Message Points for Alliance Members on Welfare Reform Reauthorization
5/7/02
1. Help working poor parents balance work and family by promoting a family-friendly work environment.
Actions that would help reach this goal:
- Expand the Family and Medical Leave Act so that it applies to smaller businesses and to workers who have worked less than 12 months. Link the FMLA to the state’s unemployment trust fund, so that welfare leavers retain income when they must be off work due to illness, disability, or family responsibilities.
- Provide tax incentives to employers who offer flexible work scheduling for families, on-site day care, health care benefits, and various forms of leave.
- Increase funding for child care under the Child Care Development Fund to meet the needs of all eligible children.
Actions that don’t help:
- Expanding work activity requirements from 30 hours to 40 hours.
- Expanding the direct work requirement from 20 to 24 hours.
- Limiting child care funding to amounts that would fail to cover even half of eligible children.
2. Guide welfare leavers into family-sustaining jobs.
Actions that would help reach this goal:
- Include high school completion, post-secondary education and job training in the definition of work.
- Provide a comprehensive, tailored approach to job training through case management services for welfare leavers.
Actions that don’t help:
- Narrowing the types of job training and education that count as work activities.
- Limiting credit for job training and education.
- Giving states credit for caseload reduction rather than successful job placement.
3. Provide an adequate safety net for those who can’t work.
Actions that would help reach this goal:
- Institute cash benefit levels that bring families at least up to the federal poverty level.
- Provide Medicaid coverage to all poor adults who cannot afford employer-provided health insurance or who have no other coverage.
Actions that don’t help:
- Limiting credit for compliance with substance abuse treatment, rehabilitative services, and work-related training to three consecutive months in any two-year period.
- "Universal engagement" requirements that assume everyone will attain self-sufficiency through work.