Welfare Reform at 30: Restoring Work, Personal Responsibility in Federal Welfare

The subcommittee will come to order. Um, wanna welcome everyone to our Work and Welfare subcommittee hearing. Today's hearing is titled " Welfare Reform at Thirty, Restoring the Promise of Work and Personal Responsibility in Federal Welfare Programs." Wanna welcome our witnesses today and all the members of the subcommittee. I'll begin with my opening statement. My name is Darren Lohut and I represent Illinois's sixteenth district covering much of central and northwestern part of my state. Our goal today is to reflect on the historic, bipartisan welfare reforms made in nineteen ninety-six. The principles that drove those reforms and the challenges and opportunities that remain, three decades later. Thirty years ago, in the face of rising caseloads and generational dependence on welfare, Congress enacted a package of consequential, social policy reforms to change the nation's welfare system. Welfare reform replaced the open-ended quote " no strings attached" cash entitlement program with the temporary assistance for needy families known as TANF. For the first time, TANF included work requirements, time limits, enforced the principle of work in exchange for benefits, and capped federal funding for benefits, while providing states' flexibility to experiment with tailored solutions for families in poverty. Those reforms, led by House Republicans and ultimately signed into law by President Bill Clinton, were based on shared bipartisan principles, that America should maintain a strong safety net for families in need, but that assistance should be targeted, time-limited, and connected to an expectation of personal responsibility and work. During President Clinton's announcement of the legislation in nineteen ninety-six, He described the reforms as quote " transforming a broken system that traps too many people in a cycle of dependence to one that emphasizes work and independence to give people on welfare a chance to draw a paycheck, not a welfare check" unquote. In many ways, the nineteen ninety-six reforms were a success. Welfare caseloads fell dramatically. Employment increased among many of the families most likely to have previously relied on cash assistance. For example, labor for labor force participation among never married mothers rose from roughly fifty-nine percent in nineteen ninety five, to seventy-four percent by two thousand, an increase of roughly fifteen percentage points and more work translated into substantially higher earnings. However, as TANF caseloads shrank, programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program known as SNAP, and Medicaid grew in both spending and recipients. From nineteen ninety-five to two thousand twenty-five, SNAP participation rose nearly sixty percent, while Medicaid rose a hundred and fifteen percent. Reforms made by H.R. one, the working families tax cut bill, took significant steps toward restoring the promise of the nineteen ninety-six act by strengthening work requirements for able-bodied recipients of SNAP and Medicaid to ensure more individuals who need help are connected to work. Unfortunately, we have struggled to find the bipartisan consensus that made the reforms of nineteen ninety-six possible. Congress may be divided on these principles today, but I don't believe the American people are. Tying federal benefits to the expectation of work is not a punishment. All of our government programs need to be oriented to provide every opportunity for individuals to grow their capacity and to be connected to meaningful work. Two years ago, this subcommittee traveled to Chicago to hold a field hearing, where we heard firsthand from witnesses at a homeless shelter in ranking member of Danny Davis's district called the Pacific Garden Mission. During our time there as a subcommittee, we spoke with Pastor Corey Brooks and his team at Project Hood. They told us about the philosophy of uplifting individuals, equipping individuals in crisis with skills and tools to find stability, and transforming lives, through faith and work. That stayed with me. At the heart of our welfare reform three decades ago was the simple principle, there is dignity in work. Americans are a generous people. Our country provides a robust social safety net to the tune of more than one trillion dollars in spending each year and more than eighty government assistance programs. But that is not how we should be measure measuring success. Government assistance can provide important help during a difficult period, but no government program can substitute for the stability, confidence, purpose, and connection to community that meaningful work can provide. With that, I want to again thank our witnesses for traveling here today, uh, and I look forward to your testimony. And with that, I'm pleased to recognize the ranking member, gentleman from Illinois, Mister Danny Davis.

Thank you, Mister Chairman. let me thank you for holding this hearing so that our subcommittee can discuss the serious challenges facing working parents and what we in congress should do the thirtieth anniversary of the temporary assistance to needy families program, our TANF is a fitting frame for this hearing because the republican leadership of the current congress is making the same as the nineteen ninety four republican leadership did today's republicans are making life harder for parents who can't afford child care so they can work making it harder for all americans who struggle to pay for basic necessities because president trump's policies make everything cost too much all while helping the very rich get even richer tariff rules are far from the most urgent problem facing americans today and richard the former governor of texas once said and i quote life's not fair but government should be end of quote when they are struggling the last thing parents need are threats penalties or piles of paperwork proven that they're trying to obtain work. They're not lazy and they don't have time to work for free in exchange for help because they have laundry to do, homework to help with and work that will pay for winter coats and sneakers. Parents need help finding affordable child care. because there simply is not enough of the right child care for everyone who needs it caregivers need paid family and medical leave so they can care for their loved one they need good jobs the skills to do them and unions to protect them and they need money to maintain a roof over their heads keep their utilities on buy needed medicine and get through emergencies. The most pressing problems for today's families are the Trump economy and the Republican Congress. Republicans choose to cut off nutrition assistance for five million children and strip health insurance from fifteen million people. And Republicans stand by while President Trump makes everything that families need more expensive food housing medications heat air conditioning childcare and gasoline meanwhile these cruel cuts were used to pay for huge tax cuts to the richest americans including the president and his cabinet this is not fair to struggling americans in my state of illinois hundred and fifty thousand people have lost the snap benefits they use to buy groceries alarmingly ninety two thousand illinoilians lost their health insurance after republicans gleefully ended the a. c. a. tax credit and those who do have coverage are paying between twenty five and fifty percent more for it leaving less money for everything else gas costs close to five dollars a gallon in parts of the state a fifty percent increase during the trump administration this is not fair to struggling americans while regular americans suffer president trump has increased his net worth by more than two billion dollars just since he returned to the white house while regular americans struggle president trump focuses on building a giant ballroom surrounding himself with gold destroying historical landmarks to entertain and grow the wealth of his friends and donors and starting unnecessary war after war this is not fair to struggling americans thirty years of tennis taught us that congress' job is to stand up for the people who sent us here to help give everyone a fair shot despite the challenges that life presents. We were not elected to empower a president who doesn't care about them. We were not elected to crush Americans during their most vulnerable times. This committee and this congress need to listen to and assist parents that are struggling not be a new hoops for them to jump to to secure help from their government and the first step in any kind of reform is to work together on a policy focused on what families tell us that they need and so mr. chairman again thank you for holding this hearing and i hope that americans will get the help they deserve as opposed to training them to get any benefit at all. Thank you very much and I yield back.

Thank you, Mr. Davis. Uh, I'm now pleased to recognize the full committee chairman, Jason Smith of Missouri. A gentleman from Missouri is recognized.

Thank you, Chairman LaHood, Ranking Member Davis, for holding this uh hearing today. Um, this is not the first time the Ways and Means Committee has has marked the anniversary of the nineteen ninety-six welfare reforms by by taking the opportunity to reflect on their impact. In debate after debate following passage of the one big beautiful bill, we've heard from from our friends on the other side of the aisle about how work requirements to receive public benefits will have a catastrophic impact on low income and working families' lives. It's not lost on me that similar arguments were made thirty years ago. So it's worth revisiting the impact of these changes to have a sense how how changes to other programs may play out. As we look back on the successes of the nineteen ninety-six TANF reforms and the progress that has followed, we should remind ourselves why reform was needed in the first place. Prior to those reforms, we had a welfare system that did far too much to create dependence on government assistance, to trap people in these programs, and far too little to encourage those who needed our help to also experience the dignity of work and the rewards of personal responsibility that can come with it. That was after all why leaders in both parties including president Clinton knew that change was desperately needed today despite what I would hope would be bipartisan agreement that work is beneficial for individuals and their families creating that path to greater independence and self-sufficiency we still hear a lot of concern from our democrat colleagues that they see work requirements as a bridge too far for those receiving welfare yet the facts show that the TANF reforms in nineteen ninety six had a transformational positive impact following enactment of those reforms welfare caseloads dropped dramatically from nearly four point four million in nineteen ninety five to five hundred and seventy thousand in twenty twenty four. As important, it, not more important, outcomes for the folks, the program was designed to help also improve dramatically. For example, employment among single moms went up nearly forty percent in just the first four years after implementation. and real earnings roughly doubled. However, we know that today improvements are still needed, especially when it comes to achieving greater accountability at the state level in combating fraud to ensure resources are prioritized for those most in need. To that end, the Ways and Means Committee recently approved H. R. eighty-eight seventy-two, the Preventing Waste Fraud and Abuse, and TANF Act, to improve the integrity of that program. At the end of the day, it is one thing to look at the data and discuss how these policies can work to improve outcomes, but it is also vital that we hear from those who have directly participated in our nation's welfare programs. That is why I'm grateful that we have a group of witnesses who can provide personal experiences from their perspectives with the welfare system. One in particular, from the show me state, Misty Misty Kelso, um from the great state of Missouri, um is here to testify on her personal journey navigating and working with and within the welfare system. Miss Kelso, I always, always appreciate having a fellow Missourian um with us so thank you for agreeing to participate to share your lived experience and for what you do to help others um in need and i wanna thank all of the witnesses for helping the policy policy makers on this committee learn more about not just the financial security a job and steady paycheck can provide but also the benefits to the individuals and the families who deserve to experience the dignity of work um and all that it has to offer. I yield back, Mister Chair.

Thank you, Chairman Smith. Uh, we'll now turn to our witnesses, um, and we'll start off with, uh, introducing the witnesses and then you'll each have five minutes. Um, our first witness will be Scott Winship, who is the Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility at the American Enterprise Institute here in Washington DC. Next, we'll hear from Miss Missy Hanks, who is the executive director of the Elm Foundation in Huntsville, Alabama. Next we'll hear from Mat Damschroeder, who is the director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services in Columbus, Ohio. Next we'll hear from Misty Kelso, who is the operations manager at Watered Gardens Ministries in Joplin, Missouri. And lastly, we'll hear from Kristen Rohr, uh, Finkbeiner, who is the co-fin co-founder and CEO of Moms Rising in Kirkland, Washington. Welcome to you all. We'll start off with you, uh, Mister Winship, and you're recognized for five minutes.

