D.C. City Council Member Jim Graham is celebrating a possible victory in his long battle to buy more time for families facing cuts in their welfare benefits.
On Aug 23, Graham, who chairs the council’s human services committee congratulated Mayor Vincent Gray’s finding $11 million, enough money to buy a six month delay in a 25 percent reduction in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits. The cuts were scheduled to go into effect Oct 1 this fall for families who have exceeded a 60-month time limit on the program.
“The positive turn of events is the direct result of the success of my meeting with the mayor in July. During that dialogue, stakeholders, advocates and I persuaded the mayor that what was about to happen would be a draconian cut and he agreed,” said Graham.
The mayor’s office did not return a request for a comment.
The funds to delay the TANF cuts came from the District’s moving special education students back to city public schools from private placements, and from decreases in child and family services and public health insurance caseloads, according to Graham.
To affect the delay, the emergency legislation needs to be passed by the City Council and signed by the mayor by Sept. 20. Last year, the District implemented a 60-month time limit on welfare benefits. More than 6,000 families who had been on the rolls for more than five years saw reductions in their checks as a result.
Further reductions set to go into place Oct. 1 would take another bite out of benefits, leaving some families with monthly checks of as little as $260. The move to reduce benefits was intended to encourage welfare recipients to find work. But a redesigned TANF employment support program charged with assessing each family’s needs and problems and guiding parents into job training, education and job seeking activities has taken longer to get underway than was originally anticipated.
“This is the right course of action,” said Graham in his Aug 23 statement. “The Department of Human Services has reviewed only 1,500 cases out of the more than 6,000 long term TANF recipients. Before we even think about cuts, every case has to be reviewed.”
