Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Restricting TANF Access

EFTA and the eGovernment Payments Council have provided their comments to the Department of Health and Human Services on the agency's impending rules for restricting access to TANF benefits. To see the EFTA/eGPC comment letter, click here.

eGPC has spent a great deal of time over the last six months on this issue. This included two nationwide surveys, a white paper, and a webinar. Our goal has been to inform the rules-making process so that the rules developed by DHHS actually accomplish the goals of the legislation in such a way that the administration of public funds for eligible households is not adversely affected.

Our fear has been that without a firm understanding of the problem and how public benefits are administered any resulting restrictions on TANF use may be only sporadically effective and could be discriminatory against TANF participants who play by the rules. Compliance with the Section 4004 requirements, as they're called, could also sap valuable resources from the administration of public aid in many states.

We believe that the most effective way to achieve the goals of the Middle Class Tax Relieve and Job Creation Act (Section 4004) is to give states maximum flexibility in developing and managing their own plans that work best for their states and their program participants This is definitely not a situation where one size fits all.

That's how we see it. Check out our comments and let us know if you agree.

No comments:

Post a Comment