Deficit Reduction Act of 2005

DEFICIT REDUCTION ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - November 08, 2005)

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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to strenuously object to tucking the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Act reauthorization into this budget reconciliation bill.

What this does is masquerade the Draconian policy changes of TANF that impinge on what we claim to be our priority, to help working families, particularly women, get back into the workforce. How can we do that, create productive workers in view of slashing the work supports so desperately needed by these marginal families?

How can we cut $11 billion from the Medicaid program and say we want these women to go to work? How can we cut $4.9 billion from child support enforcement and say that we want you to go to work? How can we not even provide an inflationary increase in child care funding, while we increase those work requirements and say with a straight face that we are trying to help people reach self-sufficiency? How can we claim to try to raise women up and families up from their conditions, when we slash educational opportunity, reduce educational opportunity into oblivion?

Well, Mr. Speaker, there are people who are prepared to tell me that we are increasing TANF benefits by almost $1 billion, but when you look at what we are doing, the $926 million over 5 years, scored by CBO, because they must include extensions of supplemental grants, which they are excluded by law from not projecting, if you look at that, and adjusting for this scoring factor, what we are actually seeing is a TANF spending reduction of $239 million. Yes, I said it, $239 million reduction in TANF services.

This basic block grant is frozen. It increases work requirements, but it does do one thing that I approve of. It eliminates two performance bonus programs, saving us $1.1 billion, but it plows that money, $349 million, back into marriage promotion programs.

Do we have any concern about the kind of domestic violence that this may spawn, or another $409 million for, quote, unquote, ``new research projects,'' researching and studying the poor, rather than providing the poor with the needed services like Medicaid, like child care, like educational opportunity? Instead, we are continuing to make this a windfall for what we call poverty entrepreneurs.

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