April 6, 2004, Update: Contact Your Senator During Spring Recess

The Senate will be officially in recess from April 12-16, but most Senators will begin heading home on Thursday, April 8. This period in their states would be an ideal time to contact your Senators and urge them to take responsible action on reauthorization of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. You can find addresses for their home offices on their Web pages at http://www.senate.gov  If you can't visit, please call.

Senators should be encouraged to support legislation that would:

- increase funding for child care (as they did with passage of the Snowe-Dodd amendment last week);

- restore TANF and health care benefits for legal immigrants;

- give states increased flexibility in determining what meets the work requirement (such as expanding the time allowed for vocational education from 12 to 24 months);

- give states flexibility to waive or extend work requirements and time limits for people facing severe barriers to employment;

- reject increased work requirements; and

- reject the "superwaiver" proposal that would allow states to waive federal rules in certain low-income programs, in the name of program coordination.

If Congress cannot pass legislation that meets these standards, IT SHOULD INSTEAD EXTEND THE CURRENT PROGRAM -- WITHOUT CHANGES -- FOR AT LEAST TWO YEARS.

The Senate began consideration of TANF reauthorization last week but quickly broke down over Democratic efforts to attach amendments to increase the minimum wage, extend emergency unemployment benefits, and protect the right of workers to be adequately compensated for overtime work.

The Republicans were willing to allow votes on these issues only if they could have votes on some of their own concerns and if they could get a guarantee that the Democrats would agree to speed up the debate on TANF and appoint conferees immediately.

The Democrats were unwilling to commit to appointment of conferees because they have been repeatedly shut out of conference committee negotiations on other topics and were unwilling to run that risk with TANF. It seems likely that partisanship and lack of civility will only increase as Congress moves into election mode, so the prospects for a good outcome from a conference committee on TANF are not encouraging.

Click here for more information on TANF

Contact: Mary Cooper, NCC