In contrast to the funding mechanisms now in place, funding under H.R. 4 would not adjust for a recession. Without such an adjustment, States in recession would encounter reduced revenues and increased caseloads. In such times, it is the working poor who would most likely need, but not receive, temporary assistance. Thus, individuals needing a temporary lift could be left without cash assistance, food stamps, child care, or even school lunches for their children. In addition, H.R. 4 would deny public assistance to legal immigrants — who pay taxes and contribute to their communities — thereby shifting substantial burdens to State and local taxpayers.

The Administration, therefore, opposes H.R. 4 in its current form because: it would fail to reform welfare by moving people from welfare to work; it would reduce Federal funding in ways that would impair the health and nutrition of children and families; and it.is not tough enough on parents who owe child support, and is too tough on innocent children.

Pay-As-You-Go Scoring

H.R. 4 specifies that none of the changes in direct spending resulting from the bill shall be reflected in estimates under the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985. However, Members of Congress have publicly stated that the budget savings in H.R. 4 are to be included in a package of offsets designed to pay for upcoming tax legislation. Therefore, the budget savings in H.R. 4 would go neither toward real welfare reform nor toward deficit reduction, but primarily to finance tax cuts for the wealthy.