Transcript
See also: Transcripts for the Introduction and Panel I.
KENT WEAVER: Okay. If you can take your seats and quiet down, we're about to start on the second panel. I'd like to remind everyone that the slides for the PowerPoint presentation are available on our website and the first two of our policy briefs are also available on our web site. I think everyone here in the room has them, but those who are watching via the live web cast probably have not yet downloaded them. They're available in PDF format.
I'm Kent Weaver. I'm the third co-director of the welfare reform and beyond initiative. I'm the quiet one, letting Belle and Ron do the PowerPoint presentation today.
Up to this point, we talked mostly about TANF and related programs, but not very much in detail about the welfare reform and beyond initiative and what we're going to be doing. So I'm just going to spend a couple of minutes outlining some of our products, and I want you to know that all of this is very much in development, and we want your feedback on things you think that we've missed, things you think that we could be doing better, either particular policy briefs or a broader set of programs that we should be running.
Please let us know on our web site, which is www.brookings.edu/wrb. There is a place where all of our email addresses are listed and we really do want your feedback.
Belle ran the slide at the beginning about the objectives of the welfare reform and beyond initiative. The central objective is trying to take this huge amount of research that's now emerging from a variety of institutions, including many of the ones that are going to be represented on the upcoming panel, and try to make it available in user-friendly formats for policy makers, the public, and for the press.
We're also trying to move beyond TANF reauthorization to focus on a broader set of issues and how we can assist low-income families become more self-sufficient, increase their incomes.
Very important, we think, is trying to foster an informed and civil dialogue on welfare reform. I think most people would agree that the dialogue in 1993 to 1996 was not frequently civil and sometimes uninformed. We want to change that looking both inside and outside the Beltway.
And lastly, provide the media with accurate, balanced information. What specifically are we going to be doing?
Our written products begin with the special issue of Brookings Review that Belle Sawhill is going to be editing. It will be out in about three months. If you look on our web site, you can see the list of authors and articles there, and here is a brief preview of it as well.
We think we have a very balanced and very distinguished set of contributors. The objective of this is to try to foster a dialogue. These are not all people who, let's say, are from the mushy middle. We wanted people who would have a little bit of edge to the debate to begin getting the debate going.
A second set of products that we'll be producing are about 18 to 20 policy briefs. Again, you have the first two of them in your packets, those of you who are here, and you can get them on the web. If you do not, the first two essentially parallel the discussion that Belle and Ron gave this morning. The next set of policy briefs will focus on assessing the record of welfare reform over the last six or seven years and asking questions like is devolution working? What do we need to do to improve outcomes for children?
And after this—these will probably be coming out through about September. Then, they will be followed by a series of policy briefs that will focus on specific issues in the TANF reauthorization debate.
The third component of our written products is the New World of Welfare volume. I think most of you know about that volume. There's going to be a conference on it next week. Brookings will be publishing that volume. We're very proud to be associated with Rebecca Blank and Ron Haskins and the enormous amount of work that they and the Anne E. Casey Foundation have put into that.
There will—I'm going to be writing a brief monograph called "Gaining Ground?" with a question mark, which focuses on implementation of welfare reform at three stages—state decision-making, implementation in welfare offices, and then responses by recipients. Again, the first New World of Welfare is supposed to be quite comprehensive. This is supposed to be much briefer and integrative across stages of the implementation process.
Belle Sawhill and Adam Thomas are working together on a series that essentially is the beyond welfare part of our component on policy options for low income families. There is already one of their papers that's available on our web site and a policy brief on that subject will be available soon. Stay tuned. It is great, I assure you.
In addition to our written products, we're going to have a series of what we call oral products—public briefings and seminars like this one, again both here and outside the Beltway. Most of us are going to Madison next week to talk to welfare administrators—most of us in welfare reform and beyond are going to Madison next week to talk to welfare implementers there and we're going to be doing a series of events around the country.
We're also going to have what we call a stakeholders' seminar, where we're going to bring together a consistent group of people from government, from advocacy groups, from the research community, to try to have an ongoing dialogue, starting early again, an informed and civil dialogue.
A series of press briefings—we're going to be running a program for reporters who are new to the welfare reform beat to get them up to speed before TANF reauthorization begins?a series of legislative briefings, and retreats. Many of you already know about the series that Belle Sawhill and Doug Becher (ph) have run on Capitol Hill. That will be ongoing.
And as I said, lastly, beyond-the-Beltway events for policy makers and the press.
Again, these are works in progress. And we do want your feedback on things that you think that we missed that could help us achieve our goals.
We're going to move right into the second panel so if the speakers could come up, we'll start on the second panel, and get the perspectives of a number of different institutions and individuals who are important contributors to the welfare reform debate.
I'm switching microphones here. Sorry for the logistical complications.
