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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI need help debunking this email from a co-worker
She is saying that President O waived the work requirements to receive food stamps.
The Official Policy Directive issued July 12, 2012 allows for the traditional TANF work requirements to be waived or overridden under the Obama administration. Official memo TANF-ACF-IM-2012-03.
Thanks everyone for your response....
GoCubsGo
(32,061 posts)There are no work requirements for getting food stamps. There are requirements for welfare. You idiot co-worker apparently does not understand the difference between the two.
Dyedinthewoolliberal
(15,485 posts):O)
Fresh_Start
(11,330 posts)Still Sensible
(2,870 posts)that they can probably find out the "facts" by looking it up somewhere... but the reality is that it doesn't matter at this point other than to keep throwing rhetoric. The election is over. We won, they lost.
And if your co-worker used the business email, you might suggest they stop that crap and go back to work.
Rambis
(7,774 posts)Home The FactCheck Wire Does Obamas Plan Gut Welfare Reform?
Does Obamas Plan Gut Welfare Reform?
Posted on August 9, 2012
A Mitt Romney TV ad claims the Obama administration has adopted a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements. The plan does neither of those things.
Work requirements are not simply being dropped. States may now change the requirements revising, adding or eliminating them as part of a federally approved state-specific plan to increase job placement.
And it wont gut the 1996 law to ease the requirement. Benefits still wont be paid beyond an allotted time, whether the recipient is working or not.
Romneys ad also distorts the facts when it says that under President Obamas plan you wouldnt have to work and wouldnt have to train for a job. The law never required all welfare recipients to work. Only 29 percent of those receiving cash assistance met the work requirement by the time President Obama took office.
Under the new policy, states can now seek a federal waiver from work-participation rules that, among other things, require welfare recipients to engage in one of 12 specific work activities, such as job training. But, in exchange, states must develop a plan that would provide a more efficient or effective means to promote employment, which may or may not include some or all of the same work activities. States also must submit an evaluation plan that includes performance measures that must be met or the waiver could be revoked.
Ron Haskins, a former Republican House committee aide who was instrumental in the 1996 overhaul of the welfare program, told us the Obama administration should not have unilaterally changed the work-requirement rules. But Haskins said the Romney claim that Obamas plan will gut welfare reform is very misleading.
I do not think it ends welfare reform or strongly undermines welfare reform, said Haskins, co-director of the Brookings Institutions Center on Children and Families. Each state has to say what they will do and how that reform
will either increase employment or lead to better employment of recipients.
The Obama policy responds to state officials who say they can improve job placement and retention if freed from the time-consuming process of documenting and verifying that recipients are engaged in those work activities.
In times of reduced funding, waivers may be the best method to allow states to find effective and efficient approaches to assist the unemployed to find and keep work, the Utah Department of Workforce Services wrote to federal welfare officials last year.
Republicans criticized the new policy shortly after it was implemented on July 12. That prompted Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican who supports Romney, to issue a July 17 press release defending Utahs waiver request for state flexibility to achieve work-related outcomes for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) recipients.
Welfare to Work
The Romney campaign began airing its new TV ad on Aug. 7. Called Right Choice, the ad praises the bipartisan cooperation of President Bill Clinton and a Republican-controlled Congress to overhaul welfare. It then turns partisan and attacks President Obama.
Romney TV Ad, Right Choice: President Obama quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements. Under Obamas plan, you wouldnt have to work and wouldnt have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check. And welfare-to-work goes back to being plain old welfare. Mitt Romney will restore the work requirement because it works.
Its simply not true that the administrations policy will allow states to just send you your welfare check. Under the policy, states must meet a whole new set of federal requirements in order to obtain and keep a waiver. Plus, states have an incentive to get people off welfare and into jobs, since that would free TANF funds for other services for low-income families.
I think and now remember Im a Republican that the ad is very misleading, Haskins said.
Well go into more detail about the new policy later, but first lets review how we got here beginning with The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 that created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.
The welfare overhaul was designed to help move unemployed Americans from welfare to work. The federal government strengthened work requirements on families receiving cash assistance, and for the first time imposed lifetime limits (generally up to five years). After two years on TANF, the parent in the household must be engaged in work activities.
The law also generally requires states to document that 50 percent of all families receiving cash assistance are participating in such work activities. But work-participation rates peaked at 38 percent in 1999 and started to decline prompting Congress to attempt to strengthen the rules when it reauthorized TANF as part of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.
Still, the work-participation rates remained low. The most recent data available show the rate was 29.4 percent in fiscal year 2009. Many states rely on options in the current law that allow them to be in compliance with requirements even though their rates are below 50 percent.
The new work-participation rules did have one impact on states: They were time-consuming to comply with and counterproductive to helping people find jobs, as documented by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office in a 2010 report. GAOs welfare experts were among those questioning the value of the work-participation rates as a measure of success.
The emphasis on work participation rates as a measure of program performance has helped change the culture of state welfare programs to focus on moving families into employment, but weaknesses in the measure undercut its effectiveness, Kay E. Brown, the GAOs director of Education, Workforce and Income Security Issues, testified before a Senate committee on June 5. Are the work participation rates providing the right incentives to states to engage parents, including those difficult to serve, and help them achieve self-sufficiency?
Mayberry Machiavelli
(21,096 posts)Oh, and what everyone else said as far as the fact checking.
reflection
(6,286 posts)so I won't send more. But note to your co-worker, that not only is it false, but MITT ROMNEY himself, along with 20-odd Republican governors, asked for flexibility (not waivers) on the TANF work requirements. Obama's HHS Director was listening to what governors were asking for and working with them, instead of being a partisan dick. That's what real bipartisanship looks like.
liberalmuse
(18,670 posts)Under Obamas plan, you wouldnt have to work and wouldnt have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check, a Romney campaign ad says. [CBS, 8/7/2012]
REALITY: The administrations welfare waiver initiative would strengthen work requirements by empowering states to innovate on strategies that could move 20 percent more of the caseload into sustainable employment. As the governments directive announcing the initiative notes, The Secretary is only interested in approving waivers if the state can explain in a compelling fashion why the proposed approach may be a more efficient or effective means to promote employment entry, retention, advancement, or access to jobs that offer opportunities for earnings and advancement that will allow participants to avoid dependence on government benefits. Republican and Democratic governors and even Romney and Paul Ryan have all promoted flexibility before Obama embraced it. [HHS, 7/12/2012]
The above is right in the policy directive. Click the link below and scroll down to "HHS Priorities":
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/resource/policy/im-ofa/2012/im201203/im201203?page=all
skeewee08
(1,983 posts)sinkingfeeling
(51,276 posts)late campaign:
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/08/does-obamas-plan-gut-welfare-reform/
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/23/politics/fact-check-welfare/index.html
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/08/22/159791065/despite-fact-checks-romney-escalates-welfare-work-requirement-charge
Google is your friend.
SDjack
(1,448 posts)She should complete a welfare assistance application where she lives. Then, ask her what she would have to do to qualify for assistance if she had no job, other source of income, or savings.