Thank you. Uh, Chairman LaHood, Ranking Member Davis, and members of the sub- subcommittee on Work and Welfare, thank you for holding this important hearing on the thirtieth anniversary of the nineteen ninety-six welfare reform law and for the opportunity to testify before you today. The personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation act per war which had its beginnings in the forerunner to this very subcommittee replaced the aid to families with dependent children program, with temporary assistance for needy families. afdc had provided cash with few conditions and its benefits diminished, when other income rose via a new job or a new marriage. The result was a classic poverty trap. TANF instituted lifetime time limits in required states to engage beneficiaries in employment related activities, or to reduce their caseloads by an equivalent amount. Today the evidence is clear that welfare reform benefited poor families enormously. To summarize the evidence that I detail in my written testimony, from nineteen ninety four to twenty twenty four, the share of single parent families receiving AFDC or TANF plummeted from forty six percent to eight percent. It dropped by half just between nineteen ninety four and two thousand this decline had no precedent in previous history from nineteen ninety four to twenty twenty five the share of never married single parents that were employed rose from forty six percent to sixty eight percent in the three years between nineteen ninety six and nineteen ninety nine it rose from fifty percent to sixty five percent again there was no precedent

yeah

uh to that point for that sort of increase And importantly, employment rates never declined, uh, to the level that they were before welfare reform, even during the great recession. Pregnancy rates among unmarried women peaked in nineteen ninety and are lower today by more than one third. From nineteen ninety four to twenty twenty four, the marital birth rate, I'm sorry, the non-marital birth rate among women ages fifteen to seventeen, eighteen to nineteen, and twenty to twenty four fell by eighty-four percent, sixty-nine percent, and forty percent. Between nineteen ninety-six and twenty-twenty-two, the child poverty rate fell by between fifty-two and seventy-eight percent. The rise in earnings since welfare reform has been so large that if the safety net disappeared tomorrow there would be less child poverty than there was in nineteen ninety-three. Welfare reform showed the promise of a work-focused safety net that provides opportunity including work supports such as earned income tax credits, tougher child support enforcement, and generous child care support in exchange for personal responsibility. It provided a model for the anti-poverty policy reforms included in the recent one big beautiful bill act such as the tougher work requirements for food stamps and the introduction of work benefits in Medicaid. But denial of welfare reform's success remains strong, especially as the twentieth century fades into history. In twenty twenty one, a child allowance providing benefits without any requirements in return, temporarily became the law. The enactment of the policy was fueled by claims of rising extreme poverty that had been thoroughly debunked. Public debate among economists as to the importance of work incentives contributed to the defeat of attempts to make the child allowance permanent that year. A subsequent National Academy of Science report vindicated the side, arguing that decisions about working respond predictably to changes in government benefits. Today, dozens of local experiments in providing a guaranteed basic income operate around the country. often funded through federal covid emergency funds. Calls for a universal basic income have grown louder, fueled by premature convictions that artificial intelligence will put millions out of work. These policies would bring back features of the pre-nineteen nineties safety net that impeded upward mobility by weakening work and marriage incentives. While we wait for evidence from the new OBBBA work requirements, various incremental reforms to TANF would help beneficiaries. Representative Kerry has sponsored H. R. eighty-eight seventy-two, the preventing waste, fraud, and abuse, and TANF act, with along with Representatives Miller and Bean as cosponsors, uh, and Representative Moore, uh, which would ensure that TANF funded benefits and services are directed to poor and near-poor families, prevent states from using federal TANF dollars to substitute for state spending, require states to spend their TANF funds within three years, and direct the Department of Health and Human Services and states to better address improper payments. Thirty years ago, the nation hit on an effective set of policy reforms that reduced government dependence increased employment slashed out of wedlock childbearing lowered the share of children living without two parents and reduced poverty. It should go without saying that we should build on the lessons of welfare reform, not reverse course as we continue our vital efforts to reduce hardship and expand upward mobility. Thank you.

Thank you, Mister Winship. And now recognize Miss Hanks.

I put on my glasses, I'm old, y'all. Chairman LaHood, Ranking Member Davis and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity that I have to be here today. My name is Missy Hanks and I'm the Executive Director of the Elm Foundation in Huntsville, Alabama. And the Elm Foundation is a privately funded operating foundation providing grants and relational case management for education and workforce development. When necessary, we will also provide stipends for barriers such as child care or transportation. We are an effort-based organization and participants work at least twenty hours per week to qualify. They must make and keep goals and increase their education skills toward being gainfully employed so the result is

So, they're people and money, right?

Yes, sir.

Yeah.

You're real- OK. Thank you.

That's a little better, yeah.

Thank you. Thanks. Um, so the goal is that they become self-reliant. While I have many stories to share, I'll share just two. Um, one participant, Messy, and her nine year old son were homeless when they joined our program. We assisted Messy in returning to school. She became a nurse with supervisory duties. She has since bought two homes. And her son received a full scholarship to attend Amherst, and he is currently in residency to become a pediatric doctor. brock came to our program after high school and he needed to become employed immediately he has completed a local utilities lineman program and he is now gainfully employed at a regional utility provider and i come before you today not as a policy expert because i'm not that smart but somebody who has spent their career more than three and a half decades working with and for people both in federally funded and privately funded programs I have seen that the government programs can and can easily trap people and their children into dependency. I actually left this industry for several years because I honestly felt like I wasn't really helping anyone. Far too many people on my caseload relied on programs to address their immediate needs but they did not utilize the programs that would lift them out of poverty and I'm only before you today because the foundation utilizes the effort-based model. But I do think we can agree most Americans want to provide for their families an experience not only the dignity but the security that comes from knowing they can take care of themselves and we as service providers should not complicate the journey with dependency. At Elm we ask a simple question, what can we do for you today so you won't need us anymore? We believe that assistance should be a bridge And we also know that work is an essential part to that journey, because work not only provides income, but it also develops technical as well as life skills, problem-solving ability, and social capital, confidence, and dignity. As a nation, we must ask ourselves what are the outcomes of our current social service program. My experience in Huntsville gives me just a local exp- uh perspective. The Elm Foundation also administers the Charity Tracker network of Madison County which allows participant organizations, a locally sponsored tool which allows us to coordinate services and share information. As of July, twenty twenty-six, the network included three hundred and eighty-four agencies and nine hundred and thirty-six agents but that is only a small fraction of the nonprofits in my county. In twenty twenty-five, participating organizations documented more than seventy-seven thousand assistance records. representing more than five million dollars in assistance. To note, governmental agency's data is not recorded in this database, so the six million dollar plus that goes out every month in food stamps is, for example, food stamps, it's not counted toward these figures. The data shows that approximately half of the individuals receiving assistance were working age adults between the ages of eighteen and fifty-nine. And this is indicative to me that we are failing our citizens. Crisis assistance is necessary, but if the same person needs the same assistance six months later and again the following year is our job finished simply because we provided a food box or paid a utility bill? I believe welfare reform should make effort, work, and reduced al- reliance on assistance core measures of success. And every program should demonstrate, they should be compelled to demonstrate efficacy through tracking the outcomes of their charity. By strengthening coordinated case management and control at the local level, we can assure that we are helping people move to self-reliance. Charity must be relational and accurate for it to be effective, and that can only happen at the local level because a community knows their people. Coordination will help reduce duplication and allow resources to be directed toward those who can't help themselves, the elderly, children and individuals with significant limitation. Presently there is an overlap in our community in government and non-profit assistance. We don't need more programs. We need better programs and better program performance. Accountability in agencies is is paramount. And at this time, we do not have that. We have what I call the wild wild west. out there in our non-profit agencies. We're serving in silos, not sharing information, we're not tracking outcome and leveraging resource. And I would just like to reiterate that accountability and compassion are not opposite. Accountability is not punishment, accountability is empowerment, and we should expect effort from people because we know they are capable of it and of achieving more. But we should expect the same of our agencies that are funded through tax dollars. Thank you for the opportunity to testify and I look forward to answering any questions.

Thank you, Miss Hanks. Now, recognized Director Damschoter.

Good afternoon, Chairman LaHood, Ranking Member Davis, and members of the subcommittee, and thank you for the opportunity to be here today. My name is Matt Damschoter and I'm the Director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, the Ohio agency responsible for overseeing Ohio's public assistance, workforce development, adult protective services, child support, home energy assistance, and community services block grant programs. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was successful in reducing welfare roles and promoting work in Ohio and across the country. Since its passage, our public assistance caseloads have fallen dramatically, from more than two hundred and twelve thousand families receiving receiving ADFC in nineteen ninety-five to fewer than forty-three hundred families today. Between those families and child-only cases, Just over fifty thousand children currently receive TANF in Ohio. In fact, about eighty-seven percent of all recipients are children with child-only cases. Today, the adults remaining in Ohio's TANF cash assistance program that we call Ohio Works First, are those who face multiple significant barriers to employment. Many live with physical or mental health challenges. Most have limited education. And they often lack a lack access to reliable transportation, child care, and stable housing. These challenges are not easily addressed by a one size fits all public assistance work requirement program that is why we are grateful that Ohio was selected by the administration for children and families last year as one of five states to participate in the new federal TANF pilot program our pilot builds on the thirty year legacy of Aurora giving states flexibility by allowing case workers to work closely with participants to develop individualized plans that address their most significant barriers to work rather than measuring compliance using the traditional The pilot instead gives us the flexibility to develop performance metrics that better reflect successful outcomes, metrics that can be measured and evaluated for the return on investment. This pilot will help reimagine the role that states play at administering public assistance benefits moving from transactional services to transformational investments it also strengthens the public benefits continuum by ensuring that our lowest income adults on TANF cash assistance already and prepared to progress into snap e and t and we owe a funded programs on their path to a sustainable career, financial independence and a legacy of overcoming poverty. For example, our benefit bridge program connects participants with a care team that can help them address barriers, make and make a work plan and ultimately achieve financial independence. One participant, a young woman in Licking County, Ohio, who grew up relying on public assistance, says that the program gave her the skills and confidence to transform her life. She's now a nurse, a married mother, owns her own home, and is happily self-sufficient. Our comprehensive case management and employment program, CCMEP, takes a similarly innovative approach to helping low-income fourteen to twenty-four year olds break the cycle of poverty. CCMEP integrates TANF and WIOA youth funding to focus on people, not programs, and offer more coordinated individualized services. Ohio was one of the first states in the nation to attempt this degree of cross-program integration. However, braiding these funding streams can be difficult due to mis-aligned federal performance measures. It would be beneficial to grant HHS waiver authority in the TANF program, as it is granted to DOL for WIOA programs in limited circumstances. Many states, like Ohio, have taken meaningful steps to reframe assistance around a work-first philosophy, one that recognizes the benefits as a temporary support while placing employment with the economic opportunity at the forefront of our interactions with recipients. Our TANF pilot is the next step in modernizing the administration of public assistance. With that said, I believe we can add to this work by increasing our focus on TANF purposes three and four. Under the leadership of Governor DeWine, we have invested in fatherhood initiatives, promoted the success sequence, and increased support for kinship care. As an example, TANF funded programming for a pilot program through the Ohio Commission on Fatherhood, to teach dads about things like safe sleep, the importance of mom's breastfeeding. smoking cessation and safe birth spacing. Involved fathers improve outcomes in communities with high infant mortality rates. Thirty years after welfare reform, administering public benefits remains complex and challenging. We work every day to bar the door to fraudsters and those who would abuse the system, while delivering important services to eligible Ohioans. We look forward to building on these principles, analyzing our pilot performance metrics, and working with ACF under the exemplary leadership of Assistant Secretary Alex Adams. again thank you for the opportunity to testify today and i'm happy to answer any questions

