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.