Health and Human Services Committee Home

June 26, 2007

Dear Chairman Baucus, Senator Grassley, Chairman Rangel and Representative McCrery:

On behalf of the nation's Governors, we are writing to urge you to enact legislation that will help us better administer the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and restore flexibility to this successful program.

The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA) directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to establish regulations on what activities may count toward work, how to count and verify reporting of work hours, and who is a work-eligible individual. In June of 2006, HHS published interim final regulations that limited state flexibility and increased the state administrative burden in all of these areas. While we believe that some of the requirements found in both the DRA and the interim final rules help establish a level playing field among the states and regions; others are unduly burdensome, and we ask for your help in restoring some common sense aspects of this critical program.

Restore flexibility for rehabilitation and supportive services.
With an increased number of TANF participants facing severe barriers to work, key rehabilitative and supportive services (such as substance abuse, behavioral and mental health and domestic violence treatment) play an integral role in moving participants to work and retaining employment. Under the interim final rule, states must count these services as job search/job readiness - one of the most restrictive categories in the program. This category currently limits services to a total of six weeks and no more than four weeks in a row. Furthermore, the interim rule would require states to count the treatment hours received during a week, no matter how few, as a full week.

Governors urge Congress to restore states' ability to count rehabilitation and supportive services as a category other than job search/job readiness. Ideally, since these services are so unique and vital to the populations they serve, they should be given their own separate category. At the very least the rules should be changed to allow states to count actual hours spent in treatment instead of counting by weeks.

Create an accommodation for work hours for people with disabilities.
While the interim final rule recognizes that states are legally bound by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, it fails to distinguish between individuals with disabilities and other TANF clients with respect to required weekly work participation. This failure places states in the unreasonable position of either facing penalties or violating the ADA by requiring individuals to work longer hours than they are medically permitted by law. Furthermore, although individuals who are on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) can be excluded from the work participation rate calculation, the determination of SSI status can take up to 24 months during which individuals may not be excluded.

Congress should allow these individuals, if they are working at their medically prescribed maximum level, to be considered as working at the full participation rate. In addition, Congress should provide the authority to retroactively exclude individuals with a pending SSI determination from work participation calculations if they are ultimately found to be SSI eligible.

Eliminate the 90% two-parent work participation rate.
Maintaining a 50% work participation rate for all families was a common theme in every major legislative effort to reauthorize TANF in 2005, and is a principle also shared by the Administration. However, the DRA required states to meet an unrealistic 90% participation rate for two-parent families. Governors strongly support efforts to maintain the flat 50% rate for all families, regardless of size.

Delay implementation of work verification requirements and penalties.
States will be making many changes to their TANF programs to come into full compliance with the new work verification plans, including retraining of staff, state legislative action, computer system changes, and adjustments to vendor contracts. States must receive specific feedback from the Administration on Children and Families on their work verification plans before moving forward on final implementation of these new requirements. While states received an initial round of state specific feedback on April 30^th, many questions remain and states will be hard-pressed to meet ACF's June 30^th deadline for submission of amended plans. The slow pace of feedback and the scope of the required changes make it practically impossible for states to come into full compliance by September 2007.

Governors urge Congress to delay the compliance date for these new work verification requirements at least until September 2008.

We appreciate your attention to this issue and stand ready to work with you to improve the TANF program.

Sincerely,