thank you director now recognize miss kelso

chairman hood and ranking member davis and some subcommittee good afternoon and thank you for allowing me to be here today my name is missy kelso and i work as an operations manager at water gardens where i serve women and children experiencing homelessness addiction poverty grief and some of the hardest circumstances imaginable but i'm not here today as an academic or a public policy expert i'm here as someone who has lived the realities we are discussing and i now get to watch it play out in the lives of the women i serve every single day i know what it feels like to be stuck i know what poverty feels like not as a statistic but as a mother trying to make ends meet when there simply isn't enough i know what it feels like to depend on government assistance i know what addiction feels like i know what it feels like to make choices that hurt yourself and the people you love i'm four years into a life i once wasn't sure i would have and that is why i believe so strongly that people need more than a roof over their head i've learned from experience if we want people to actually change their lives we have to help them get out of survival mode first because you cannot expect someone to build a future when they're completely consumed with surviving today when someone is worried about where they're going to sleep tonight how they're going to feed their children whether they can get to work or whether they're going to lose everything because of one unexpected bill their brain is focused on survival and survival doesn't leave much room for healing through my work and own my own experience i have come to believe that poverty reform has to recognize the whole person there are four things every person needs and deserves relationship redemption hope and human dignity relationship every person is meant to be with another people were not created to live in isolation when someone is struggling with poverty addiction homelessness or trauma isolation often makes everything worse people need healthy relationships they need community they need someone who knows their name knows their story believes in them and is willing to walk beside them that doesn't mean removing accountability in fact healthy relationships provide the accountability people need to change redemption every person is meant to be with god people are more than their circumstances their mistakes their addictions there is a spiritual component to restoration that cannot be ignored for us that means helping people understand that they have value that they are loved by god and that their past does not have to define their future hope every person should see an end to his poverty hope is more than simply telling someone that things will get better real hope means being able to see a path forward a person needs to be able to look at their life and believe i can become something different i can work provide for my children have a home rebuild relationships live independently if someone cannot see a way out it is very difficult to ask them to keep moving forward human dignity every person is a noble creation the women we serve are not problems to be solved they're people they're mothers daughters sisters employees neighbors friends and future leaders sure they've made mistakes but their mistakes do not erase their dignity poverty should never cause us to see a person as less valuable at water gardens i get to see women take those steps i get to see someone who walked through our doors defeated begin to stand a little taller i get to see women learn how to show up keep commitments take responsibility work through conflict and begin believing that they can actually build a different life that is why i believe effective poverty reform has to address both the person and the barriers around them We need to provide stability without creating permanent dependence. We need accountability without compassion. We need opportunity without ignoring the realities people are facing. And we need to recognize the dignity and potential of every person we serve. So I'm not here today to tell you that one program or one solution will fix poverty. I'm here to tell you that people need a bridge, a bridge from survival to stability, from stability to healing, from healing to work, and from work to independence. that bridge has to be built on relationship redemption hope and humanity i know what it is like to need that bridge and now i have the privilege of helping build it for someone else when i look at the women we serve i don't see statistics i see mothers and daughters and women who have made mistakes i see women who have been hurt and i see women who still have potential they don't need us to lower the expectations for their lives they need us to help remove the barriers that keep them from reaching those expectations Because poverty does not have to be someone's permanent identity. People can heal, work and recover. People can experience redemption. People can have hope. And every person deserves to be treated with dignity along the way. I know, because I am one of those people, and every day I get to watch other women begin that same journey. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Kelso. Now recognize Miss Roe Finkbeiner.

Thank you, Chairman LeHood and Ranking Member Davis, for the opportunity to testify here today. as you heard i'm christin rauffenkebeiner executive director of moms rising which has a total membership of three point seven million who live in every state and are working to help build a nation where families can thrive we're grateful for this opportunity to bring the voices of millions of moms into this room today and at moms rising we hear from moms everyday that they and their families are working hard playing by the rules and yet still cannot make ends meet as the cost of raising children is skyrocketing a pound of hamburger now costs more than you get paid for an hour of wages at the federal minimum wage less than half of americans can now afford healthcare child care now costs more than college and more than rent in seventeen states and gas housing and aging and disability care are mind bogglingly expensive families need the wages of moms more than ever just to put food on the table and a roof over the heads of their children and now three quarters of moms are in the labor force but hardworking moms are being forced to make unacceptable choices moms like nicole in florida who skipped her colonoscopy that her doctor says she urgently needs in order to pay the pediatric bills for her three children and right now we're hearing from more and more moms that they're feeling the squeeze of huge increases in cost after the republican majority slashed one trillion dollars from medicaid cut snap by a hundred and eighty seven billion and refused to extend the affordable care act premium tax credits And then instead of fixing the crisis that families are facing, they have now poured more than two hundred and forty billion into militarized immigration enforcement without guardrails to protect our communities. Our nation absolutely needs a safe and orderly immigration process that balances compassion and security, but not cuts to healthcare and certainly not cruelty. The current family affordability and healthcare crisis are not a question of resources they're a question of priorities. that two hundred and forty billion dollars would cover Medicaid for almost thirty million people the daily cost of the war in Iran alone could cover the daily healthcare costs of the fifteen million people who are expected to lose Medicaid and also cover the snap benefits for all forty one million Americans who rely on it the tariffs have cost each US household twelve hundred dollars a year the resources are there the priorities are wrong in this high cost environment TANF needs improvement it has been frozen at sixteen point five billion dollars per year since it started in nineteen ninety six losing more than half of its value to inflation and the bureaucratic barriers to the program are much too onerous fewer than one in four families in deep need receive TANF but repeating TANF's mistake by pretending that cutting programs make families stronger is not the answer moms of all political parties are struggling as republican's signature bills have cut off millions from healthcare and limited food access. They've also blocked care policies, caused cogs to skyrocket, and allowed TANF to become outdated. Fortunately, solutions are possible. We urge Congress to recognize what thirty years of experience has taught us. If we want parents to work, we have to make it possible for parents to work, to get healthcare, and to thrive. that means cash for people to put gas in the car to buy diapers and to access child care that means paid family medical leave when a new baby arrives or a serious health crisis strikes that means living wages so care workers can stay in their profession that means the fair treatment of immigrants who are critical to our care workforces our businesses and our communities it means health care coverage that families can rely on accessible maternal health care affordable elder and disability care food assistance when times are hard and a child tax credit that allows families to afford the enormous and rising cost of raising children. These aren't alternatives to work. These are what makes work possible. We hear from moms everyday about this, and we have a whole book of stories to share with you on this too. Moms know the value of work because moms work all the time. Whether that work comes with a paycheck or not, we don't need our government withholding food or from our children to motivate us to work more the idea that taking away a family's resources to buy diapers school supplies groceries or pay rent or healthcare coverage will somehow miraculously make child care more affordable or replace the need for paid family medical leave or turn a low wage job into one that supports a family is simply ridiculous it doesn't have to be this way opening avenues for moms to thrive opens doors for our economy to thrive one key study found that better care family policies would actually increase our country's long-term real gbt growth g d p growth by ten to fifteen basis points and all of the programs that i mentioned today have extraordinarily high return on investments in short when moms do well our nation does well lifting families lifts our entire economy and strengthening the programs that allow moms and families to thrive is not only the right thing to do It's the smart thing to do for our nation as a whole. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Roe Finkbeiner. Uh, we I appreciate all of the testimony we heard today from our witnesses. And now we'll proceed to question and answer uh, a question and answer session with our members here today. I'll now recognize myself and Miss Kelso, I'm gonna start with you. First of all, thank you for sharing your personal story and your journey that you've been through, and how passion you are passionate you are about the work that you're involved with. um one of the things that you mentioned in your written testimony was reconnecting with your own children as part of your recovery process and can you talk about the role that the family hope center played and how those influences helped with your relationship with your children today you can hit your mike there

um so i did i lost custody of my children um and they terminated my rights and my job that i work for now they walked alongside me through that whole journey um they went to court cases with me they just encouraged me not to give up um after they terminated my rights they were the community that um uplifted me and um really gave me the strength to keep going um

and how is the relationship today

the relationship today so i am actually adopting um my sixth my seventeen he just turned seventeen my seventeen year old back from the state of missouri which is unheard of um and thursday they signed guardianship to my thirteen year old to me um so it's been amazing journey

well congratulations very happy for you yay

thank you

congratulations

oh

um well thank you very much um i'll now turn to mr. mr. winship um mr. winship one of the things um i find concerning is economic indicators that suggest that programs like universal basic income lead to a decline in work. There was a report by the CBO congressional budget office in twenty twenty five that found more Americans were dependent on welfare checks at the expense of work, and how low income families are becoming increasingly dependent on government transfers. Can you talk about the expansion of spending on anti-poverty programs since nineteen ninety six and how that has impacted trends in work among low income households?

Yes, thank you, Mister Chairman, for the question. Uh, so uh as I think you or Chairman Smith mentioned, currently the safety net has uh over eighty programs um that are serving low income people. We spend at the federal level, not even looking at what states, spend over a trillion dollars a year on anti-poverty programs. Um, that number's gone up by about a quarter of a trillion just since nineteen ninety six. Um, now some of those programs are uh work encouraging um the earned income tax credit um the additional child tax credit uh those are conditioned on uh having some earnings so those are those are actually helpful i think uh for helping more people become independent but others uh are not conditioned on work um that would include uh the snap program which uh food stamps uh as how most people know it by um which until uh ovb ba uh had you know very minimal work requirements to it so in some ways uh all of the trends that i recited are trends that occurred despite uh kind of an anchor um holding back uh the reforms to TANF because we have all these other programs that that retain work disincentives and marriage disincentives um so that that's a big problem the other the other thing i want to address uh related to calls for basic income they're really interesting um, experiments that are happening, um, one of the best ones was done by the open research, uh, guaranteed income study which gave a thousand dollars, uh, a month for three years to folks in Illinois and Texas. Um, what that study found actually is that, uh, employment dropped by four percentage points for the people that got uh the additional benefits. Um, if you look at how much people reduced their non-transfer uh income, for every dollar that they got in in the guaranteed benefit, Uh, that that was twenty eight cents. So for every dollar of of this guaranteed base income, they earned twenty eight cents less. If you look at families, uh, without a college education, that number is forty four cents to the dollar. Um, so there's, you know, there's there's not any doubt at all that we have to be really careful about how we design these safety net programs. Because some of them really can discourage work and be counter-productive in the end.

Thank you for that. Um, Miss Hanks, in your testimony you shared how you started out as a social worker in ninety-six and decided to leave after feeling like you weren't actually helping anyone. Can you describe what it's like working as a social worker when these welfare reforms were happening uh back then and how that compares to what you're doing today at the Elm Foundation?

Yes, sir. When I was working, I was actually working for the state of Alabama when that occurred. Um, we were grateful for the reform. Um, we knew that it would help the individuals that we served. What I saw was, individuals in my caseload that now had the work requirement, lots of them found it wasn't necessary to receive the AFDC or TANF anymore. I was absolutely shocked at that, but I think that might explain some of our numbers of yes, AFDC went down, but food stamps and other programs went up because it wasn't worth the effort to go out and satisfy, I literally had clients tell me that, it wasn't worth going the effort going out to satisfy the work requirement that they would rather just give up the the cash payment. Um I didn't see that a lot but I did see it. And again I felt like, ok well what we're doing here with these programs, we're not equipping people to become um long-term um steering their own ship, taking care of themselves, that it was generationally hurting people in my caseload. Um i will say that we do things extremely different at the elm foundation like i said we're effort-based and i'm not talking always being employed twenty hours we're we're talking effort sometimes a client comes in and at that moment and where they are in their circumstances the amount of effort they can give might be something as simple as going out and buying a calendar to keep in their purse you know we're starting with people um where they are and helping them to become um, you know, to have confidence that they know they can do more, um, both within work requirements, but also just life skills, because sometimes a person doesn't know if they weren't giving that, they weren't given those, uh, competencies from their family, then it's, um, our caseworkers that provide that for them, the support and the the moral support that they need.

Thank you for sharing that, Miss Hanks. I'll now turn to Mister Davis for his questions.

