October 10, 2003, Alert: House, Senate Extend Current TANF Program; Advocacy Is As Important As Ever

Both the House and the Senate have extended the current TANF program through March 30 of next year. It appears now that the Senate will not have time in the current session for the protracted debate that is likely to occur if they take up the issue this year. The leadership apparently feels that there are too many other major issues to deal with that take priority over TANF.

It is always possible that this could change and that they could decide to schedule a vote on short notice, for which reason Sen. Daschle wants to know about any possible amendments that are being developed, in order to be prepared either to support or oppose them. He is opposed to the bill approved by the Finance Committee, as were all of the Democrats who voted on it.

The primary amendments under discussion are ones being developed by Sens. Snowe and Bingaman regarding increased child care funding and by Sen. Jeffords concerning the granting of more time on TANF for people working to overcome barriers to employment. There are likely to be many others.

It is also possible that the Tripartisan WORK bill developed by the Senate Finance Committee last year will be introduced as an alternative to this year's bill. The WORK bill is far preferable to the later version.  While we wait for the Senate to decide that voting on TANF is important, the advocacy community is urging concerned people to contact their state legislators and share concerns with them about how TANF should be amended. They seem to be the only people Senators are listening to these days on this issue.

The text of the Senate Finance Committee bill, as marked up by the Committee in September, is now posted on line, in PDF format.  The first 141 pages in this format are the language of the House bill, all struck out by the Senate, so just keep scrolling until you get to clean text.

For those who have difficulty with PDF documents, you can also find it at http://thomas.loc.gov . Click on "bill search" and enter the House bill number (HR 4). This will produce a list of sections of the legislation. You will need to scroll down for many lines to get past the parts that are struck out, before you come to the text of the Senate bill.

For more information, contact Mary Cooper, NCC