We're happy to have a very distinguished set of panelists to do this from the research, advocacy and intergovernmental communities, groups that we refer to by the generic term stakeholders. In order to allow more time for audience participation, I'm going to keep the introductions to the audience of the panelists extremely brief.
Going from this side to that side, we have Susan Golonka, from the National Governors' Association, Robert Rector from The Heritage Foundation, Alan Weil from The Urban Institution, Jeffrey Johnson from the National Center for Strategic Nonprofit Planning and Community Leadership—which must be one of the longest acronyms in existence—and Bob Greenstein from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Judy Gueron from MDRC.
In this panel, we have suggested that our panelists address one or more of three issues relating to TANF reauthorization.
First of all, what do they or their organization see as the most important reauthorization issues?
Secondly, what are their organizations doing to prepare for the TANF reauthorization debate?
And thirdly, what do they think that needs to be done that isn't being done by themselves or others to improve the quality of research, discourse and policy making in the next round of welfare reform?
We've told panelists that how they allocate their brief amount of time among those topics is completely up to them, whichever they want to discuss, one, two or three, but whichever they chose, we've asked them to adhere to very strict time limits.
As you know, the 1996 welfare reform legislation subjects most adult recipients of TANF to five-year time limits. And as Belle Sawhill noted in her discussion, there is a significant debate about whether families receiving TANF will be able to become self-sufficient within five years. And we're not going to be able to resolve that issue today but we hope that we can shed some light on the question—can six welfare policy experts with lots to say meet a five-minute time limit for doing so?
(LAUGHTER)
And like many states, we've adopted a progressive series of sanctions beginning with a small "please stop" sign, and moving up to a very large "please stop" sign that we will begin implementing after the five minutes.
So anyway, we discussed many different orders or potential orders of speakers and we finally decided to do it alphabetically. So, being a Weaver, I sympathize with Alan Weil, which means he gets to go last as I always go last. But we're going to begin with Susan Golonka.
SUSAN GOLONKA: Well, I'm delighted to be here. And I have to say I was suffering a little bit of withdrawal because, for these two hours up to this point, I don't think I heard the word governor mentioned at all. And states very rarely. And so I really want to remind you that, in 1996, the governors made an agreement with Congress and the Clinton administration to say that we will take on welfare reform. We will change the system. We'll take a block grant, fixed funding and flexibility and, in exchange, we will transform the system into one that focuses on work and supports families.
And I think we forget that governors took a risk when they did that. I mean, the block grant was fixed. Who knew what the economy was going to be like. And they were also willing to be held accountable with this—a different way of looking at the welfare system. They were going to reduce caseloads, put folks to work, et cetera.
And I really think that, as Ron outlined a little bit earlier, these changes have occurred. For the most part, they have lived up to their initial promises. We have the caseload reduction, the poverty reduction, teen pregnancies continue to decline, child support collection is up to a tremendous amount. So a lot of really positive things have happened because of decisions made by governors and state legislators in the states and implemented at the local level.
And I also want to recall that, as the time—over these three or four years, governors were really operating in a very uncertain environment. Very quickly, we were hearing threats that the TANF block grant was going to be cut. We didn't have regulations for quite a while. So there was a lot of risk that was going on at the time.
Now, I sort of alluded to the successes, and I think the governors clearly recognize that there's a lot more that still needs to be done, and a lot of the issues were raised today in terms of families who are remaining on the caseload who face severe barriers, families who've left the caseload, and who are working but not necessarily in great jobs, and then those that we really have to say that we don't know very much about—those who are left and are not working.
So, as governors review these sort of unfinished missions, I think it's—you know, they are very much feeling they will be critical to the debate. They are, I would say, even a little bit more than stakeholders because, again, they are the ones who implement, set the policies and are ultimately held accountable.
Now, the governors have not really set any policy statement at this point in time and, in some ways, it's a little premature even for me to speculate. But we do know that, in February, when the governors come to Washington and meet, that they will be looking at a general policy statement around welfare reform reauthorization. It may not have a lot of detail. I think what we will see in the course of the year that we're coming into is that the governors and their policy staff will be looking at the record, looking at the research—what does the research tell us about what's worked? What are the changes we really want to push for? But it's somewhat premature.
I think that what I can tell you—and this may not come as a surprise—is that the governors will be supporting continued flexibility and maintenance of the funding. And while I say it's no surprise, and that's often what we expect governors to say, I think it's that the record that they've demonstrated on welfare reform really attests to this is a good direction to continue in.
You now, I think that welfare reform has not been smooth in all areas, and problems have been recognized—one of them being the fact that a number of families were leaving, for example, without Medicaid or food stamps. What we've seen, as research has found, identified problems, studies pointed out these issues, states have made changes. They have made corrections so that families that are leaving will be receiving all the supports that they need.
The flexibility that is in the law has really enabled states and governors to continue to move ahead, to redress the problems that arise, and also to set higher standards. We're not now just looking at reducing caseloads and placing families in