Tanf Extension Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Ms. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman from California for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to join my colleague from Missouri in asking my colleagues to support H.R. 430 and to vote ``yes'' on this legislation.

Now, this is just a short-term, 6-month extension of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program because we could not sign off on the negotiated 2-year extension from the omnibus. Therefore, the program has lapsed, and it is imperative that we move this legislation quickly, get it cleared through the House, sent over to the Senate, and signed into law.

Needy Americans are relying on us to do this. There are several States that have absolutely no TANF dollars, zero carryover funds to insulate against the prospect that this reckless shutdown will persist and impact our most vulnerable citizens.

While my State is not one of the 23 States that have less than one quarter of Federal TANF funding in reserve, our reserve is not gigantic. At the current spend-down rate of funds in Wisconsin, we are projecting that these funds will only last until early May, so this is of some urgency.

Just let me remind you, Mr. Speaker, about the importance of extending this program. This bill will allow HHS to send States, Tribes, and territories overdue funds that they depend upon to help level the playing field for struggling parents trying to work and to support their families, tools like childcare assistance, transportation, job training, money for basic needs, and services like food and diapers.

I want to remind you, Mr. Speaker, that three-fourths of current TANF recipients are children, usually living in poverty with their parents or grandparents.

Mr. Speaker, as a former welfare recipient who rose out of poverty with the help of cash assistance, SNAP, and higher education, I understand how critically necessary it is for Americans to have access to our Nation's safety net known as TANF.

Mr. Speaker, I will never forget the spring of 1996, when Wisconsin Governor Tommy G. Thompson decided to end welfare as we knew it.

I was a State senator at the time. I stood on the floor and filibustered until the wee hours of the morning with 100 amendments. Then in the fall of 1996--it was a gigantic error of judgment, in my estimation--Congress, on a bipartisan basis, followed Governor Thompson's lead and replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children with TANF, a program that turned into a block grant, having absolutely no connection with people's ability to get work.

It imposed work requirements, whether there was any viable work there or not. It limited educational opportunity for women, thus creating a permanent underclass of workers. It does not provide promised childcare and training, the very things that are most helpful for helping people get employed.

While this proposal has been adopted by Congress and signed into law, I have known, since 1996, that I would spend the rest of my career trying to right-size this program and make sure that the program not only met people's basic survival-level needs but actually worked toward helping people lift out of poverty.

I am looking forward to this 116th Congress, when we can reenvision welfare reform, because this imperfect program needs to continue to assist struggling families to meet those basic needs. Forty-three million Americans currently live in poverty and some in extreme poverty.

I remind the Speaker that our Nation is only as strong as its most vulnerable population. Instead of criminalizing welfare recipients and creating more barriers for the poor, we must help lift them up so that they, too, can escape poverty, join the economy, and add to our tax base.

Let's pass this bill, and let's use the next 6 months provided by this legislation to work together to enact long-overdue changes to TANF that will restore childcare, incentivize education, and move away from punitive time limits.

I ask my colleagues to vote for H.R. 430, and then I urge them to join me in reenvisioning the program.

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