Officials at the District’s Department of Human Services want the D.C. Council to give them six more months to implement “an aggressive yet deliberate strategy” to determine which of the 6,000 District families that have been receiving welfare payments for more than five years still need financial help. But that review should have been conducted four years ago.

When Congress replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in 1996, it clearly intended the new federal welfare-to-work block grant program as a short-term safety net for families down on their luck. It was a major success. By 2003, 2.9 million fewer children were living in poverty. The DC Fiscal Policy Institute points out that the District’s own welfare rolls decreased by roughly 50 percent — from about 70,000 adults and children in 1996 to 40,000 in 2011.