Thank you very much, Chairman, and let me thank all of our witnesses for their expert testimony. I really felt enlightened listening to the different concepts and ideas and beliefs and experiences. um mishrofink by with the blessing of what i call congressional republicans president trump has initiated and put over a hundred billion dollars on a war of choice in iran and will spend about uh one point four billion for the national guard to patrol d. c. and another five hundred million for a giant ballroom for the white house what what could these dollars have done for the moms that you represent

thank you so much for that question i happen to have a list the members of moms rising are republicans independents libertarians they live in every state in every congressional district and we hear from them everyday that what they want and need is healthcare and nutrition access because as i shared more than half of americans can't even afford healthcare anymore they need paid family medical leave when a new baby arrives or a serious health crisis strikes how many people here know that we are one of six nations on the entire planet earth that don't have that for new parents it's ridiculous it's costing thirty four billion dollars a year due to lack of access of paid family medical leave because parents are pushed out of the labor force just in times of need we need maternal health programs the united states now has the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed nation in the world that is not ok and black women are three times as likely to die in childbirth as white women and maternal care deserts now exist in more than thirty five percent of counties including fifty six percent of rural counties we need affordable accessible high quality child care nobody should pay more than ten dollars a day for their child care we need access to living wages for child care workers many of whom are moms including my own mom we need expanded ctc snap with medicaid and eitc to make sure families get the stability they need to get through difficult periods this all saves taxpayer dollars in the long run they don't just lift families i'm gonna share a couple return on investments snap republican economists estimate that for every one dollar in to snap taxpayers get back a dollar eighty childcare for every one dollar in to childcare taxpayers get back at least seven dollars and some studies show more than twenty dollars for high risk kids the ctc child tax credit for every one dollar in taxpayers get back as low as eight dollars but as much as fifteen dollars why because these programs are opening the door to dependence to responsibility to accountability and to freedom and choice of how we raise our kids and go to work these programs are critical and they should be funded instead of cut thank you so much for your question mr davis representative davis

thank you and let me ask you do you think that additional penalties and paperwork and proof uh stimulate or motivate individuals to become more actively engaged in seeking work

that's an excellent question and there is a lot of controversy surrounding mom's in work and i'll just say all mom's work i'm gonna say that right now caring for children is often treated as not working when a mom does it herself but the moment she needs someone else to provide that child care so she can go to a paid job we recognize it for what it is work expensive work as i mentioned child care now costs more than college moms know the value of work because they are working all the time whether that work comes with a paycheck or not and we don't need someone again withholding food or healthcare coverage to motivate us to work more programs like the ctc and tanf which get cash to families are so effective because they allow us to make the decisions about our families we were talking a minute ago about some pilot projects and waiting for some return on investments to come in and i wanna share a pilot project in michigan that is doing quite well rx kids in which moms receive a lump sum of fifteen hundred dollars during pregnancy and then five hundred dollars a month thereafter this provides lifesaving financial security that is universal and unconditional importantly the return on investment for rx kids already is for every one dollar in taxpayers are getting back four dollars back these programs are also resulting importantly in a fifty percent lower maternal mortality rate. Remember we're at the highest maternal mortality rate of any of the developed nations? These are lowering maternal mortality rates. They're boosting our economy. They're lifting families and they're opening doors to the opportunity to opportunity for everyone. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I go back.

Thank you, Mr. Davis, pursuant to committee practice, we'll now move uh two to one questioning. I recognize the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Carey.

uh i wanna thank uh thank you chairman of the hood and ranking member davis for holding this hearing uh to fully understand uh all the issues that uh that we have before us but i also wanna thank the witnesses for being here um we have mister damschroeder from the great state of ohio he's the director of the ohio department of job and family services uh services and you're the only if i'm correct the only state official here today and i'm gonna focus a majority of my questions on you. Being that you're from my home state, um, and a Columbus native, you also went to the Ohio State University.

Mm-hmm.

People have heard me talk about that a time or two here. I wanted to give you a chance to highlight some of the, and I know we spoke earlier in my office, but if you'd be so kind, Matt, if you could just kinda highlight some of the initiatives that we in Ohio, we have been blessed. I mean, we talk about thirty years. And uh, boy it seems like it's gone in a blink of an eye, doesn't it?

Yeah.

But we had a tremendous governor, and George Winovich, who really led the charge. And and now with Governor Mike DeWine and all of his initiatives. But Matt, if you could just maybe just highlight some of those things, please.

Sure. Uh, Congressman, so I I I would point specifically to the benefit bridge program that we've developed in Ohio that I mentioned briefly in my testimony. And it was you know ohio is one of the the few states that is a state supervised county administered and this idea actually came from some of our counties and the case workers who are in working with individuals uh on public assistance and what we often heard was that individuals on public assistance lacked the networks of support um and so by uh putting by creating this program uh we matched individuals participants with peer mentors connected them with uh financial literacy training uh and also paired some state general revenue dollars with TANF for things that weren't eligible for the for the federal TANF purpose uh in order to help fill some gaps

mmm

and really create an individualized plan to move off of public assistance and towards uh independence.

and and director i mean and for those who don't know ohio geography we have a very diverse state And our home city of Columbus, Ohio, was the test market for every single food uh that's that's brought into market. But but but initially our st- I mean but but additionally our state, but from Toledo to the Mahoning Valley, the Ohio Valley, the Miami Valley, the Queen City, and all points through Appalachia. Um, we have different states that have different needs, so can you talk a little bit about ODJFS's uh role in establishing the benefit bridge program as you've highlighted and what successes you've seen from allowing our counties eighty eight in the state of ohio um you know to implement it differently

uh so in in a in a sense the benefit bridge is kind of like a a little uh Aurora

mmm

in the sense that we're taking these federal dollars and instead of having a top-down one's fits all state program to push out to our eighty eight counties uh we're you know creating some some guardrails uh but we're letting each county kind of tailor that their service delivery to their individual residents and their individuals on public assistance really kind of putting the human back into human services

right

um because individuals aren't a program they're not an application they're a person who has individual and unique needs different from the next person and so by giving the counties the flexibility and a little bit of extra state dollars it really allows them to tailor the assistance that's needed for that household.

And and I know that uh you've worked very closely with our Ohio Senator John Husted and my colleague Blake Moore uh from Utah on the upward mobility act uh which would give states more flexibility to work on these benefit cliff issues or numerous programs. And I I know that uh the gentleman uh from uh Utah will probably address that. You wanna talk about that maybe a little bit more?

Yeah, so I I think as we look at it, again I mentioned that people aren't programs uh and as we've looked at it individuals are often on many different types of public assistance programs and all of those different programs from the federal government have different benefit cliffs different eligibility rules different definitions for what is eligible uh and so i think one of the the opportunities that is available to the states should the upward mobility act pass is to really kind of look at all of those things in a true continuum and align the different benefit cliffs to say we're gonna create this process where an individual is on these five programs and one falls off and then the next one falls off and the next one falls off uh and really create a a program or a process uh for moving that person off the public service

Director my time is up and I wanna thank you and I wanna thank all your team that came in from Ohio and I appreciate your testimony with that Mister Chairman I yield back.

Thank you Mister Kerry now I recognize Mister Yackem from Indiana.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, for holding this hearing today, and thank you to our witnesses for being here. In nineteen ninety-six, Republicans led the way uh in reforming our nation's welfare system and creating the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF program. These welfare reforms translated to significant positive outcomes for beneficiaries. Labor force participation among never married mothers rose almost f- fifteen percent in four years. That led to higher earnings and a decline in welfare dependence. While the creation of TANF was not a vast im- of creation, excuse me, while the creation of TANF was a vast improvement from prior cash entitlement programs, there are still improvements to be made to ensure resources are reaching the most vulnerable in our communities. I'm proud to lead the Reducing Bureaucracy for Uplifting Families Act, which would reduce the maximum percentage of TANF funds that States use for administrative expenses from fifteen percent to ten percent. This frees up more funds to go directly towards services and for families in need. Additionally, I believe we need to look at how we evaluate if programs are working, and are they meeting the needs of the intended uh use. Mister D- Dan Schroeder, your testimony mentions that federal performance metrics impact what states prioritize, even if it may not lead to the best long-term outcomes. Ohio is currently participating in a pilot program aimed at testing alternative outcomes our turn of outcomes-based metrics, such as improving employment and reducing reliance on federal programs. How have the changes in performance metrics impacted your work with beneficiaries?

So Congressman, um, one of the things that allows us to to do is is look at other other ways of approaching um you know, the return on investment other than just the workforce the work participation rate. And so part of what we've done with our benefit bridge program uh and also are doing with our pilot is to kind of create a uh we're we're using a scoring method uh called the empath uh score where we'll survey the individual coming into the program survey them at the at the end uh it measures different things across i think five or seven domains uh and instead of you know cause our ultimately the goal is to move person individual and that household towards independence and in some cases uh, especially for some of our individuals on, uh, our cash assistance program. You know, moving from fifty percent of federal poverty to a hundred and ten percent of federal poverty is a success story. And so we also want to measure all of the other things that's happening in that person's life around work preparedness, financial literacy, family connections, and the like.

Right. Thank you. And, uh, Miss Kelso, thank you for sharing your incredible story about overcoming poverty and abuse, recovering from addiction,

I would say that it did keep me stuck.

Mm.

for a long time um especially living in like low income housing and being engulfed in um a community that was stuck in crisis mode um and honestly it was easier to stay on dependence um without looking at the barriers of being a single mom of um not having child care not having a car um not having community was a big one um and so when i started to work i didn't have my children and i built a community that i needed um to be successful that i am today

how did working help you break out of that cycle

um so for long time i seen work as um just a a way to survive um and when i started looking at work like it gave me purpose and not um i need to make money to take care of my kids something inside my brain changed um and i started looking at um it really empowered me to wanna do better in all aspects of my life

you feel like he gave you a level of dignity because you're able to actually do it yourself and provide for your own family

um

as opposed to leaning on the government

yeah yeah absolutely um and you know there is that cliff that a lot of single parents or parents worry about where you don't make enough money to survive um and honestly with the job that i do have water gardens really taught me how to outsource that i'm not good at just being an operations manager i know how to cut yards or watch people's children um there's more to a paycheck than just going to one job everyday i mean i had to learn that because it didn't my brain wasn't functioned like that yet.

But thank you for having the boldness, the courage and the confidence to come here and share your story.

But but but but

I find it to be inspiring and thank you,

What was the other note you had to say?

Mister Chairman,

Uh, you

my yield back.

Is your testimony that you have more than one job, you've babysat

Miss Moore, we we you'll be recognized in a second here.

