Letter to Chairman Price - Oppose of Political Stunts to Attack Social Programs

Letter

Dear Chairman Price,

We write to share our concerns regarding possible proposals to use the budget reconciliation process to make sweeping changes to welfare and other vital safety net programs. It has been reported in the media that Republicans plan to include reconciliation instructions in the Fiscal Year 2017 Budget to reform and harm our country's public assistance and safety net programs. As you know, House Republicans, through Speaker Ryan, have made a commitment to restoring regular order in this session of Congress. Major pieces of legislation, like welfare reform, should be debated through the regular deliberative process.

We are concerned that some Republicans will utilize budget reconciliation instructions to overhaul welfare and repeat the same mistakes of the past. For example, in 1996 when Congress "ended welfare as we know it" and replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), the United States greatly weakened its ability to help impoverished and needy families. Over the past 18 years, the TANF caseload has dropped 60 percent, despite worsening socioeconomic conditions for families living in poverty. Additionally, the TANF work requirements are already exceedingly harsh -- pushing women and low-income individuals into low-paying jobs with little to no upward mobility. Doubling down on these failed approaches could be disastrous to vulnerable Americans all across our country.

As you know, poverty in the United States is an unfortunate reality for 46.7 million of Americans, which equates to 1 in 7 Americans. Our future generations are at grave risk when 22% - or 16 million children - in the United States are living in poverty. While poverty is a challenge in all communities, we know that communities of color are disproportionately affected by this crisis. Moreover, growing wealth and income inequality in the United States substantially exacerbates this crisis and reduces the chances for impoverished families and low-income workers to lift themselves out of poverty and into the middle class.

That is why we must support and expand the very safety net programs that are vital to combating poverty. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), in 2014, federal safety net programs lifted 36 million people out of poverty who would have otherwise been impoverished. Furthermore, programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) proved tremendously important as a swift countercyclical response to hunger during the Great Recession and continue to lift millions of Americans out of poverty each year. We should work to improve and strengthen these programs, not streamline congressional debate to add barriers for families to access these vital anti-poverty programs.

Instead, there are important policy recommendations that have real potential for bipartisan movement in the 114th Congress. For example, both former Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and President Obama have expressed willingness to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to twenty-one years for those without children, which would help improve conditions for millions of young Americans living in poverty. Congress is also at the brink of passing meaningful criminal justice reform in order to reduce our country's over-incarceration crisis. This sweeping reform could prove to be a meaningful step towards addressing the school-to-prison pipeline, which pervasively robs opportunity from our most at-risk and impoverished youth.

Sincerely,

Gwen Moore
Member of Congress

Barbara Lee
Member of Congress

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