White House Attacks Legislative Push To Shore Up Welfare Work Requirement

President Obama policy aides attacked a Republican bill that would block the Department of Health and Human Services from waiving the work requirements associated with the 1996 welfare reform bill, even as the White House continued to deny that it had authorized such waivers.

“With respect to the provision in H.R. 890 to limit State flexibility to strengthen the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program, the Administration notes that this flexibility was requested by Governors on both sides of the aisle to allow States to test new, more effective ways to place more people on a path to self-sufficiency,” the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a policy statement today. “The Administration is disappointed that the bill includes this unnecessary bar to innovative welfare-to-work strategies.”

Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., introduced the bill. “Nothing in current law prohibits a State from strengthening its work requirements and moving more individuals from welfare to work,” Camp said during a hearing last week. “Instead, a waiver would only be needed to weaken the work requirements, as the Administration wishes to do, pure and simple.”
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