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Highlights Of Senate Passed Final Budget Reconciliation Bill
12/21/05
On December 21, 2005, the U.S. Senate approved the final FY 2006 budget reconciliation bill. Since the Senate passed bill makes some technical changes to the final budget agreement approved by the House on December 19, the House will have to vote again on final passage. The President is expected to sign this bill. The House could vote in December but that vote most likely will take place in January.
Highlights of the Final Senate Passed Bill:
Title IV-E Foster Care and Adoption Assistance
The Senate passed budget reconciliation bill includes cuts in federal foster care assistance for abused and neglected children primarily affecting those cared for by grandparents and other relatives. Cuts in Title IV-E funding total $577 million over five years and $1.29 billion over ten years.
The bill makes these cuts by:
- Repealing the 2003 Rosales v. Thompson 9th Circuit judicial ruling that had expanded Title IV-E foster care eligibility to some children being cared for by grandparents and other relatives. This change cuts federal spending on Title IV-E foster care by $397 million over five years and $879 million over ten years.
- Enacting restrictions on the use of Title IV-E administrative case management funding for the placement of children in kinship homes, children considered "candidates" for foster care, and children leaving ineligible facilities (such as psychiatric, crisis centers and some juvenile facilities) and moving to foster care. These changes cut federal spending on Title IV-E by $180 million over five years and $411 million over ten.
The Senate bill does include a one year, $40 million increase in funding for the Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) program. The bill also creates two $10 million court improvement funds to increase the coordination between state courts and state child welfare systems. These provisions anticipate $86 million in new spending over five years.
TANF Reauthorization
- Reauthorizes the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program for five years with no increase in funding.
- Requires states to meet higher work requirement in 2006. States must have at least 50% of TANF adult recipients in single parent families meeting work requirements in FY 2007. To lower this requirement, states must reduce the number of families receiving TANF assistance since 2005.
- States must also have 90 percent of two parent families meeting the work requirements. Most states cannot meet these two requirements. Many states may be subject to a penalty (loss of TANF block grant funding).
- In addition to stricter work requirements the legislation would now require states to apply all work requirements to "state-only" programs. These state-only programs are programs funded solely with state dollars and used to serve some families who cannot meet certain federal requirements such as being legal immigrants, undergoing substance abuse treatment, two-parent families living in high unemployment rural areas.
Child Care Reauthorization
- Reauthorizes the federal child care program with few changes and almost no increase in child care funding. Child care funding would increase by $200 million in the first year (less than a five percent increase in funding) with funding levels frozen for the last four years of the reauthorization.
- Any future increases in federal child care funding would depend on Congressional annual appropriations decisions. Congress has not approved any increases in child care funding since 2002 and since that date child care funding has been reduced.
Medicaid
- Clarifies states' use of Medicaid funded targeted case management services for children in the child welfare system. This clarification could result in limiting the ability of state child welfare agencies to use Medicaid targeted case management services for children in foster care. This clarification assumes net federal savings of $760 million over five years and $2.1 billion over 10 years. Estimates also assume that the changes would shift some costs to the federal foster care program increasing federal Title IV-E spending by $350 over five years and $940 million over 10 years.
- Allows States to now charge families a co-payment of 10% if their income is at the poverty level, or up 150% of the federal poverty level ($16,000 to $24,000 for a parent and two children). Current law restricts co-payments to $3. For families whose income is 150% of poverty, states could charge a 20% co-payment and a premium.
- Weakens current requirements under the EPSDT (Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic and Treatment) for children allowing states the ability to scale back some of the services provided through this screening.
Child Support Enforcement
- Cuts funding of child support enforcement by $1.5 billion over five years and $4.9 billion over ten years.
- The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this will result in the loss of $2.9 billion in child support payments over five years and the loss of $ 8.4 billion over ten years.
Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
- Requires an individual eligible for SSI payments who are owed more than three months of benefits to receive these back-payments in installments rather in one lump sum payments as allowed under current law.
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