TANF Issues: TANF Reauthorization

TANF Reauthorization: Building a Social Safety Net that Works for Women and Families

A Broken System

Family public assistance, commonly referred to as "welfare," is one of the critical components of a strong, functioning Social Safety Net.  Because the number of single mothers vastly outnumbers that of single fathers, the program is especially important to poor women and their families.  In fact, over 90 percent of parents receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the current national assistance program for families with children, are single mothers.

In 1996 the federal government enacted sweeping welfare reform legislation eliminating "welfare as we know it" by replacing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (or "AFDC)" with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families or "TANF"(TANF) as the national family public assistance program.

Since that change, the percentage of eligible poor families receiving the benefit has plummeted: today, only 40 percent of poor families receive assistance, down from 84 percent in AFDC’s last full year.  Likewise, only 22 percent of poor children now receive assistance, down from 62 percent.

Even for those families that do receive assistance, benefits often fail to cover the most basic needs. In July 2008 for a family of three, the daily benefit per person was less than $8.00 in all but one state, less than $5.00 in thirty states, and as low as $1.86 in one state (Mississippi). Benefits this scant perpetuate widespread material hardship for the women and children who rely on TANF, now over four million in number.

TANF Reauthorization is a Critical Opportunity for Improvement

TANF offers a critically important safety net for single mothers as they experience an exceptionally high poverty rate of over thirty five per cent.  About ninety per cent of parents receiving TANF are single mothers.  

TANF falls far short of what an adequate safety net program should be.  Benefits are far below the official poverty standard.  Only a minority of eligible families actually receive benefits.  

Congress must reauthorize TANF by February 29, 2012.  Reauthorization offers a fresh opportunity for advocates to press Congress for measures to make TANF responsive to the mothers and children the program is intended to serve.

Legal Momentum has established the EndPovertyNow Coalition and is working to identify and promote targeted changes to the TANF program that will make it a meaningful safety net and a true stepping stone to economic security. Some of the policies we support include: raising benefit levels; removing the five-year life-time limit on benefits; increasing federal oversight; improving TANF recipients’ access to quality childcare; ending discouraging application practices; ensuring that victims of domestic violence, sexual assault have access to benefits; enabling recipients to complete their schooling and to participate in substantive job training programs to meet their work requirement.

For more information on TANF Reauthorization, see Reports and Caseload Updates and Statements to Congress and the Administration.