In 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act dramatically altered the way the federal government provides financial assistance to needy families. This Act created Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which limits assistance to 60 months and requires recipients to engage in a prescribed set of work activities. While this "work first" approach has resulted in a significant decline in the number of low-income people receiving assistance, it has not enabled those leaving welfare to escape poverty or even become self-sufficient, staying off welfare permanently. As Congress reauthorizes the 1996 Act, NCWGE believes that welfare programs should end the cycle of poverty and give states the flexibility to promote self-sufficiency through education and job training to help ensure that women are not locked into low-wage jobs.

NCWGE supports the following principles for welfare reauthorization:

• The success of the law must be based on the number of people no longer living in poverty-not on the number of people no longer receiving assistance. The current law's reliance on job search and early employment rather than on increasing earnings for welfare recipients has failed to provide roads to permanent self-sufficiency and has not significantly lifted women and families out of poverty.

• Because education and training are crucial means for women to achieve economic self-sufficiency, states must be given the flexibility to provide the combination of education, job training, job search, and work that will best help their TANF recipients to obtain and retain better jobs with higher wages. Toward that end, Congress should:
  
  • Eliminate the 12-month limit on vocational education or job training;
    
  • Eliminate the 30 percent cap on the number of families participating in vocational education or teen parents pursuing a high school diploma in a state's caseload that can be counted toward federal work participation rates; and
    
  • Allow education leading to a diploma, GED, certificate, associate's degree, bachelor's degree, or postsecondary degree to count toward federal work participation rates.

• States should be accountable for the results of their programs. Allowing states the flexibility to target recipients with job searches, education, and job and skills training will enable case workers to respond to welfare recipients' barriers to economic self-sufficiency as well as the needs of the local labor market. In return, states should be held accountable for their results. Congress should direct states to maintain and report on data that will permit evaluation of the efficacy of different combinations of work, job search, and education and training activities. Such outcome measures will enable states to better mesh their education, training, and employment programs for TANF recipients and will hold states accountable for helping people find work, keep jobs, increase their wages, and become self-sufficient.

• Welfare recipients should be protected from all forms of discrimination, and all relevant civil rights and labor laws should be vigorously enforced. These laws include the Fair Labor Standards Act; the Equal Pay Act of 1983; Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967; Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972; the Rehabilitation Act of 1973; the Immigration Reform and Control Act; the Americans with Disabilities Act; and the Family and Medical Leave Act.