AFDC Foster Care Program Provisions for coverage of children in foster care under H.R. 9030 need to be clarified. Currently, certain AFDC eligible children who have been removed from their homes as a result of judicial abuse and neglect determinations are eligible for federal foster care payments under the AFDC-FC Program. It is not clear how these children would be affected by H.R. 9030. Section 2101 (b) seems to imply that benefits would continue to be available to children placed in foster care by judicial determination or as a result of the death or desertion of their parents. Protections in H. R. 9030 for these children must be studied and clarified in relation to current proposals affecting AFDC-FC which have been passed by the House in H.R. 7200 and are currently in the Senate Finance Committee. Any provisions adopted must ensure that children will not be removed unnecessarily from their own homes, placed inappropriately or left to linger in care indefinitely. Child Care Programs CDF supports a comprehensive universal system of family support services including child care based on principles of equity, universality, diversity, accessibility, prevention, and accountability. Current federal child care policy has created a threetrack system: inadequate public day care for the poor; tax benefits for day care for the rich; and little or nothing for those in between. H.R. 9030, while laudable in many other respects, would do very little to rectify this situation through its provision of a $150/month per child "income dis regard" up to a maximum of two children. - Manipulating the tax system would do nothing to help parents who need additional income to purchase care. Even if it did, there would still be no guarantee that adequate child care services would be available that even minimally met the needs of children. The absence of sufficient places for children who need some form of day care has been well documented. In March 1972, there were about one million places for children in approved day care centers and family day care homes. These places could provide coverage for less than 5 percent of the 20 million children under 6; for less than 16 percent of the 6.5 million children under 6 with working mothers; or for less than half the 2.3 million children under 6 in femaleheaded households. Poor children have even fewer slots available. In 1975, Head Start reached about 350,000 children, less than 20 percent of those eligible. Follow-Through served only 78,000. The same year, over half the children enrolled in nursery school and kindergartens were from families with incomes over $10,000. As a first step toward ensuring adequate child care, CDF urges the limitation of child care job "slots" provided under Title II to programs meeting the Federal Interagency Day Care Requirements. In addition, both potential workers and users must be free to refuse, without penalty, association with day care providers who fail to meet these requirements, We believe that until the country faces up to the need for universally available child care services, slots which are available should be targeted on those families and childen most at risk: those who have special needs; poor children; children of single-parent and working-parent families; those families who without the option of part-time or occasional child care might have to place their children in foster care. These groups of children should be eligible for quality child care regardless of family ability to pay. In the belief that universally available child care services are absolutely essential, CDF intends to work with others to pursue development of such a program, independently of, but linked to the development of new income maintenance policies. The principal objective of such a program would be to provide child care services to families who want and need them in order to meet the comprehensive needs of their children and carry out their child-rearing responsibilities more effectively. Since such a program should serve families of all classes needing decent child care options, not just poor families, it probably warrants separate development from proposals like H. R. 9030. However, the overall issue of social services including day care is one with which any program of welfare reform and this Administration and Congress must - - be concerned. The parallel development of and linkages among income maintenance, jobs, and service programs must also go forward. STATEMENT OF THE CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS, HON. PARREN J. MITCHELL, CHAIRMAN, HON. SHIRLEY CHISHOLM AND HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL, COCHAIRPERSONS, WELFARE REFORM SUBCOMMITTEE Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, we are pleased to come before you today representing the Congressional Black Caucus to submit testimony on H.R. 9030, "The Better Jobs and Income Act." As you know, this welfare reform proposal submitted by the administration will have a direct and critical impact on the livelihood of many of our constituents, and is therefore of utmost concern to the Caucus. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus are encouraged by the administration's effort to address welfare reform in a comprehensive, rather than a piecemeal, fashion. This approach, if extended sufficiently and implemented fully, would establish a more efficient system with uniform standards and methods of operation. The goals of the Better Jobs and Income Act are worthy of support: A basic level of Federal income assistance; expanded training and employment assistance to lowincome persons; and fiscal relief for State and local governments. The proposal also properly attempts to maintain family structure, reduce stigma upon recipients, reduce administrative costs, and improve and consolidate program management. While the goals and principles embodied in the administration's welfare reform proposal are essentially sound, the actual provisions of the bill in terms of the extent of opportunities and assistance provided fall far short of the need. This is particularly true in the job creation section, which we need not remind you is of central importance to the black community, as well as in the extent and operation of the cash benefit proposal. The black unemployment rate remains nearly 15 percent by official figures, and is far higher when those too discouraged to look for a job and those underemployed are included. While the welfare reform proposal cannot substitute for full employment legislation, it must directly address the need to provide job opportunities for those now on welfare who can work and desire to work. Another major concern we have with respect to the welfare reform proposal is that minimal attention has been given to providing the essential social services, such as medical care, day care for children, educational opportunities, and career training. We fear that any program which attempts reform of the current welfare system, but which does not include social services is doomed to failure. We would also point to the need for firm privacy protections in light of the ever-increasing computerization as it affects welfare recipients. It is clear to us that rising costs, such as day care services, will consume whatever increased benefit the client might