The TANF Program: Issues

In the current economic crisis, more and more families are turning to TANF and encountering the program's fundamental flaws: barriers that prevent eligible families from accessing benefits, sub-poverty benefit levels that ensure continued hardship, and work rules that stop parents from participating in education and training programs that offer a permanent escape from welfare and poverty.  Legal Momentum works to develop new laws and policy solutions that address these issues, alleviate women and children’s poverty, and increase women’s access to living wage employment.

Our work addresses the following concerns:

  • Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Reauthorization: Building a Social Safety Net that Works for Women and Families: Family public assistance, commonly referred to as “welfare,” is one of the most critical elements of a strong social safety net for women and children. Our current system, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), falls far short of what an adequate safety net program should be. Congressional reauthorization of the program, scheduled for February 2012, offers an opportunity to change that.
  • Welfare and Civil Rights: Federal protections against discrimination apply to TANF recipients in work placements and training programs. TANF participants have a right, like all Americans, to a discrimination-free work environment.
  • Public Benefits for Immigrant Women: Currently federally funded TANF and some other  benefits are generally only available  to immigrants who have been residing legally in the U.S. for five years.  However, there are some important exceptions to the five year bar, such as for some immigrant victims of domestic violence.  Also, some states provide state funded benefits to immigrants who have been residing legally in the U.S. for less than five years.