District legislators are pushing for an extension beyond the five-year cutoff date for some welfare recipients in a city where nearly half the population is receiving some type of government handout. Councilmen Jim Graham and Michael Brown want to extend for up to two years local aid to certain residents who receive welfare checks from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. TANF recipients represent about 8 percent of the more than 232,000 D.C. residents on government aid, according to the Department of Human Services. That group — 40 percent of the city’s population — receives either food stamps, Medicaid assistance, welfare checks or some combination of the three.
“This gives us an opportunity for the necessary assessments to be made — right now we have conducted a fraction,” Ward 1 Councilman Graham said Tuesday.
But Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans said the city has a decade-long history of being lax on the time limit.
“We kid ourselves if we say we’re going to end it,” Evans said to his colleagues.
The federal funding cutoff for TANF was installed in 1996, but jurisdictions, including D.C., were slow to enforce it and often found supplemental funding through grants or other programs.
After a bill including the proposal was tabled by council Tuesday, Brown and Graham told The Washington Examiner they would push to fund the extension through the 2013 budget proposal by including it their Human Services Committee budget recommendations. That committee, which Graham chairs, is scheduled to make its recommendations Wednesday.
According to Brown’s office, the extension would affect 6,179 families, including nearly 14,000 children, who otherwise would have their welfare funding cut off on Oct. 1.
“Some of these situations we’re talking about, we’re talking life or death,” said Brown.
The proposal would allow some five-year recipients, including a minor parent enrolled in school, domestic violence victims and disabled parents, to be exempted from the cutoff for up to two years, as long as they are working toward a degree or credential.