receive under the proposed welfare reform program. Therefore, in order for H.R. 9030 to be a truly comprehensive proposal, it must include as an integral part of its program a social service component with adequate provision for such services. Further, the bill assumes passage of national health insurance legislation. If national health insurance is not passed, there should be provision to cover under medicaid persons who will be receiving cash assistance. We would now like to detail some of the specific concerns which Caucus members have with the bill by section. JOBS The jobs section of the bill simply will not provide enough jobs for all those who are able to work and seek employment. The administration's proposal is based on the assumption that the national unemployment rate for 1981 will fall to 5.6 percent, and that enough private sector jobs will be available to take care of most of the lowincome people who are, or would like to be, in the labor force. Both of these assumptions are highly questionable and urban unemployment, as we know, is particularly resistant to decreases in the over-all unemployment rate. We suggest that measures be incorporated into the bill which will provide a public service job for every person who is able to work and seeks employment, but has been unable to find work in the private sector. The administration's proposal is said to create 1.4 million new public service jobs, 300,000 of which are part-time. That figure, however, includes the approximately 725,000 jobs that are currently available under titles II and IV of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA). Thus the net gain the jobs under this proposal is much lower, more like 675,000. With the present high unemployment rate, it is apparent that this is an inadequate number of jobs. Yet there is neither a mechanism nor a formula defined in the bill to determine how jobs shall be allocated. Further, there is nothing in the proposal which provides a significant attack on the problem of structural unemployment the unemployed who lack the skills, the experience and the familiarity with the labor market to obtain adequate employment. In that respect, we would like to direct your attention to an analysis entered in the Congressional Record on October 27, 1977 by Congressman Andrew Jacobs, which shows that of the 3,400 jobs advertised in the Washington Post of October 23, very few were available for the unskilled. This is evidence that jobs are unavailable in the private sector for the typical welfare recipient. Even more disturbing than the bill's failure to provide sufficient jobs and jobs for the unskilled is the notion that the proposal must provide "work incentives" in order to get people to work. This is reminiscent of the infamous "workfare" provisions of the last welfare reform effort. The notion that poor people must be coerced into working is not only unsubstantiated, it is contradicted by the facts. It is contradicted not by the Federal Government's negative income tax experiments which have been going on for the last several years, but also by the experience during the past several months in New York, Chicago and Atlanta, where the number of job seekers was many times the number of available jobs openings when a few hundred openings were announced. Building the entire jobs component of the bill around the myth that poor people must be forced to work skews the proposal in an undersirable direction. It is the administration's responsibility to propose and speak out for a policy which provides jobs, a policy of full employment, rather than implying that the poor must be forced to work. The 5 week job search period for private employment, for example, if intended to serve as an incentive for unemployed persons to find private sector employment before turning to the public service jobs as a last resort. The approach is questionable, but might be acceptable if, during the job search period, families were provided with enough assistance to enable them to meet their basic needs. However, the rate of $192 a month, which can be provided for up to 2 months (with the additional 3 weeks required to find a public service job), is grossly insufficient for a family of four. Giving families less than subsistence income during the job search punishes them for conditions that are totally beyond the family's control. In urban areas, in particular, this policy is certain to lead to yet more frustration and hopelessness. Another example of the punitive nature of the bill's approach to public service employment is the restriction of the earned income tax credit to wages from private or regular public sector jobs. This implies that it is preferable to have a private or regular public sector job, even when such jobs are not available, and those in the special public sector category are penalized. Consider that a person is not permitted to obtain a special public service job until determining during a 5 week job search that a private sector job is not available. By failing to allow special public service employment job-holders the benefit of the earned income tax credit, the bill once again punishes people for something over which they have no control. Further, the bill does not provide for deduction of work expenses such as travel for those also receiving cash benefits. We would like to reemphasize our concern about the wage levels of the public service jobs. We strongly urge that these jobs pay the prevailing wage in order to avoid public assistance clients receiving less money than their coworkers for doing exactly the same work. If the program in fact attempts to encourage work, then it is rational and necessary to improve the salary allotments. We are also concerned about the effect that youth employment will have on the designation of the principal wage earner, and on the level of cash assistance. We strongly recommend that earnings by youth be disregarded in the determination of the principal wage earner. Also, families whose youngest child is a full-time student over the age of 18 should not be excluded from obtaining a special public service job. Finally, we would like to reemphasize the need for a real trainig program. In order to decrease the number of persons who must depend on public assistance, it is imperative that we provide training and career development opportunities, and that we equip clients with the skills needed to make a smooth transition into the private labor market. The administration's proposal clearly fails to provide meaningful training to enable clients to secure employment which will make them self-sufficient. The inability of the recipient to become self-sufficient is simply perpetuated by the lack of career development opportunities. Thus the reality is that many if not most low-income persons who are employed will not be able to find private sector employment. Only after suffering the indignity of a punitive job search during which the family must subsist on a completely inadequate grant will they have an opportunity to obtain the special public service jobs. Those who are fortunate enough to get a special public service job still only hold it for a year, however, before being forced to engage in another job search during which time the family is once again given an appallingly low grant. |