Assistance for the Neediest
In the mid-1990s, policymakers in Washington set out to reform the nation's welfare program. Relying on stereotypes and rhetoric about “welfare queens," they enacted the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant in 1996, dramatically changing the safety net for low-income families. Welfare reform fundamentally altered the nature of public assistance, ending welfare as an entitlement. Benefits would no longer be available based on need, instead, strict new work requirements and life-time limits on eligibility were imposed.
As a result of these changes, the number of families receiving assistance has fallen steeply. While proponents of welfare reform stubbornly assert that the 1996 law was a success, pointing to these steep declines in enrollment as the principle measure of success, poverty rates have climbed in recent years. Today, more people are poor, and those who are poor have slipped deeper into poverty. Too many low-income families are now without access to basic supports and services, deepening poverty in areas hard-hit by job losses.
When Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996, grassroots groups around the country started organizing to ensure that their voices were heard as their states began implementing the strict new federal mandates. In 1999, the Center for Community Change started the National Campaign for Jobs & Income Support which united the power of local groups around the country, making their voices heard and raising up the needs of their members.
Years later, Congress has extended the law which governs the TANF program multiple times, making families wait for national legislation that would patch the holes in the safety net created by the TANF. Rather than tackle the logical next steps in welfare reform (such as ensuring that families not only move off of welfare but also out of poverty) the federal debate has become bogged down in an unrealistic debate about work hours and participation rates, ignoring the reality of too many families struggling to find and keep living-wage work.
As a result, in states as diverse as New York, California and Pennsylvania, several leading grassroots organizations have shifted their focus to making the case for publicly-funded wage-paying jobs, a promising alternative to unpaid, dead-end workfare, as under the current TANF program. While still committed to ensuring that the TANF block grant program serves those families most in need of assistance, the Center for Community Change, in partnership with key grassroots allies, is working toward a broader public conversation focused on economic and social justice.
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