Political Quotes

“I rise today on behalf of Senators Hutchison, Bingaman, Hutchinson, Breaux, Ensign, Baucus, Lincoln, Thompson, and myself to introduce a piece of legislation which will extend the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families supplemental grants for one year. This grant program has been critical to the success of welfare reform in our States. The TANF block grant, as it is commonly known, was established in the 1996 welfare law. These were modest supplemental grants for 17 relatively poor or rapidly growing States. The grants were intended to reduce the very large disparity in welfare funding between poorer and wealthier States that resulted from the basic TANF funding formula. The TANF supplemental grants have afforded States, like ours a more adequate opportunity to achieve TANF goals. While TANF is scheduled to be reauthorized in 2002, the supplemental grants included in the 1996 law were authorized only through October 2001. If the grants expire, 17 States will lose as much as 10 percent of their TANF funding beginning in October 1 of this year. Wealthy, low-growth States will experience no reduction. These grants are not supplemental in the sense of being add-ons. They were designed as an integral part of the TANF allocation formula and are critical to the success of the TANF programs in the States that receive them. The decision to end the grants a year before reauthorizing the entire program was not a policy consideration, only a financial one.”