Oh I just

I'm gonna

I just I just didn't wanna lose that moment that

You you'll have a uh I'm gonna recognize Miss Chu for five minutes.

after the nineteen ninety-six welfare law as evidence that work requirements were successful. Miss Roe-Finkbeiner, I want to challenge that definition of success. When a family disappears from the TANF roles, that doesn't mean they've escaped poverty or that they are necessarily doing better. Now, Congress terminated the aid to families with dependent children federal income support and replaced it with TANF. And the share of struggling families receiving assistance fall from two thirds to less than a fourth. But, um, what happened was that even though immediately afterwards child poverty did fall, in the long run TANF contributed significantly to an increase in deep poverty among children. And today, less than one in four families in deep need in America receive TANF. And in fact, a key reason for the lower caseload has to do with something called the hassle factor. And that was coined, a term coined by the Heritage Foundation. They said the primary reason for TANF case closing nationally was the failure to submit paperwork, attend meetings, or meet other administrative requirements. It wasn't because families no longer need it. that assistance. And doesn't that sound familiar? That's exactly what Republicans have done with the big ugly bill, where new SNAP and Medicaid work requirements quickly have been kicking parents and children off their food assistance and health coverage. So, Miss Roe, think-finder, can you talk about the danger of measuring the success of these programs by how many people you can kick off of them rather than whether families actually no longer need the assistance and what does TANF's thirty year history tell us about? what happens to the millions of families now losing snap and Medicaid under republican's big ugly bill

i sure can i can also talk about the danger of measuring the success by the number of moms who are now in the labor force the amount of money that it costs to raise children right now is a hundred and forty thousand dollars per family according to external analysis that's seventy thousand dollars a parent there are pressures on parents right now that are pushing parents into the labor force because the cost of child care health care food groceries gas everything are so high so to put the success of tanf measuring the amount of moms in the labor force is erroneous to the facts that are happening right now now the lesson we should take from the last thirty years is that families need a care infrastructure not because they lack responsibility or ambition but because life happens a baby is born a spouse dies a child or a parent gets sick a job disappears and child care costs more than a paycheck and gas is skyrocketing the question for policymakers right now shouldn't be how quickly we can take away assistance from families when those things happen it should be how we open avenues for families to regain their footing to care for their own children to stay connected to work to contribute to their communities and to move toward greater economic security parents shouldn't have to be working more than one job we have parents all over the country and even on this panel who are working more than one job and you know what the job that is left behind caring for our children that's a job too we need a care infrastructure so that we can take care of our children and provide for ourselves and live good lives having said that building a care infrastructure isn't just about opening avenues

uh i wanted to ask you another question and that's about the barriers for parents to employment and uh around the time of of uh the TANF program being formed uh people were described as lazy dishonest they were even called welfare queens but what americans need is the removal of barriers that stand in their way in fact you talk about the story of amparo who was a clinical research manager before she became a mother she wanted to continue her career but infant and toddler care was so expensive she literally could not afford to work and she eventually relied on medicaid and wick but as you point out those programs weren't what kept her from working it was a lack of affordable child care so can you just say a word or two about what uh what problem does imposing a work requirement actually solve

yeah i mean she's an excellent story it's in my written testimony if people wanna read the whole thing uh her income was gone because she was pushed out of labor force because child care cost more than her pay and so when her family was struggling to make ends meet she turned to medicaid and to wic and those programs didn't keep her from working the lack of affordable child care did but because of wic and medicaid her child had food and health care while she was struggling but her story doesn't end there this fall she was entering the the workforce because her son is now eligible for new york city's universal three k program we're seeing here how child care how paid family medical leave how all of these programs are on ramps to the labor force and to opportunity and they need to be funded not defunded

thank you miss chiu and now recognize mr. miller of ohio

thank you mr. chairman truly appreciate it and thank you for the witnesses uh being here today and miss kelso thanks for your personal story uh it's very touching and things like that matter a lot so thank you very much um thirty years ago the personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation nineteen ninety six replaced a flawed open-ended entitlement uh with a program built on a simple idea work should be a part of the deal the results speak for themselves welfare rolls went down eighty five percent labor force participation among never married mothers went up from fifty nine to seventy four percent and real earnings roughly doubled but thirty years later there's still much work to do cash assistance is now less down from over seventy percent in nineteen ninety six and hhs has found dollars flowing to households well above the poverty line even college scholarships for six figure earners with no federal requirement to track improper payments that's why i cosponsored rep kerry uh he's preventing waste fraud and abuse in tanf act work is one of the most powerful ways to lift people out of poverty and tanf proves snap and medicaid never had work requirements as a stronger consistent as tanf's and their own costs and caseloads have climbed steadily as a result of that which is why this committee acted through the working families and tax cut plan i thank our witnesses especially those with ground level experience as i had mentioned earlier thank you very much uh and look forward to building on the real lessons of nineteen ninety six um thank you uh director damschroeder ohio is one of only five states participating in the redesigned tanf pilot to study work participation outcomes what is ohio doing differently under the pilot and how will you know whether families are actually becoming more self-sufficient

uh congressman one of the things that that we're doing differently uh as a result of the pilot is improving the way that our county human services agencies work closely with the state's vocational rehab uh agency uh and so in this case you know think of an individual who is receiving uh ohio works first cash assistance um and as a part of the process you know an an addiction is is identified or a disability or something of that nature so instead of saying simply alright we're going to waive the work requirements uh we instead make a referral to the voc rehab agency to have a conversation about what supports are needed for that individual in order to you know address addiction issues or what are the conversations that need to be had with an employer uh around accommodation what do we need to do to help find an appropriate uh an appropriate employment opportunity. Governor DeWine talks a lot about making sure that Ohio is a place where every individual can fulfill their God-given potential, whatever that is for that person. And so I think what we have with the TANF uh uh pilot is the up opportunity to be creative and individualized in helping that that to happen.

Yeah.

Um it that's awesome to hear, I mean it is incredibly heartwarming, I mean right now right, support means a lot, and um I know you and I have talked about it in the past but overall you know being there for someone just to tell them hey you did an awesome job today right or give someone a pat on the back or a high five or shake their hand right uh and that's why i'm such a big believer in technical education because it gives that added level of support and care um so thank you for that answer um i'm going right back to you i'm in ohio and you're in ohio and sorry witnesses i'll make it easy uh director dampschroeder again uh ohio has become a national leader in attracting businesses and creating jobs

yes sir

How have the state's welfare and workforce policies helped support the economic growth and what lessons should congress take from ohio s approach to connecting people in public assistance with work?

Uh, so, uh Congressman, so Ohio a number of years ago, under Governor Taft, uh combined the state's workforce agency and human services agency to create twenty five years ago the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. And so what that means is in most of Ohio's eighty-eight counties the the american jobs center is in the exact same building uh as the public assistance office and so in most of our counties what we're finding uh as i mentioned in my testimony we're kind of moving towards a work first mentality is when a person comes in to apply for snap or medicaid uh we do all of those things and work that process in the application to get them approved and then as a part of that visit we you know take them by the hand figuratively and walk them to the other side of the building and say let's have a conversation about work and let's have a conversation about training uh and one of the things that we've heard from our employers is that you know help a person uh with the soft skills necessary we'll train them for the job in our restaurant our factory or wherever it is but help them with those soft skills and so a lot of the things that we're doing around that training component isn't necessarily you know getting them uh a a certification and a two year degree uh right off the bat uh in advanced manufacturing But it's some of those initial certifications that are necessary to help get them in the door, uh, and get a toehold in a new career path.

Damn. Thank you very much. Uh, truly appreciate your answers. Thank you to all the witnesses. I'm over time. I yield back to you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Miller, and now recognize Mr. Bean of Florida.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon to you. Good afternoon, Ways and Means, uh, subcommittee, and to our all-star panel. Welcome to Capitol Hill. You'll always get to say from this day forward, That time I testified before Congress. That's what you'll get to uh to uh say. Uh, you can say you gave them the business. How about that? Uh, let's talk about nineteen ninety six. It was a year of big change in America. Uh, Microsoft upended the word processing realm by introducing Word. How about this? The VHS uh VHS tapes uh market was uh rocked. by the creation of the DVD. How about that forever changed? And it changed again. How about that since then? And that was the same year that Congress says we've gotta change welfare. It's not working. We went from uh welfare that incentivized government dependency, having more babies out of wedlock, intergenerational poverty, it rewarded that and changed the dynamic to empowerment, putting people to work, uh, by creating the temporary assistance for needy families. And the numbers, I won't say what, uh, Congressman Miller just said, but the numbers are fantastic. I mean, we have, uh, uh, have really changed the directory. Uh, and Miss Kelso, you are one of the, the poster children of, uh, of making that change. I've got a question for you coming up in just a moment. But the nature of government, I'll tell you, being in Congress, it's a constant state of what can we do better? What can we do better? So even right now, we've come a long way. Uh, what can we do better and where do we go from uh here? I know the answer, what it's not, is blaming the other party. We're celebrating a creation, a bipartisan uh creation and the uh the answer is not just gonna point the finger and blame uh anybody. So, but I wanna look back and say uh one of the challenges of creating a program that incentivizes work is uh, is trying to have uh encouraging people to get to work and get them out the door and get them going, They don't wanna earn anything because they don't wanna reduce their their benefits. That's a uh, that's a very tough one. So, uh, toss up. Uh, I look at Miss Hanks, you're nodding. Uh, Mister Damschroeder, Mister Winship, you're ready to jump in. Who wants it? It's just a toss up. What do we do? What's the secret sauce of uh of incentivizing people to get out the door, get out there and go get them and start earning? Who say, what say you, Mister Winship? What say you?

Uh, thank you for the question, Congressman. uh i uh so i i i think to your point um benefit clips are a big problem um even even not the clips just the fact that as you earn uh additional uh money your benefit gets down goes gets reduced um that's a real work disincentive um there aren't great ways i think to uh to deal with that by

right

playing around with what that phase out looks like you know you could you could get rid of it and make it flat and that's basically a universal benefit super expensive plus now you're bringing middle class families onto the safety net.

It's just tough uh it's tough. I know, Haya, what say you, Mister Damschroeder, can you do it in ten seconds? There's there a twenty second answer.

Uh, well, well the short answer is uh similar to uh to the other witness, uh having programs that align um to reduce those cliffs I think is important. We saw it during the pandemic, we saw it uh when Governor DeWine expanded uh SNAP eligibility to two hundred percent uh so that the government programs stopped competing against the private sector for work.

I like it. No, I I I like it. Uh, Miss Kelso, you have an incredible success story. You were at the bottom. You were at the bottom. And uh, you bounced and you came up. Uh, I know your folks. Have to be really proud of you.

Yeah, they are.

What what you've overcome. They are. That's uh, that's fantastic. Um. What's missing? Is there something missing in future welfare reform that we need to to give? I know there's benefit and I know we wanna. I do also wanna correct the record of the big beautiful bill, uh, didn't cut, must be sure, let's be uh clear, it didn't cut uh health care. What it says is if you're able-bodied and can, you need to go to work and there's dignity in work. And you just said it, having a reason to get out of bed. So we didn't cut, well, we didn't cut uh these these programs. Also, moms are exempt, if you have a dependent kid, you're you're exempt from work requirements. You you you don't have to uh to uh to go to work. We all wanna help the most needy. What what ingredient are we missing, Miss Kelso, is there something else that in future welfare reform you think needs to be added to the mix?

I think like really seeing people as a whole, not as this statistic, sorry, statistic, um, really maybe trying to individualize what you're doing. Cuz if you look at somebody that, um, is in that cliff, and you look at the bills that are usually going out and what they're making, um, literally they're better off being on government assistance than than not being um and so what do you do about that that's the that's the part also mental health is a big thing addiction is a big thing trauma um but you guys can't force anybody to deal with those so um our uh i would say the united states might have some issues but

uh thank you we're proud of you and uh hope to chat further and uh build this recipe. Mister Chairman I yield back. Thank you so much.

Thank you Mister Bean. Now recognize Miss Moore of Wisconsin.

