It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Today, the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an official policy directive rewriting the welfare reform law of 1996. The new policy guts the federal work requirements that were the foundation of the reform law. The Obama directive bludgeons the letter and intent of the actual reform legislation.
Today the Obama Administration issued a new directive stating that the traditional TANF work requirements can be waived or overridden by a legal device called the section 1115 waiver authority under the Social Security law (42 U.S.C. 1315).
Section 1115 states that “the Secretary may waive compliance with any of the requirements” of specified parts of various laws. But this is not an open-ended authority: Any provision of law that can be waived under section 1115 must be listed in section 1115 itself. The work provisions of the TANF program are contained in section 407 (entitled, appropriately, “mandatory work requirements”). Critically, this section, as well as most other TANF requirements, are deliberately not listed in section 1115; they are not waiveable.
In establishing TANF, Congress deliberately exempted or shielded nearly all of the TANF program from the section 1115 waiver authority. They did not want the law to be rewritten at the whim of Health and Human Services (HHS) bureaucrats. Of the roughly 35 sections of the TANF law, only one is listed as waiveable under section 1115. This is section 402.
Originally posted by xuenchen
from The Foundry
July 12, 2012
Obama Guts Welfare Reform
This story says that the U.S. Department of Human Services (HHS) has now "exempted" the "work" requirement from TARP.
TARP is essentially the family welfare program.
TANF, not TARP... There was absolutely no work requirement attached to TARP as evidenced by the fact that it neither worked nor kept Americans working after the money was cherrfully passed from the tax payers to the bankers.
While the TANF work participation requirements are contained in section 407, section 402(a)(1)(A)(iii) requires that the state plan “[e]nsure that parents and caretakers receiving assistance under the program engage in work activities in accordance with section 407.” Thus, HHS has authority to waive compliance with this 402 requirement and authorize a state to test approaches and methods other than those set forth in section 407, including definitions of work activities and engagement, specified limitations, verification procedures, and the calculation of participation rates. As described below, however, HHS will only consider approving waivers relating to the work participation requirements that make changes intended to lead to more effective means of meeting the work goals of TANF.
Originally posted by cavtrooper7
It's kicking the economy into the states lap,rather than solving it at the federal level.They are easier to blame and when they fail you can send in help.
The President has ended welfare reform as we know it.
September 18, 2009
By: D. Christian Moore
The massive $785 billion stimulus bill, passed by Congress and signed into law by the President, changes one of the basic principles which made the 1996 legislation so effective. Welfare reform, as signed and enacted by President Clinton, removed the incentive for states to grow their welfare rolls.
Rather than “encouraging” increased use of benefits, and thereby encouraging dependency, the goal of welfare programs would be to get folks back to work so they no longer would rely on the Government. This was seen as a proper balance between helping those who really needed it, and de-incentivizing a dependency culture. This is what the stimulus bill changed. In fact, states will now receive more funding under the stimulus by expending all manner of aid programs.
Pres. Barack Obama vowed to correct the mistakes of the Bush administration but instead is determined to undo one of the great successes of the Clinton years: welfare reform. Democrats have inserted provisions into the catch-all stimulus bill that will reverse Clinton-era welfare reform, re-establishing the wasteful, incentive-killing system whose transformation was the bipartisan pride of the 1990s.
Obama Ends Welfare Reform As We Know It
By Robert Rector & Katherine Bradley
July 12, 2012 7:00 P.M
This afternoon, President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an official policy directive undermining the welfare reform law of 1996. The new policy guts the federal work requirements that have been the foundation of that law — one of the most successful domestic policy reforms in the 20th century.
Welfare reform replaced the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children with a new program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The underlying concept of welfare reform was that able-bodied adults should be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving welfare aid.
Originally posted by cavtrooper7
It's kicking the economy into the states lap,rather than solving it at the federal level.They are easier to blame and when they fail you can send in help.
Otherwise, no surprises here... I honestly believe that Obama is strongly depending on the welfare recipient vote as his main demographic come November. Seems like the only logical reason he has strived for 3 and a half years to increase the numbers in that group by as much as possible.
Originally posted by buster2010
Originally posted by cavtrooper7
It's kicking the economy into the states lap,rather than solving it at the federal level.They are easier to blame and when they fail you can send in help.
States are supposed to have more power than the fed's. It's better that way why should someone that my state didn't vote into office be able to tell my state what to do?
Originally posted by Libertygal
Originally posted by buster2010
Originally posted by cavtrooper7
It's kicking the economy into the states lap,rather than solving it at the federal level.They are easier to blame and when they fail you can send in help.
States are supposed to have more power than the fed's. It's better that way why should someone that my state didn't vote into office be able to tell my state what to do?
The problem is, before the states caught on to what he was doing, at least the Republican states, they were eagerly accepting the handouts and overbloating their welfare rolls. They unwittingly took the payouts, bloated their rolls, and now are going to bankrupt with being faced with no funds to pay union workers, retirees, Medicare/Medicaid, and Welfare without accepting Fed help.
It literally destroys any chance of any state ever becoming independent of the Fed again.
Hence, we see cities, much like those in California, going bankrupt. And that is just the start.
edit on 13-7-2012 by Libertygal because: (no reason given)