Davis Opening Statement at Worker and Family Support Subcommittee Hearing on TANF

(As prepared for delivery)

I greatly appreciate our Subcommittee’s bipartisan work on home visiting and child welfare, in particular, but I cannot sit here and pretend that this hearing is anything but a preemptive justification for cuts to supports for struggling families to pay for tax giveaways to the wealthiest and most secure. 

Nor can I ignore that our Republican partners remained silent while Secretary Kennedy took Elon Musk’s chainsaw to the Department of Health and Human Services, putting implementation of all our work at risk.

While our economy is crumbling and families face steep price increases due to dangerous Trump policies and massive cuts to the federal workforce and funding, we are having a hearing about modest recommendations by the Government Accountability Office to improve our administration of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program – or TANF. 

TANF remains a critical source of funding for child care, child welfare services, and foster care in many states, but it fails to support most parents working their way out of poverty. If our goal is truly to discuss real TANF reform, why were Committee Republicans silent while the Trump Administration canceled the TANF pilot projects mandated by a bipartisan law to test how to make TANF work better? Non-partisan staff awarded the pilots to a diverse group of states so we would have evidence of what policies most improve TANF. But Secretary Kennedy abruptly canceled the awards and fired the entire HHS TANF policy division.

If our goal is truly to discuss TANF reform, why do my Republican colleagues continue promising deep cuts in TANF and similar programs like the Social Services Block Grant to pay for tax giveaways to the wealthy? Cutting TANF funding will cut child care, child welfare services, and help for struggling parents - making the lives of children and families worse, not better. 

If the goal is to make TANF accountable, I urge my colleagues to support the bill Representative Chu and I introduced to give HHS the tools they need to penalize states for gross malfeasance. State accountability was left out of the original law by design of its Republican drafters, and only Congress can fix that. If accountability is important, I urge my colleagues to join me in calling on President Trump to withdraw his nomination of Thomas March Bell for HHS Inspector General given that he was fired from a previous job for mishandling taxpayer dollars.

Focusing on the minutia of TANF policy seems to sidestep our Subcommittee’s obligation to ask more important questions.  Are families better off than they were four months ago and will the Republican Congress provide the supports Americans need to survive the recession and harm caused by the Trump policies?  Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding no.  The Trump Tariff Tax is making the cost of basic necessities like food, housing, and utilities spike while savings and retirement balances have plummeted by trillions of dollars,  while retirees fear their survival as President Trump and Elon Musk work to dismantle the Social Security Administration. 

I appreciate the work of the experts before us. But focusing on narrow process issues instead of protecting the people we represent from cruel and chaotic policies is like focusing on the details of a fire truck while a house burns down. Seniors, children, and families need us to act to protect them.

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