Thank you for all for being here. Um Mister Winship um your testimony starts out with a welfare reform and it's discontents. So I guess I would be that discontent at least on this panel. I just wanna make a point. that Miss Hanks, Mister Domschroeder, Miss Kelso, Miss Ro Finkbeiner, all your testimonies disagree with mister Winship. Did you, am I the only person that's noticed that? Even you, Miss Hanks, you talked about being frustrated as a professional social work and not being able to help people. But now you're in a program where you can. deal with people as individuals, and that's very expensive to deal with people and do an individual plan for them, you know, with your waiver to be able to do that, to be able to fill in the gaps. This person you're talking about who's a nurse, that's disallowed under most TANF programs. People can't, women can't go to college uh, and still get daycare and food stamps and And uh um something. So that is a phenomenal story that many people will not be able to experience. Miss Kelso, I'm so happy um to hear about your story as well, but I am appreciate your last comment that, you know, people cannot do this when they hit these benefit cliffs. I mean, mister uh Don Shorter, you talked about somebody who has one hundred and ten percent of the poverty level And they're taking care of their kids and all of a sudden they're making nineteen hundred dollars a month. And I live in Milwaukee, I don't live in Chicago or New York or LA, but if you're poor, you better be able to spend fourteen hundred hundred dollars a month on a unit in Milwaukee. And they made nineteen. And all of a sudden they now can't have SNAP. They, it's not true, uh, as my colleague indicated, that that adults are exempt. from work requirements if they have kids now you can't get Medicaid now you can't and as she said you're better off not working you get nineteen hundred dollars a month cause you're ten percent over the poverty level for two people and all of a sudden you know you're getting evicted because i mean y'all do the math the rent is fifteen hundred dollars a month and you get nineteen hundred dollars You know, and and and because you're working, you know, and work is not paying. Now, I I have a question before I move on to ask Miss Roe uh, bind finger question. You said that wages for welfare recipients increased, they doubled. What, from zero to what? Double zero is still zero. What what what what what was the you You talk about the reduction of the caseloads, but you don't talk about getting people out of poverty. What is your evidence and your research that the wages that these women got got them out of poverty? You didn't you you had a long testimony and you didn't Lots of numbers, one point nine increase in in employment versus over the decade. And then the next decade, there was another one point nine. I mean, it just it was hard to you know i ain't smart as you so i had a hard time understanding your point your point is that it it accomplished what it accomplished cause there were more black women that didn't have auto wedlock births but white women it was ok for them to have auto wedlock births cause they simply had delayed having kids crazy testimony but so you disagree with all the rest of these panelists that people need child care if they're gonna work. People need snap. If they, if you can incentivize them, get them to work. People need healthcare. You disagree. You're saying that this extra help that they get, dis-incentivize them to work.

Is that a question, Blase?

Yes, sir. It is.

Uh, so I think you've characterized a lot of things that I actually didn't say.

But you, you just said race was a proxy, so you just talk about I can go over your entire testimony. But we but they the chairman is not gonna let me do it. But I read it. I'm I read it.

OK. So the point that I made in the paper, uh, coming back to the point about whether caseload decline is the thing that we should care about. If the caseloads had declined as much as they did, and poverty hadn't fallen or poverty increased, I would be the first person to speak up against wealth.

Did, okay, okay, did, okay, Miss uh, Miss Rove, thank minder, cuz you're gonna cut me off. Did poverty decrease as a result of welfare reform?

the way TANF is described the way TANF was implemented was different in every state which makes it very difficult to get a standard roi on what happened with TANF which is why we have experiments happening right now like in ohio what we do know is that the initial investment of sixteen point five billion is dated nineteen ninety six we learned we had what vcr's happening right and we know that we've lost fifty percent of that influx influx of funds due to inflation we know that TANF is outdated we also know that congress did just cut a trillion from healthcare medicaid and failed to expand and extend the a c a tax credits which is pushing families off of healthcare which is causing hospitals to close which is causing children to not be able to get the care they need moms not to be able to get the care they need and many of those cuts are not expected to go into place until twenty twenty seven so we know we have a healthcare emergency we have a family economic security emergency we have an affordability emergency and we thank the members of congress like you who are standing up for families in this time of need

and one hundred percent of the job loss in the last quarter was women

yes

and black women the people who are having the babies according to you mister wenschapp eh eh eh uh i i got your testimony right here sir

if you'd like to read it i would support it miss moore miss moore

and and

Miss Moore, I've been generous with a minute thirty over your time.

Mister Chairman, Mister Chairman, you are always so generous, and I appreciate your generosity. And I wanna appreciate all of the testimony that we heard here today. Thank you, and I yield back.

Thank you. Thank you.

Now recognize uh Mister Moran of Texas.

Thank you Mister Chairman, thanks to all the witnesses here today to talk about this important topic of TANF. Uh, a lot of folks don't know much about TANF and I hope their they're learning more about it today and the things that we need to continue to improve on. Uh, a lot of folks don't know that the really the the end goals come down to four things. We're trying to provide assistance to needy families with children so they can live in their own homes or uh homes of relatives that we're trying to end dependence of needy parents on government benefits through work. Hear hear me say that clearly. I think some of you have said that. We're here to end dependence on government. We don't wanna increase dependence on government. We want them to get prepared for a job and and prepared for marriage. We wanna reduce uh out of wedlock pregnancies and promote the formation and maintenance of two parent families. I've been talking about this for a long time. That fourth one in particular is really important to me. They're very worthy goals, all four of them, because ultimately what we wanna do is restore dignity through work. Um, Miss Hanks, I think you're the one that said you can have both compassion and accountability. I love that. I love the way that you describe that because that is exactly spot on. So, Mister Damschoter, I wanna come to you first and talk about fourth goal, the fourth sighted goal of TANF which is to uh promote the formation and maintenance of two parent families. Uh in your written testimony you discus- discussed the work Ohio is doing to focus on TANF uh purpose number four, which I just sighted for you. You specifically mentioned Ohio's fatherhood initiatives. Earlier this Congress I introduced the White House Council on Fathers and Sons Act which would establish a council for coordinating efforts across federal agencies to address challenges facing fathers and young men. We've got one already established for women and girls, but I happen to think we shouldn't leave the dads behind. Um, this council would also promote the important role that fathers play in families, critically important, to help address the ri- rising mental health challenges facing men and boys, and to support the development of programs that help sons successfully transition into adulthood. I cannot tell you the number of times I have conversations with uh young ladies that are looking for real men in this world. And it's hard for them to find. Uh, so I'd sure like to help restore uh that role of men and fathers and sons in the family and keep that that biblical institution of marriage really, uh, as defined by our Judeo-Christian heritage, one, at the front and center of all that we do because that leads to so many great positive outcomes in our nation. I'd like for you to elaborate if you could on the investments that Ohio is making in fatherhood initiatives, the impact that you're seeing from those investments, and how this committee can help ensure that other states have the tools and resources necessary to make similar investments.

Thank you, Congressman, and and I would really uh focus in on one one particular uh organization in Ohio, a group uh that's in some of our larger metro counties called Dads to Be. Um, and they received funding from our state fatherhood commission. uh that is almost entirely funded uh with tanf and uh as i mentioned kind of briefly in in my testimony what dads to to be uh you know helps uh those dads sometimes married to mom sometimes not um understand what their role is uh in um uh helping uh helping mom uh during the pregnancy um and and afterwards and so as i as i mentioned some of the things that we talk about is the role of the dad in in the household um uh around smoking cessation and uh and uh and alcohol abuse and those kinds of things the role of the dad in helping mom get to prenatal appointments uh and all of the things that needs to happen post delivery as well and so what we have seen uh is uh is some improved outcomes in communities that have uh high infant mortality rates and would certainly uh welcome any member of the committee to come to ohio uh meet with Kim Dent the head of our fatherhood commission visit the the folks with dads to be and see first hand some of the great things that are happening because of the investment of ten F dollars uh in this for fourth for the purpose

I miss roe uh finkbeiner I wanna just give you a shout out to one thing that you said actually earlier. You said that there's not a harder job I think I'm quoting you right than being a mom and I'm gonna agree with that. My wife and I are raising four kids together and it is a tough gig but she's a She's chosen to be a stay-at-home mom and there is no harder job than raising kiddos. It's very tough. So for all those stay-at-home moms out there, a shout out to them for the great work that they're doing at home. Miss Kelso, for the millions of Americans who may be going through a difficult season, similar to the one that you experienced. What would you want them to know about their own potential, uh their eternal value, and the import importance of having someone believe in them?

Um, not to give up. Sorry. Um, not to give up that no matter how low you go, that um, there's always a way out if you put in the work and you believe in yourself and um, build community.

Yeah, your story is truly inspiring. We thank you for being here today, cuz I think in all of the data, in all of the discussion, uh, we do not wanna lose sight of the fact that there are wonderful, great stories like yours of people who faced challenges that said, overcome that challenge, I'm gonna make different decisions, I'm going to reach the American dream in my life because I have value. And I want you to hear me say that I know you and every other person on this earth has equal and eternal value and a great calling in this life, we want them to achieve it, not to be restrained from it. So we wanna make sure TANF works to that, to that end. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I yield back.

Thank you, Mr. Moran. Now recognize Miss Van Dyne of Texas.

Thank you very much. Um, you know, thirty years ago, republicans led the bipartisan welfare reforms that ended the old entitlement without accountability programs and created the TANF program we've got today that has real work requirements and time limits on assistance these reforms recognize that a job is more than a paycheck work is dignity independence and the ability to chart your own future with a paycheck and since these changes were made in nineteen ninety six caseloads crashed by eighty seven percent earnings and employment among single mothers rose sharply. But despite these enormous improvements, today we still have an accountability program uh problem. As our witnesses have mentioned, the non-cash assistance and block grants that make up the bulk of TANF are not always tracked closely. And so I want to focus on the lack of real accountability with with nonprofits and providers that take these dollars, and sometimes just have nothing to show for it. And and maybe these groups generally do, genuinely do want to help mothers and children, but the government hasn't done enough to make sure that their work is actually having an impact. american taxpayers deserve to know that their money is helping families become self-sufficient and not being passed along through a bureaucratic web of nonprofits that are absorbing timid funds year after year uh in other in other words uh where we we need to start measuring not just spending but actual results and i appreciate miss calcio you coming and you sharing that you know as a a a a single mom myself yeah i moved out of my house when i was seventeen i got two full time jobs um and i was a single mom myself i appreciate the fact that we we are not just putting women in a position of being a hundred percent dependent on the government. Because it seems like that's what we're hearing, that they want free health care, they want free child care, uh, free supplies, free parental leave, um, give them a lump sum and then monthly stipends. Like, what is the incentive if you get paid to to do that? What is the incentive to actually get a job where you can be successful, where you can put money away? it seems like all that they want them to do is basically act as if the government is their husband that they are hundred percent on the government giving them handouts to be successful it's the exact opposite of being independent what happened to that weren't we like independent women but no what we're gonna do is keep women poor keep women pregnant and keep women getting a handout from the government is that what you wanted when you when you you know decided that you were gonna become independent and a strong woman Absolutely not. So I appreciate your story and listening to that is not the way it has to be. Um, women can actually be very successful in the workforce, we are forces of nature's. Moms can be great, you know, um, inspiration to their kids and show them that there is a way out through hard work. And, you know, we're providing them with with work assistance, we're providing them with learning the skills, and we're they're hooking up with jobs. We just had one of our largest job fairs ever. We had fifty thousand people who came out to our job fair. You wanna know why? Cuz we had six hundred and seventy businesses that were hiring sixty eight thousand positions. This is what we've got in the state of Texas. And we had a lot of women coming out and getting jobs that day. But I've got a, I've got a question, Ms. Hanks. Um, you described the social service world as the wild, wild west. Non-profits and agencies are offering the same services with no outcome tracking for the funds that they're receiving. TANF gives states a huge amount of flexibility in how they spend those dollars. If a non-profit is receiving TANF money, what basic proofs should that organization have to provide a tax?

well i will give you my opinion for what that's worth so we actually do have a mechanism to track like i said in huntsville alabama now not all agencies will avail themselves to that um like i said government agencies do not put data in that system but what we are finding is there is a duplication of services i can tell you of one entity in particular that is a government agency that receive the es the esg funding the cdbg all those things and are giving out payments but the individuals are sometimes also going to private nonprofits to get the same assistance um that is a problem it's a problem because you know it it's not fair because we're not able to serve all the people that need the assistance but it also is not fair to the nonprofits who are um giving out money in good faith so that they are they think they're serving someone um in an efficient efficient way but that's not happening so we do have the mechanism to do it it's just that um incentivizing everybody to do is another thing and that's where you guys come in

alright there you go thank you i've got a quick question i know i have hardly any time but director damster ohio's tentative pilot program moves away from the old way of counting work activities toward actual employment and earning outcomes how are you making sure the nonprofits and community providers you work with are those same standards so that taxpayer dollars are actually reducing long-term dependency.

