What’s New:
This week I introduced legislation to help healthy, working age people find work. It ensures that our nation’s cash assistance welfare program is a springboard to a job and self-support, not a sinkhole into government dependency.
My JOBS Act is based on the long-standing bipartisan principle that finding and keeping a job is the most effective pathway for low-income adults to go from poverty to prosperity.
Why it Matters:
Unfortunately, our nation’s welfare-to-work program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, is broken. States are bypassing the current work requirements, and low-income families are being trapped into government dependency. Millions of able-bodied Americans are out of the workforce altogether, even as our nation’s economy is soaring.
My bill requires states to develop individual plans for every adult on welfare to find a job. It also provides more time for TANF enrollees to receive mental health and substance abuse treatment while on the program, and it increases child care funding to make keeping a job possible.
Coupled with the stronger work requirements, these reforms to improve job readiness skills will allow adults on welfare to find and keep a job – giving them and their children hope, dignity, and a better future.
What’s next:
TANF is set to expire on June 30, 2019. As a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over the program, I will keep fighting to ensure that welfare-to-work remains a bipartisan policy and that strong work requirements are included in its reauthorization.
