Closely monitoring the impact of state welfare reform policies is critical to intensifying the
fight against poverty, according to state Representatives Garnet Coleman (TX) and Antonio Riley (WI). Speaking at a CPA-sponsored State Issues Forum, Coleman (Flemming Fellow ’95) and Riley (Flemming Fellow ’94) reviewed the current status of welfare reform initiatives and engaged in a dialogue with advocates from D.C.-based national allies about strategies for future change.
Riley’s legislation in Wisconsin pioneered efforts to move away from grant-based welfare programs toward policies that make work pay for low-income families. Despite Riley’s vote against Governor Tommy Thompson’s Wisconsin Works (W-2) program, he admires much about W-2’s philosophy.
"First and foremost, I completely agree with W-2’s insistence on work as the way out of poverty," says Riley. According to Riley, W-2’s focus on work changed the bureaucratic and political culture of welfare in the state. "The shift signaled that Wisconsin was ready to move beyond small-scale changes of AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) to an overhaul of the welfare system that produces real change for working families," adds Riley.
As vice-chairman of the Texas House Committee on Public Health, Coleman played a pivotal role in reshaping his state’s welfare reform initiatives. "In order to really make work pay, Texas families needed a three-legged stool of reform that emphasized work supports like health care, child care and job training," says Coleman. Prior to the 1996 federal overhaul, Coleman secured the first increase in the cash grant in Texas in 14 years and the first program in the nation to create back-to-school bonuses for welfare recipients, enabling families to pay for school clothes and supplies.
Looking to the future, Coleman noted that the recent loss of the federal waiver for the Texas welfare-to-work program reduced the state’s ability to help more families move beyond welfare. The waiver had permitted Texas more flexibility in setting time limits and allowing parents to retain more of their earnings as they worked their way off of assistance.
Although Wisconsin’s success in reducing its caseload by 93% has been touted as a success across the country, Riley notes that most of the families who have left welfare continue to live at or below the poverty level. "We’ve made some progress in changing our culture, our way of talking about and dealing with poverty, but we need to ensure that programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Food Stamps are available to help families move out of poverty for good," Riley says.
Both legislators believe that the strong and steady economy has greatly influenced the drop in
the caseloads, but that states need to use their federal dollars to create innovative programs that benefit the hardest-to-serve families who face multiple barriers to economic self-sufficiency.
The coming debate over TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) reauthorization provides states a unique opportunity to review and apply the lessons learned over the past few years. "We need to use the reauthorization debate to forcefully argue for a more holistic, less isolated approach to helping families escape poverty. We’ve got to make sure that we’re not pitting the working poor against the very poor," stated Riley.
If coordinated well with TANF, states could design an impressive and comprehensive system that
would connect low-income families to decent paid work that would allow them to advance up the job
ladder and earn their way out of poverty.