So ultimately uh quickly uh most of the entities that are doing that case level work with in the within the TANF pilot uh are actually our county job and family services offices uh in some cases they are working with uh goodwill uh catholic social services and others to provide some of the services but most of the uh situations it's the our county job and family services folks who are actually doing that case level work in making referrals and in some cases actually managing the community engagement activities.

Alright, thank you. I yield back.

Thank you, Miss Van Duyn. Now recognize Miss Del Benny of Washington.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, thank you to all the witnesses for being here and, um, I I wanna spend a special thank you to Kristen Rohfinkbeiner, the fantastic leader of Moms Rising and also a constituent of the First Congressional District of Washington. It's great to see you. Um, as we mark the thirtieth anniversary of TANF, we should use this moment for an honest reflection on the economic realities of the people the program is meant to support. Um, hard-working families are facing higher costs for food, housing, health care, child care, and they deserve greater access to opportunities that promote economic mobility and financial stability. And for me, this work always comes back to a very core question. Are we building an economy that actually works for families, families all across the country? When families are stretched thin by rising costs, and many of these rising costs, the direct result of policies put in place um by Republicans in Congress right now, those pressures directly impact whether parents can stay in the workforce, whether kids have stability, and whether our communities are thriving. And um that's why I've long been advocated for uh important policies that help families in particular the permanent expansion of the child tax credit. At its core, the child tax credit reflects the simple value that every child deserves a fair chance to succeed. And when we give families the tools to succeed, we see better outcomes across the board. The data is clear. And um we see our children doing better, parents staying to work first, our economy growing stronger, and we actually save money. if you care uh in our physical responsibility and look at that we save money. So I wanted to ask uh Miss Roefinkbeiner, you noted in your testimony that when Democrats expanded the child tax credit, it helped families afford essentials like child care and groceries, and enabled parents to stay in the workforce during difficult periods. Based on what you're hearing from moms across the country, would restoring a fully expanded monthly child tax credit help parents remain in the workforce stay financially stable? and help make sure our kids are getting off to a great start and if so how is that doing

absolutely we've seen that when we had the expanded child tax credit monthly payments that doors were open to opportunity it was not a reason to stop working it was a path to working and to success it was money for child care so a parent could go to work it was money for gas to get to a job money for rent school supplies the unexpected expenses can be thrown to already tight family budgets take the example of amber a mom's rising member and mom of two in new hampshire who experienced that first hand she ran an in-home child care business until her landlord sold the building where she both lived and worked it cost her both her home and her livelihood all at once she began delivering groceries to earn money while her family was unhoused the monthly child tax credit helped her pay for the gas that she needed to make those deliveries and earn an income while also helping her daughter to get to multiple medical appointments each week. For amber the support wasn't a substitute for work, it helped her work. That's the lesson that we should take from the last thirty years. Families need a care infrastructure not because they lack ambition, but because life happens. The question for policymakers should not be how quickly we can take assistance away from families when life happens, it should be how we can open avenues for families to thrive now you mentioned something really important and i found a stat that i just loved about the ctc which is that some estimates indicate that making the ctc expansion permanent would cost us ninety seven billion dollars per year but it would generate social benefits with net present value of nine hundred and eighty two billion dollars per year opening avenues for families to thrive opens avenues for our economy to thrive too and we need to do better for our families taniff is thirty years old our social network needs updating um i just wanna mention one thing about uh the idea about the government being our husband and i would like to share that not once have i heard from any member of mom's rising that they would like to be married to the government but what i have heard is that they would like healthcare and they would like paid family medical leave which congress actually heads and so when i was getting ready to come here to fly across the country to come here i wanted to pickup this suit it's really cute suit i think so and when i went to the counter i went up and they said krista are you going to a wedding and i was like no i am going to congress and they said well what the heck are you doing there and i said i am talking about uh welfare reform actually and they said really could you please bring a message from the people of washington that if we can have congress have access to healthcare all the time then we should have access to health care all the time. And if Congress can take paid family medical leave when they get sick, as they do, then we should get the same. This isn't about disempowering people. This is about opening avenues for everybody to be able to do their job, raise their families and thrive. And I just had to comment on that. So thank you for letting me share my sweet story.

Thank you. Um, I yield back, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Miss DelBene, and I'll recognize Mister Feenstrup, Iowa.

Thank you, Chairman LeHood, and thank you, Ranking Member Davis, holding this hearing. Um, it's a very important hearing. And, uh, I just wanna also thank our witnesses for your testimony. I'm impressed with what you're doing in each state. Uh, Miss Kelso, I'm impressed. You're an amazing person. You truly are. Um, you know, TANF reforms have helped millions of people. And our whole goal should have been, and it's been over decades, right, of of taking work uh taking welfare and getting people to work that's what we wanna do that should be our goal uh miss uh you just said it you know we don't wanna be married to government i mean no one wants that right no one wants that we we wanna get people where they can have a purpose a purpose in life when a purpose happens it's usually through work it's through achieving things uh miss you sort of noted that right i mean you get purpose when you when you have a job so so we have a lot of things that we can continue to work with with TANF um it's interesting that that the geo gao has plainly said that weak safeguards make tanf easy to abuse yet and that means that people are misusing money and that goes with money being lost that is not helping uh people that really need it families that really need it um when we talk about work uh lifting people out of poverty you know it it it's sort of this accountability as you noted miss hanks accountability and compassion, how they they both work together. And and and we have to have both. And as a federal government, that's what we have to look at and and direct our thoughts on on how that gets done. So, Director uh Hamshoder, I just wanna talk to you about uh what you're doing in Ohio, the pilot studies that you're doing, replacing old participation work rates with real employment and earning outcomes. How has that changed casework behavior? I'm sure all of a sudden your caseworkers changed, all right, they had to go through the process. Uh, so what lessons can we as Congress learn? So, so I always look at these states as incubators, you're an incubator state. How can we take what you have learned and pass it on to other states?

Uh, Congressman, so I would say what is what we're learning,

Yes.

uh, because we're just starting, but I think one of the things that, that, uh, we expect will, will pay dividends is we have made a huge investment around human centered design. And so spending a lot of time actually talking to the individuals and the households and the families who are on public assistance and actually talking to the nonprofits uh that support them to find out what are the things that we're that you need and what are the things that government is doing that we need to stop doing and get out of your way in order to do.

Right.

Uh so that's you know the human centered design component has been a big piece because ultimately you know we ordinarily we have these uh you know intense frameworks of government programs applications and eligibility and the like and we do a lot of box checking

yep

uh but really the goal of our pilot is to say you know we still have the accountability we still have the eligibility we still have the the uh safeguards but what are the things that people actually need

yep

in their individual lives and the role in the programs absolutely

creating independence and sort of individual for each one probably each program is different specialize for each family or each individual is that fair statement

that's exactly right and it's at some level it's kind of putting the social work back in social work

yep

uh, in the human back in human services and really, you know, again, move from a transactional uh activity to something that we hope is transformational.

Yep. So that probably inspires caseworkers. I mean, it gives them value also,

Oh. Absolutely.

seeing fruits of their labor.

Absolutely.

So how, if, so you go county by county, uh, do you see differences? Obviously, you have different demographics in each county, a different, you know, a lot of different things happening. I mean, do you see where some counties, some things work and some things don't? I guess I'm, I, the reason I'm asking that is so if a federal mandate one size fits all never works we know that uh that's why we love is the states to do this but how can you we look at county by county and the different demographics and and how we can make changes i mean would this ai would that help or i'm just brainstemmed

well i mean at some level what what we're doing as i mentioned it's it's kind of a continuation of TANF generally is to give flexibility ultimately in with the goal of helping individuals around these four purposes Uh, and so for us, you know, we spent a lot of time, as and as I mentioned, kind of part of the idea came from county caseworkers. Yeah. Uh, and so, you know, giving them the flexibility within guardrails. And what we've done is we've iterated a little bit, uh, after a couple of years of doing the benefit bridge to turn it into, Yep. uh, the TANF pilot. We've, you know, identified some things that are more useful than others, some ideas for how to leverage something in a different way. And so we have the counties sharing that information across with each other. It's good. Again, some counties small counties uh you know it's the county case worker who is doing all the work some of our larger metros are bringing some of the nonprofits into that space to give them a hand

oh thank you uh miss anks I I don't have any time left but I wanted to ask you about individualized plans so I'll give you ten seconds uh what do you how do you see individualized plans what what you're doing in Alabama

yeah so I can speak to the elm foundation and every person has an individualized plan

yes wow

based on what they what their needs are and what their aspirations are

yup making a difference

yes sir

awesome

absolutely

thank you thank you for each witness thank you and again miss counsel kudos to you you're back

thank you mister feenstra um now recognize mister moore of utah who is not on the subcommittee but thought it was important enough for him to be here uh and so he's waived onto the subcommittee today you're welcome mister moore thank you

thank you chairman i appreciate being let back on the committee that i love so much and to rejoin for the day i really do appreciate it thank you member davis appreciate your organization and getting us to be able to have this um this hearing today it's uh a hugely important hearing um but even more importantly i wanna thank my good friend from wisconsin who's now gonna look up and smile at me yeah we're we're we share the same surname but very close friends i have a sincere ask for you i won't put you on the spot but i do have a sincere ask and um because it's been brought up several times today it's cause i think you actually hit it home the best you got a little frustrated when you were talking about like the answer's right there like we cannot have these cliffs happen and then disincentivize people from being able to to to to bring themselves out of the situation and and and and and use the programs that we all want to have we all want welfare programs to be um an opportunity to assist somebody to become self-sufficient like i'd i honestly i don't think any single person in this particularly in this committee and in our larger committee, truly wants that. Uh, the Upward Mobility Act. So, we know that work is the most powerful way to move out of the poverty and reforms to our welfare systems thirty years ago made meaningful strides to uplift recipients to self-sufficiency but these programs are still not perfect as we would all agree, and in some cases benefit cliffs prevent those trying to work from taking that next job or promotion. It is a real tangible um hindrance to coming out of it. So to combat this, I introduced the Upward Mobility Act with Senator Husted, which would create a pilot program for states to combine funding from multiple federal anti-poverty programs, including TANF into a single funding stream, reducing bureaucracy while providing for immediate needs of the vulnerable populations. Um my ask to Ms. Moore, to every single democrat on this committee, would you at least be willing to read this bill? would you at least be willing to engage and consider signing on because the intent was absolutely to be something that could move the needle in this regard. And I seriously would allow you to speak on this.

