Federal Welfare Windfall Frees New York Money for Other Uses

April 23, 2000. Raymond Hernandez reporting for the New York Times quotes FPI's Frank Mauro. In the four years since the overhaul of the nation's welfare laws, New York has taken at least $1 billion given to it by the federal government for new antipoverty programs and used it instead to indirectly finance huge tax cuts and other programs that appeal to middle-class voters, according to government and private estimates. The budgetary switch has been employed by other states, prompting Congress to open an investigation [...]

2020-11-13T15:12:45-05:00April 23rd, 2000|Blog, Social Policy|

Inside the New State Budget: A Welfare Slush Fund

April 17, 2000. An update from City Limits Weekly (No. 224), New York's urban affairs news magazine. Reported by Annia Ciezadlo. Add a new one to the list of behavioral changes wrought by welfare reform: the TANF land grab. Since the old welfare program was replaced with the more flexible Temporary Assistance to Needy Families block grant in 1997, and since declining welfare rolls have left a hefty surplus of unspent funds, states have been using this cash much more creatively-including using the money to [...]

2020-11-13T15:12:45-05:00April 17th, 2000|Blog, Social Policy|

Catholic Conference opposes TANF ‘raid’

April 12, 2000. A story by Jamie D. Gilkey in the Troy Record. In the midst of efforts to reach a final deal on the state budget, opposition grew Tuesday to a proposal that would use more than $100 million originally intended to aid poor families to supplement the wages of health care workers. Among the new critics of the plan is the New York State Catholic Conference, which The Record has learned sent a letter to all state legislators opposing the state Senate backed [...]

2020-11-13T15:12:45-05:00April 12th, 2000|Blog, Social Policy|

Critics call plan ‘raid’

April 11, 2000. A story by Jamie D. Gilkey in the Troy Record. FPI's Frank Mauro is quoted. With state budget negotiations making rapid headway towards a final agreement, a proposal that initially would have diverted $165 million from a fund meant to help welfare recipients is running into resistance from a scattered group of health care and community activists, according to information obtained by The Record. Sources  say that negotiators for the state Senate presented a scaled-down version of the plan during an initial [...]

2020-11-13T15:12:45-05:00April 11th, 2000|Blog, Social Policy|

Head of Congressional welfare reform panel tells all 50 Governors it’s essential that states use their TANF resources and use them wisely

Early in 1999, U.S. Representative Nancy L. Johnson (R-CT), chair of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources, which has jurisdiction over TANF, sent a letter to the governors of all 50 states urging them to spend more of their TANF funds or risk having Congress take some portion back. This warning was made more concrete by several congressional attempts later in 1999 to rescind some unspent TANF funds. Fortunately, from the perspective of the states and from the perspective of those who [...]

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