NewtAid at 16: The Failure of TANF and Conservative Social Policy

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/08/24-6


Sixteen years ago on Wednesday, President Bill Clinton surrendered to House Speaker Newt Gingrich and signed NewtAid, legislation that replaced the Social Security Act's Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with a right-wing block grant scheme called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). NewtAid/TANF was prematurely lauded as a success before it had even been fully implemented.

It is now clear TANF is a failed program that needs to be overhauled. NewtAid's failure can be seen most simply by comparing the number of children living below federal poverty line in 1992 and 2010. (These years are compared because 2010 is the most recent year we have child poverty numbers for, and 1992 is, like 2010, the first calender year after the end of a recession.)

Number of Children Living in Families with Incomes Below the Federal Poverty Line

1992: 15.3 million

2010: 16.4 million

In sum, just over 1 million more children lived below the poverty line in 2010, more than a decade after TANF's implemetation, than before TANF's implementation in 1992. If AFDC had remained in place and reformed along progressive lines, the number of children living in poverty would be much lower today than it was before NewtAid.

AFDC was far from a perfect program—especially after Reagan-era budget cuts limited the support it provided for working parents—but it was one of the dependable pillars of our system of social insurance (although nowhere near as strong a pillar as Social Security). Instead of strengthening AFDC, NewtAid tore it down and replaced it with a radical conservative scheme that has:

Given states incentives to spend billions of dollars in public funds—funds that had previously been used to promote economic security and opportunity for low-income parents—in an unaccountable and often irresponsible manner. In fact, the bulk of public funds available to states under TANF today are not spent on child care, employment services, or helping families meet basic needs. Instead, states have diverted the bulk of funds to "other services." In the most notorious cases, states have diverted TANF funds to finance unaffordable tax cuts.
Failed to provide adequate information on how states use TANF funds. As GAO has found, we know very little about how states are using 70 percent of the funds provided by the $16.5 billion block grant, including not just "results" but things as basic as how many families are being helped with these funds.
Deeply cut the actual amount of resources available through AFDC/TANF to help struggling, working-class families. Because block grant funding has remained frozen at its 1997 level, its actual value (adjusted for inflation) has fallen by nearly 30 percent.

[IgnatiusReilly]

1. NewtAid/TANF is working as it was really intended to work

that was the whole point of getting it passed by the GOP.

The Real GOP Plan is and always will be Kill the Poor

[xchrom]

2. i'll give this 1 kick. nt

[lastlib]

3. So much for right-wing social engineering....