Oh, thank you for yielding, uh, Representative Moore. If TANF had offered the ability for people to rise up out of poverty and be lifted out of poverty through this programming, they would have stormed the White House and demanded it. Um, but it doesn't. That program has always worked the way Mister Winship says it ought to. It incentivizes you, forces you to go to work, and as soon as you make one dollar over the poverty level, you no longer have any other help. And it's an unsustainable model. To hear uh Miss Hanks talk, Mister Dom Schroeder, I mean, that is very expensive to give people one-on-one help. But that's what does it. everybody who has succeeded, Miss Kelso has had someone who gave her wrap around services and she was not trying to figure out how to pay the rent while she was getting treatment.

So, right.

I yield back, I yield to you, yes.

Thank you. The the the flexibility provided in the upward mobility act is sincerely trying to accomplish what we all want to do with respect to benefits cliffs. The uh the bill has support of Utah's Governor Cox, Ohio's Governor DeWine. I'd like to also enter in a testimony from Nick Dunn, senior fellow at the Southern Institute on the Upward Mobility Act.

Without objection.

Um, thank you, as well as a letter from Americans for Prosperity highlighting the bill.

Without objection.

Thank you.

I'll read it today.

Director Danchik. Absolutely. I it's a sincere request. I wanna broaden this out so people can really, I mean, we've talked, we've all talked about from both sides of the aisle and from from the witness stand, like, benefits cliffs are a problem. And we can get past this if we would actually kinda get out of our own way, and get out of our political mindset and our partisan mindset. to look and say hey what is accomplished and giving the state some flexibility running some pilot programs to see what could potentially work and giving them that ability to do this is an option so uh director you may you know kind of echo that but how can states use flexibility in TANF and other benefits programs to smooth the benefits cliff so families are not penalized from earning more um while still maintaining transparency and accountability

uh congressman so we're we're excited about the possibility of the upward mobility act and and ohio wants to be a a pilot state if uh and when it's enacted i think when when when we think about it um i think the opportunity what what is to look at um the benefits uh programs as a linear thing to get a person off of uh off of public assistance and towards independency instead what we have right now is just an aggregation of lots of different things that combined with all of their different benefit cliffs all their different eligibility rules to be a barrier and a person says there's no way i can get from here to there but instead we can line all of these things up and have them fall off one by one as the person earns more because they're working uh when governor de wine expanded the snap uh from a hundred and thirty five to two hundred percent the pitch was the legislature the only way you get from one thirty five to two hundred percent is by working if we can take all of these things and line them up and have individualized plans yes it's it's expensive But it's worth it because they're Americans and they're our friends and neighbors, and they're worth the investment.

In your professional experience, do you think it's possible to strike that right balance?

Absolutely.

Thank you. You're back.

Thank you, Mr. Moore. Uh, I now wanna recognize uh, Mr. Arrington, another member of the Ways and Means committee who's not on this subcommittee, but thought it was important enough to be here uh, to to hear from you. Um, and so I recognize our Budget Chair, uh, Jody Arrington.

I feel like I've been moved to the kids' table, quite frankly, Mr. Chairman. I'm looking for the corn dogs and waffle fries and um Mister Chairman, thank you, ranking member Davis, for the opportunity to say a few words, ask a question or two. I I really wanna celebrate on a thirty year anniversary of Congress actually doing its job to find ways to make programs work better for the people they were intended to serve and the taxpayers who front the monies to help their fellow americans i think welfare to work uh in nineteen ninety six uh was a success um let me give you a quote to kick this thing off it's a good quote "the culture of welfare must be replaced by the culture of work the culture of dependence must be replaced with the culture of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility and the culture of permanent assistance must no longer be a way of life " miss roe uh think minor i hope i get that right i apologize but then do you agree with that statement just philosophically

i believe that we need a care infrastructure so parents can go to work so kids can thrive so care workers can stay in their jobs with a living wage and so businesses don't have employee or supply chain disruption

do you think we should be moving uh people off of welfare to work as a as an objective i mean it is after all stated objective in tanf statutorily do you agree with that objective

i believe every person should be given

just a yes or no i mean it's pretty simple straight up if you don't that's fine i'm not

well this is well it this is complicated that's why we are still talking about it thirty years later

ok

everybody

which is remarkable to me

and every mom

yeah

should be able to determine how to raise their kids

do you think that every mom should

and that means that every mom needs to have the ability

yeah

to have a job

ok

and to even be able to choose to stay home

ok ok i'm gonna let me reclaim my time i appreciate

that means we need

the fact that you can't answer a very simple question maybe it is more complicated than i think it is but that quote was from joe biden that was joe biden in nineteen ninety six bill clinton had another statement that was very similar to that in fact half the democrats in the senate at the time voted to pass the much needed improvements to at the time aid to family and dependent children. The focus was block grants, it was state accountability and flexibility, but it was also and I think mainly this whole objective of ending dependence and trapping people in a cycle of poverty and welfare and and and and putting these incentives for work, for able-bodied adults. Do you believe able-bodied adults who are benefiting from taxpayer funded social services should be working in some capacity do you believe yes or no some capacity i won't even put a benchmark on it

well this again i just i would turn the question to you

ok

do you think that we need a care

i like being a witness i'm at the kids table i might as well be a witness too

i don't have a corndog or waffle fry though

well i'm disappointed

i'm so sorry um do you think that we need a care infrastructure in the united states of america do you think that in order to work people should have foundation and the vehicles, literally the vehicles to get to work,

Yeah. I I think we have a I think we have a trillion dollar care infrastructure that's broken.

like child care.

And instead of it being a safety net, it's a hammock or a trap. And either one of those is not good for the human soul. And that's what I think about our care infrastructure. Now, I don't doubt that your intentions are to help people. I have no doubt. Just looking at you, listening to you and watch you're just you're happy uh in your purpose. And that's a beautiful thing. But I I it's a simple question that I think many on uh uh on the other side of the aisle can't answer directly. And it's unfortunate, but and I think it's also very indicative of the shift in the Democrat party. See, we passed, and I take it a little personally, I admit, cuz I mean, I was the author of the big beautiful bill. I think we did some big and beautiful things. One of them was to restore uh the dignity of work by uh strengthening the work requirements in Tanafin, adding what we did in nineteen ninety six, the sport of Bill Clinton and and Joe Biden to uh the second largest means tested welfare program or the largest rather in the country in Medicaid. But what I heard from my colleagues from start to finish and even now, is that we kick people off of welfare through hungry people uh and their children into the streets that is patently false that's a nice way of saying it. It was a fear mongering, false narrative, tired talking point that we've heard for years. And we haven't been able to set um the policy right for those who need it and those who are paying for it. And uh and so I again, I think it's indicative of the shift in the Democrat party. I'm proud of the Republican party that unilaterally uh basically took what was nineteen ninety six reform. and applied that principle to today, our country, our citizens, those who need that safety net, that care infrastructure, it will go a lot further for the people it was intended for because of that policy. I'm proud of it. I know my time's expired, way over, and I'm so sorry. That's really uh, and I think we had a a good dialogue here, but those are pretty straightforward questions to me. I don't think they're that complicated. Uh, Mr. Chairman, thank you, Mr. Davis, thank you, Gwen Moore, my friend. I know she disagrees, I can see her up there shaking that head, and that's that's OK, we're, I love you all, and I appreciate what you're doing and why you're doing it, I just think uh it was overdue to do what we did in the big beautiful bill, Mister Chairman, I yield back,

Well well well Mister Arrington can I just ask you to please don't offer any bills

thank you.

that would take health care away from me as a member of Congress. Please don't offer any bills that would take the plane ride, the transportation, I need to get here, Or the living allowance, since we haven't had a race since I got elected twenty years ago. So, um, you know, I am alive today because I have great health care. Um, you know, diagnoses that might have been missed had I not had it, and I'm grateful for that. I'm really grateful for that. I had a baby at age eighteen, and she had an asthma attack when she was four days old. And so I was really glad that I had Medicaid. to be able to take her to the doctor and she now has a master's degree in reading and is teaching children to read so i think she was she was worth it and i think that

i agree with you miss if i may just to why you just said very

yeah i think she was worth it i was on welfare

can i just engage in this colloquy for just a minute because

yeah

i think that's also a beautiful and powerful story and i think you're uh one of the strongest people professionals and members of congress i have worked with and very compelling and a great advocate for your constituents. All that said, I'm not arguing with Medicaid and healthcare and all the other various TANF and other programs, although I have my views that it would be better meted out, administered at the state level, like the block grant, per capita caps, and Medicaid, we can debate it. I'm not talking about the care infrastructure necessarily in in you know in general, but specifically those who are able to work, who are in that care infrastructure, who are benefiting, who are able to work, not the folks who are sick and pregnant and disabled, but the ones who work. That's all I'm saying. And we didn't kick people off. We simply took what Joe Biden eloquently articulated as a as a as a as a good, healthy, responsible incentive and infused that into the largest means tested welfare program that didn't get that same um didn't get that same adjustment for the better that's all i'm not i'm not saying throw them all anything like that that's the problem in this town is we all we all mischaracterize things too often both sides and and i'm ten years into this about to leave i i i i hate to leave you i hate to go

yeah and i'm having i'm gonna miss you so much

no you don't no you don't

and i'm gonna tell you i'm tell you uh you know

the gentleman's time has expired

the gentleman

the gentleman we're just talking it's over

i oh i know um well let me just interrupt uh mr.

we're we're just uh you know

errington may not have gotten a corn dog but he did get almost four minutes over his time so um uh i'm gonna uh conclude uh thank you mr. errington for your very pointed questions and your commentary appreciate that very much um before i close i wanna recognize the ranking member mr. davis

thank you thank you mr. thank you for that

well well thank you mr. chairman and again i wanna thank all of the witnesses and i may not get an opportunity to say what i'm going to say because i'm leaving and i was staff person who is leaving the committee before i leave william miles

right

and so i wanted to thank him for his work and wish him well as he joins uh representative bled ivy but i also want to say to my staff that i have had the most incredible staff both the committee staff and my personal staff and so we may not get another opportunity to do that but i wanted to make sure that they knew one of the first jobs that i had publicly was being director of training at a federally qualified health center so this subject and i also got elected and ninety six which means this was the hotbed

yeah

of of of conversation of action of movement but it's been great working with all of you on this committee

i'm about to cry

and uh no it's just been good it's been good and my staff as i said you couldn't find a better group to work with. So thank you all. Thank you.

Well, thank you, Mister Davis, for that. It's been a joy to work with you on this subcommittee, you and your staff, uh, and you will be missed, that's for sure. So thank you, uh, Mister Davis. Uh, in closing, let me just thank our witnesses. Uh, we are grateful for your testimony here today, what you've added to this conversation, your experiences. your dialogue, the discussion today. It's been extremely helpful and fruitful for this subcommittee as we continue to work on ways to reform our welfare system. We congratulate, uh, everyone on the anniversary of welfare reform. And I think one thing that at least I take out of this today is work can be, work and the dignity of work can be so powerful for uplifting people out of poverty. We've learned that over thirty years. And as we continue our public policy journey on how do we appropriately reform, make the welfare system more efficient, more effective, more accountable, and lift people out of poverty. Your testimony here today, you're answering our questions extremely beneficial to the work that we have to do in the future, so we're grateful uh for that today and our subcommittee will continue to play a key role in that. Um with that, please be advised that members will have two weeks to submit written questions to be answered later in writing and those questions and your answers will be made part of the formal record. With that, our subcommittee is adjourned. uh