Congress fails to extend emergency safety net funds

The federal fiscal year ends on Thursday and Congress was unable to garner enough votes to extend emergency safety net funds that Minnesota has used to create short-term jobs for very low income parents, for emergency assistance payments to help low income families avoid homelessness, for summer youth employment programs, for summer lunch programs for low income children and to pay for the increased numbers of families turning to cash assistance during this recession.

Although economists have officially pronounced the recession over, we all know that far too many Minnesotans remain unemployed and that growing numbers of Minnesotans, including children, have fallen into poverty.

Minnesota had earned about $80 million in emergency TANF funds (welfare to work funds) from the original stimulus bill. With those funds, the non-profit and public workforce agencies in Minnesota more than doubled the number of short-term skill-building jobs for the low income parents turning to cash assistance. More than half those jobs were in the private sector. Without the emergency funds the state’s investment in these stepping stone jobs will be at reduced capacity for another year and it is unclear whether there will be any funds after June 30. Likewise, Minnesota’s counties were able to increase emergency assistance by more than $6 million last year because of these emergency funds -- a critical resource at a time when family homelessness has increased by 27%.

The Job Preservation for Parents in Poverty Act fell victim to familiar partisan divides in Congress – all the Senate authors were Democrats; the opposition was from Republican Senators. An article in the New York Times on Sunday, however, points out that the same partisanship did not exist nationwide: both Democratic and Republican governors had embraced the opportunity to put people to work. Find the article on the New York Times.

Senator Franken had co-signed a letter with the bill’s authors asking the Senate leadership to work for passage of the bill.

Affirmative Options will continue to follow what is happening in Congress to determine if there will be opportunities in the new Congress to act on a late extension.