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TANF Reauthorization Round II: An Opportunity to Improve the Safety Net for Women and Children  


Author:  Timothy  Casey.; Soraya  Fata.; Leslye  Orloff.; Maya  Raghu.


Source: Volume 14, Number 05, June/July 2009 , pp.65-70(6)




Domestic Violence Report

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Abstract: 

Congress must soon take up the reauthorization of TANF, offering a fresh opportunity for advocacy to make TANF responsive to the mothers and children the program is intended to serve. Change is imperative. Millions of women and children are living in the most dire poverty because administrative barriers prevent them from accessing the TANF benefits for which they are eligible. Aid for those who are able to access benefits is shockingly inadequate. TANF—Temporary Assistance for Needy Families—replaced AFDC as the national family public assistance program in 1996. TANF gave states even broader administrative discretion than the very broad discretion they had enjoyed under AFDC. Crucially, Congress deliberately chose to omit in TANF the language of the AFDC statute that had created an enforceable right to aid for those meeting the state eligibility standards. This omission foreclosed most federal legal challenges to arbitrary state administrative practices, and sharply curtailed federal agency authority to regulate state administration of TANF. In this article, the authors expound on this position.

Keywords: TANF Reauthorization Advocacy Agenda; Family Violence Option; FVO; immigrant eligibility

Affiliations:  1: Legal Momentum; 2: Legal Momentum; 3: Legal Momentum; 4: Legal Momentum.

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