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The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear President Bush:
As you decide on the priorities of your Administration for the next four years, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) urges you to give careful consideration to a number of issues concerning our nation's children that are extremely important to state legislators. As a bipartisan organization whose members are keenly aware of how federal decisions impact the lives of America's families, we are ready to work with you on the issues raised below.
Child Care Funding
The Child Care and Development Fund Block Grant is a critical component of helping families achieve and maintain self-sufficiency. State legislators see a tremendous need for child care funding, a need we still have been unable to meet. It will take a strong partnership between the federal government and the states to meet the demand for child care and help working parents stay off welfare or never need to go on the welfare rolls. Meeting this demand is essential to maintaining our welfare reform efforts.
Child Welfare
Many proposals will be made to increase flexibility in the funding of the child welfare system. NCSL strongly supports efforts to grant additional flexibility to the states. However, because Title IV-E funds protect vulnerable children and because it is difficult to predict the number of children that judges will determine need these services, NCSL believes that this program should remain an open-ended entitlement. NCSL looks forward to working with your administration on issues such as delinking foster care assistance from the old AFDC eligibility, increasing the waiver authority so that state innovation can be nurtured and replicated, and ensuring more collaboration between substance abuse and child welfare systems.
Child Support Distribution
NCSL believes that child support enforcement is a state-federal partnership. Changing the distribution system will enhance this partnership and bolster our efforts to reform welfare. NCSL supports options allowing states to pass through child support payments to families who have left the welfare system and to families on assistance to ensure that they do not become dependent. Mandates in this regard will destabilize financing for many state systems. Federal cost sharing in carrying out those options is critical to ensuring the financial stability of child support systems, especially for states that use retained child support to finance their systems.
Fatherhood
NCSL appreciates recent federal efforts to provide grants for fatherhood programs, because children benefit from having the emotional and financial support of their parents. Many states are already using TANF funds as well as their own funds to provide services to connect low-income non-custodial parents with their children. State legislators have been a driving force in establishing programs at the state level, perhaps because the issue touches so many of their other policy responsibilities, such as child support, welfare reform and family formation. We are very interested in working with you and urge you to include state legislators in any fatherhood proposal your administration puts forward or supports. Specifically, state legislators should be given the authority to appropriate the funds a state receives under any fatherhood grant. State legislators can ensure that these funds coordinate with and supplement current state efforts, as well as ensure collaboration between state, local, and private entities.
Waivers
We hope that your administration will be amenable to requests from states for waivers that allow states to implement innovative approaches to the delivery of services to children. State innovations in serving our most precious resource, our children, should be encouraged and replicated.
Thank you for your attention to NCSL's concerns. NCSL is well aware that as a former governor, you understand the need for flexibility and partnership in delivering services that benefit Americans in need. If you wish to discuss these issues further, please contact Sheri Steisel, Federal Affairs Counsel, in our Washington office. Sheri can be reached at (202) 624-8693, or at sheri.steisel@ncsl.org.
Sincerely,
Assemblywoman Dion Aroner
California Assembly
Chair, NCSL Human Services Committee |
