Half Changed World

Today HHS published regulations implementing the budget bill’s changes to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), aka "welfare."  I worked on them while I was at HHS, and my frustration with both the content and the process was a good part of what led me to jump ship.  It’s very strange to read them from the outside now.

We’re trying to get a draft of our preliminary analysis out to advocates who we work with by tomorrow.  So I was in the office at 7:15 this morning, left at 6:30, and will go online to work some more when I finish this up.  But I’m not complaining — I don’t mind working long hours occasionally, when there’s actually work to be done.  And it’s a lot more fun to spend all day writing when you get to say what you think.  I’m feeling pretty good about my decision to take this job.

I even get to talk to the press.  Yesterday, one of my colleagues called me and said "hey, Jason DeParle’s on the phone; can you talk to him about the regs?"  (No, I wasn’t using inappropriate insider knowledge — the regulations were on public display at the Federal Register’s office yesterday.)  I’m not sure I was at my most thoughtful and coherent, though; I was sufficiently impressed that I managed to accidentally turn on the speakerphone in my office, and I wasn’t sure how to turn it off without risking hanging up on him.

The short version is that overall, I think the regulations stink.  I mean, the welfare reauthorization was truly lousy lawmaking — it was tacked onto the budget bill in the middle of the night, with lawmakers desperate to go home, having no idea what they were voting for.  HHS only had limited flexibility to improve things in the regs.  But instead, they made things worse.  They made it harder for people on welfare to go to school, harder for states to help people who need services like substance abuse treatment or counseling.  And after all those years talking about state flexibility, it turns out, surprise surprise that the Republicans only believe in state flexibility when the states choose to do what they want them to.  Feh.

(There will be a polished version of what I’m working on up on my organization’s website in a couple of weeks.  If any of you are interested in reading all 25 pages of detailed analysis sooner, drop me a line and I’ll forward it to you when we have a sharable draft.)

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 29th, 2006 at 9:28 pm and is filed under Personal, Poverty and Class. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.