Welfare Reform Roundtable: Reviewing a Decade, Previewing the Future

July 25, 2006
Urban Institute
2100 M Street N.W., 5th Floor
Washington, D.C.

Writers and critics of the landmark 1996 welfare reform bill took part in an Urban Institute roundtable event with federal officials, state and local human service practitioners, researchers and analysts to mark the legislation's approaching 10th anniversary.

Overview of the discussion
Participant list
Related documents

Breakfast keynote
Audio	Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Fla.
TANF's core strategies
Audio	General discussion with opening remarks by Sheldon Danziger, National Poverty Center; Howard Rolston, Brookings Institution; Robert Moffitt, Johns Hopkins University
Low-income working families
Audio	General discussion with opening remarks by Ron Haskins, Brookings Institution; Mark Greenberg, Center for American Progress
Marriage and childbearing
Audio	General discussion with opening remarks by Wade Horn, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Andrea Kane, National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy
Children and welfare reform
Audio	General discussion with opening remarks by Gordon Berlin, MDRC; Helen Blank, National Women's Law Center
Perspective from the states
Audio	General discussion with opening remarks by Ray Scheppach, National Governors' Association; Sheri Steisel, National Conference of State Legislatures; Al Collins, Anne Arundel county government
Looking ahead
Audio	General roundtable discussion.
Lunch keynote
Audio	Wendell Primus, office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Overview of the discussion

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 25, 2006—Writers and critics of the landmark 1996 welfare reform bill took part in an Urban Institute roundtable event on July 25 with federal officials, state and local human service practitioners, researchers, and analysts to mark the legislation's tenth anniversary. Mostly hailed by participants as a bipartisan achievement that shrank welfare rolls and put single mothers to work, welfare's transformation from an entitlement program to a block grant that imposed time limits on assistance also left many families with children in poverty.

Experts offered views on how well work supports are aiding hard-pressed households, how such programs might be strengthened, and why many former welfare recipients aren't advancing in the workforce. Looking ahead, participants questioned whether the stricter work requirements imposed by the bill's reauthorization in February might constrain states and put more families at risk.

Rep. Clay Shaw, the Florida Republican who chaired the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources that wrote the historic 1996 legislation, spoke of how it helped break the cycle of poverty, gave states great flexibility, and encouraged more two-parent families. Welfare reform was "a rescue program," he said, that underscored the strength of "the human spirit."

Not so, countered Wendell Primus, the former official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), who resigned in 1996 in opposition to President Clinton's decision to sign the welfare reform bill. Primus, now a senior policy adviser to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California, echoed many at the roundtable by largely crediting a booming economy in the late 1990s and the expansion of the earned income tax credit with the single-parent exodus from welfare to work.

Debates arose over some of the same issues that sparked controversy 10 years ago. Are states getting the flexibility and financing needed to enforce this ambitious social policy? Moving the first half of welfare recipients into the workforce was easy, according to Ray Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association. But faced with tougher work requirements and fewer dollars, Scheppach views the task ahead with skepticism. "Block grants were good for states in the short run," he said, "but bad in the long run."

Both Ron Haskins, an author of the bill and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Wade Horn, HHS assistant secretary for children and families, argued that states could be doing more with their federal dollars to bolster working families.

Can government policy increase healthy marriages and reduce out-of-wedlock births? With more government money than ever going toward encouraging stronger unions between low-income parents, Horn argued that "doing nothing produces nothing" and that providing low-income couples with the same skills many wealthier couples possess is only fair. Other participants questioned whether marriage deserved such government focus.

Many agreed that the next 10 years may be the bigger challenge since a slew of unanswered questions and concerns persist. Stuart Butler, a vice president at the Heritage Foundation, urged everyone to consider how to improve the incomes of those leaving welfare. He suggested the public education system as an untapped resource that could be better educating and preparing youth for a competitive workforce. Olivia Golden, an Urban Institute senior fellow and former HHS assistant secretary, said that work supports-especially state unemployment insurance-should be given more consideration.

Many experts cited the array of state welfare experiments in the early 1990s as pioneering successful welfare reform. More such experimentation could show how to make work supports more effective, Golden said.

Nearly everyone agreed that the real work of welfare reform will unfold in the coming years. As the roundtable's moderator, Los Angeles Times national economics correspondent Peter Gosselin, said at the start of the event, the participants are "history makers" invited to "look backward at what should be ahead."

Roundtable participants

Greg Acs, principal research associate, Income and Benefits Policy Center, Urban Institute

Gina Adams, senior research associate, Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population, Urban Institute

Richard Bavier, senior policy analyst, U.S. Office of Management and Budget

Gordon Berlin, president, MDRC; former executive deputy administrator, New York City's Human Resources Administration

Helen Blank, director, leadership and public policy, National Women's Law Center

Stuart Butler, vice president of domestic and economic policy studies, Heritage Foundation

Al Collins, chief of staff, Anne Arundel (Md.) county executive; former director, Office of Family Assistance, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Sheldon Danziger, codirector, National Poverty Center, University of Michigan

Olivia Golden, senior fellow, Urban Institute; former assistant secretary for children and families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Naomi Goldstein, director of planning, research, and evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Mark Greenberg, executive director, task force on poverty, Ctr. for American Progress

Ron Haskins, senior fellow, Brookings Institution; former majority staff director, U.S. House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources

Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Andrea Kane, senior director for policy and partnerships, National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy; nonresident fellow, Brookings Institution

Pamela Loprest, principal research associate, Income and Benefits Policy Center, Urban Institute

John Monahan, senior fellow, Center for the Study of Social Policy

Robert Moffitt, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Economics, Johns Hopkins University

Beatriz "BB" Otero is founder and executive director of CentroNía in Washington, D.C.

LaDonna Pavetti, senior fellow, Mathematica Policy Research

Sharon Parrott, director, welfare reform and income support division, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Wendell Primus, office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Jerry Regier, principal deputy assistant secretary, Office of Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Howard Rolston, visiting fellow, Brookings Institution; former director of planning, research, and evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Elaine Ryan, deputy executive director for policy and government affairs, American Public Human Services Association

Ray Scheppach, executive director, National Governors' Association

Margaret Simms, interim president, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies

Matthew Stagner, director, Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population, Urban Institute

Sheri Steisel, federal affairs counsel and director of human services policy, National Conference of State Legislatures

Jim Weill, president, Food Research and Action Center

Marty Zaslow, vice president of research, Child Trends

Sheila Zedlewski, director, Income and Benefits Policy Center, Urban Institute

Related documents

Two fact sheets reviewing welfare reform research conducted during the past decade are available from the Urban Institute.

"A Decade of Welfare Reform: Facts and Figures" is an overview of several key aspects of welfare reform.

"Government Work Supports and Low-Income Families: Facts and Figures" offers a more targeted look at work support programs.

A report by the Urban Institute's Sheila Zedlewski and Pamela Loprest, "The Changing Role of Welfare in the Lives of Low-Income Families with Children," is forthcoming.