• Serves adults and children
• Provides cash for food, clothing, shelter
• Aged, blind, disabled--'the worthy'
• SSI varies by state (minimum federal baseline amounts are supplemented by many states)
• This is the 'deserving' population . . . 1973 program replaced 2 separate programs with standardized eligibility tests and administration

• Cash assistance, temporary, plus other in-kind services
• If you work: child care, child support enforced, medical coverage provided, if there is money available
• 5 year lifetime limit; 2 years consecutive, then you need a job (varies by state)
• states can exempt up to 20% of the population from the time limits
• focus here on temporary--welfare as a transitory state
• officially: provide assistance to needy families so children may be cared for in home or homes of relatives;
• end dependency of needy parents on govt. benefits by promoting job prep., work and marriage
• prevent/reduce incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies
• encourage formation and maintenance of two-parent families
• reducing rolls: 50% by 2002
• Benefits haven't kept up with inflation
  

• Payment to working poor-subsidy of 40% on low wages-it's applied to their tax liability-so they only get money back if the credit exceeds the liability (this graph should help understand)
• Average credit for yr 2000 was about $1,500
• 19 million households received EITCs in 2000
• qualifications: money earned during year; qualifying child living in home; earned income less than $31,150 with more than one 'qualifying' child; those getting credit must have social security numbers; fraudulent claims will get you a ten year suspension from eligibility;
• Above $12,500, the credit begins to decrease (disappears into 21% base tax rate)
• encouraging people to work--here's a question for you: is it a subsidy for workeres, or employers?

• A welfare program of last resort-a safety net for the safety net, designed mostly for people without children
• state-based
• Cash and in-kind assistance programs, administered entirely by state, county, municipality, etc.
• Designed to catch people ineligible for TANF or SSI
• 35 states have GA programs; 24 have standard eligibility rules
• Only 2 states currently provide GA to able-bodied adults without children
• Who are these people? Some include children living with unrelated adult; disabled individuals; elderly who are not eligible for SSI (or are waiting to hear);
• Most states give GA only to the severely poor (for most states, monthly income eligibility range is $100 - $400 for individuals, 300-600 for family of 3);
• GA benefits are low and falling in all states--it's not very important to very many people any more, meaning there really is no functional safety net for those who fall through the safety net.

In-kind programs

These include food stamps, Medicaid, housing assistance, and nutrition programs like the federally subsidized programs we've talked about in the hunger project). Here are some data on these (from Schiller):

source: U.S. Census Bureau, Office of Management and Budget

SNAP is a federal program we should all be pretty familiar with. Medicaid (called Oregon Health Plan here) is federally funded, but state-administered. As one of the brushes articles notes, there is a stigma associated with the use of Medicaid, and some physicians simply don't accept Medicaid patients. Federal housing assistance is designed to reduce rent payments for people with low incomes. The in-kind programs often involve being put on waiting lists, and this can be one of the longer waits. There are public housing projects, public-assisted housing, and tenant-based assistance (tenant can choose his/her own place, provided the landlord will take the money--another 'brushes' experience). There are also federally-funded nutrition programs, which include WIC, for pregnant women and mothers of children under one year. There are food voucher programs, which we've discussed, school lunch programs, and commodity programs (where local food banks get much of their food, along with food drive contributions).

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• Drafted and passed by Republican-controlled House of Representatives; signed by President Clinton;
• Gave more power to states ('devolution'); designed to keep more children in their own homes or with relatives (why?); focus on job preparation, work, and marriage; discouraged out of wedlock pregnancies (as opposed to, say, births?); encouraged formation of two-parent families
• The current $300 million marriage promotion is an effort to apply funding to what has been an unfunded part of the 1996 legislation;
• Block grants are federal funds administered by states; TANF is block grant-again, more devolution (further 'federalizing' AFDC);
• Time limits: 60 months on cash assistance (states may reduce this); states can exempt up to 20% of recipients, and can continue beyond limits with their own funds (few reportedly do, however--have you checked out state budgets lately?);
• Work requirements: after two years of cash assistance; states face financial penalties for not moving a certain percentage off of welfare--the key measure is reducing welfare rolls;
• Family cap: families already receiving assistance will not gain new benefits with additional children--the underlying assumption being . . . ?