The Obama Administration has created a firestorm by claiming the authority to waive the work requirements of the popular 1996 welfare reform law. But the damage doesn’t stop there.
The same July 12 guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) states that HHS will not approve policy initiatives that are “likely to reduce access to assistance.” Translation: Obama’s HHS will oppose any policy that actually reduces welfare caseloads and dependence.
What’s more, stung by criticism for gutting the successful core of welfare reform, HHS now claims that states receiving a waiver must “commit that their proposals will move at least 20 percent more people from welfare to work compared to the state’s prior performance.” On the surface, this sounds impressive, but a state can meet this goal merely by raising its monthly employment exits from, say, 5 percent to 6 percent of caseload. That kind of change will occur automatically as the economy improves, even without bureaucratic action.
The new HHS “standard” is merely a ploy that will allow HHS to exempt liberal states from the regular TANF participation rates without clearly stating what they are doing.
Given the normal turnover rate in welfare programs, the easiest way to increase the number of persons moving from “welfare to work” is to increase the number entering welfare in the first place. Liberals have traditionally used sham “exit” statistics to pretend to shrink welfare when in reality they were rapidly increasing it.
Read more: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/26/even-more-bad-news-on-obama-hhs-gutting-welfare-reform/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FoundryConservativePolicyNews+%28The+Foundry%3A+Conservative+Policy+News.%29
The same July 12 guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) states that HHS will not approve policy initiatives that are “likely to reduce access to assistance.” Translation: Obama’s HHS will oppose any policy that actually reduces welfare caseloads and dependence.
What’s more, stung by criticism for gutting the successful core of welfare reform, HHS now claims that states receiving a waiver must “commit that their proposals will move at least 20 percent more people from welfare to work compared to the state’s prior performance.” On the surface, this sounds impressive, but a state can meet this goal merely by raising its monthly employment exits from, say, 5 percent to 6 percent of caseload. That kind of change will occur automatically as the economy improves, even without bureaucratic action.
The new HHS “standard” is merely a ploy that will allow HHS to exempt liberal states from the regular TANF participation rates without clearly stating what they are doing.
Given the normal turnover rate in welfare programs, the easiest way to increase the number of persons moving from “welfare to work” is to increase the number entering welfare in the first place. Liberals have traditionally used sham “exit” statistics to pretend to shrink welfare when in reality they were rapidly increasing it.
Read more: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/26/even-more-bad-news-on-obama-hhs-gutting-welfare-reform/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FoundryConservativePolicyNews+%28The+Foundry%3A+Conservative+Policy+News.%29
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