and it is okay to use those. we don't want to go into a profession and believe we cannot make it like someone else because we are different. because that is one of our strengths. i found that out and that is just one of my stories. another strength is horizontal networking. men with comfortable in vertical chains. women like governance, collaboration, concencus and coming to decision. that is a powerful power women

have. you can bring the well-vetted idea up the chain here. and that is valuable to know our power to be confidant in who we are and not shy way from that. so that is four barriers i think are important to go over to set the tone of some of the obsticals. as we look at leading at all levels that sets the context. how can we get young women and everybody to lead at all levels from student up to president to ceo or superintendent in my case. and i can the first tenant of this was talked about but i want to emphasis this. it is leading

yourself. there is a lot of principles that go into that. until we get the self down we will never be able to lead others or move up in an organization. does anyone know the kung foo pa pana da? we happen there is poe who is a fat panda and he is trying to get in shape to fight the bad guys that are going to come in and destroy the valley. he doesn't like a warrior in any respect and people tell him you will never defeat the enemy. you are not the right size, shape or whatever. at the end of the day, they

think they will go back on the scroll and those of who might remember the palace, there is a scroll at the top that animal the dragon can lay eyes on. so they have done all they can to train him to be the dragon warrior. we think we will get that down and that will tell him the secret ingredients he needs. the scroll comes down, he reads it, screams and jumps back. it a mirror paper and he sees his face starring back and the others grab the roll and they say they are hopeless because there is not an ingredient to make him successful. it was all of the qualities that

helped him beat the bad guy. he used his weight to sharp him. the eelectrlectrical sharp just tickled the panda. so there was no secret sauce. everything he needed to be the warrior was inside him despite what he looked like. that is part of the problem with stereotypeing when we say you cannot be that because you are not the right type. and before we start our careers we are selected out because someone told us we are not the right part or don't look like the right part. i know this isn't a personal experience for me, but kung foo panda has the ten leadership lessons is had hone of the talk

i give. i encourage you to see the movie and you will see what i feel about it being a great leadership movie. that is about self discovery and that panda wasn't going to defeat the warrior until he had self-discovery and moral comfort to believe in who he is. so if you get nothing else other than self-discovery from your four years here that is okay. leading others is the next level. this is where self-less service comes in and your civic engagement and developing a strong, professional reputation in what you are competent in and taking care of your people and finding what is best in them and helping them find their passion.

you will never be a successful leader on your own. i have 1600 people showing up and i would be nothing if i just showed up in my office. it is all my people who do the work there. you have to make sure your people's potential is realized and fulfilled. that is where reaching out the hand and bringing them up. i was the co of a ship. i was a junior officer. it was the same ship with the pastor said i was taking a guy from a young guy who needed to support a family. i was trying to learn my job and develop professionalism and one guy on board was an engineering, a young fireman, the lowest person you can get on the totem pole. he was sitting there cleaning a filter and i started to walk by and i said good evening to him.

and it was after hours. and he just kind of said good evening ma'am. and i turned around and said what are you doing. and he said i am just cleaning this filter like it was a no-nothing job. and i said can you show me what you are doing. and he was curious i would be interested and got into it and he was excited showing the captain how to clean an oil filter. i thought nothing of it. i went away. but on the next door was my engineer, i guess you don't need me anymore. i heard you are getting your information from the fireman. because the fireman went around saying i showed the captain how to clean the filter and she things that is the most important job on the ship. and i had to tell my officer i was making him feel valued.

i was empowering that young man and make sure my senior leaders knew i wasn't dissempowering them. i had to reach up to my coworkers. leading in the executive ranks is a big difference. many of you are not there but i want to address the continuum because it is important that as young people you focus on what you could do. and you could be in senior management one day if you so chose. you have to get out of the tactical that made you successful in the junior stages. you start the need transform into a more strategic perspecti perspective. you ask bench mark, prepare assessment of your company and

what the gap is from where you are and need to be. and start looking to be doing value added things to bring the company forward. just coming to work is no longer good. in the coast guard, examples of that, i need to be looking at where the coast guard academy fits in with the department of homeland security is beyond. and some of the ways i have done is that looking in people that are interested in the arctic. the arctic is a big open area that needs to be addressed from a number of points. and we in the coast guard have

missions to be done up there and how can my academy help deliver research and capacity to help the coast guard and dhs find the right role if the coast guard in the arctic. we have a center for maritime strategy and policy that helps inform this decision making. i brought along the art of strategy and this is available in the back. it will be available on your way out if you want to grab one of those strategy. and we at the coast guard academy are trying to decide where we can deliver cyber skills and education so the cadets have the skills needed in an every-changing world. as a senior person, knowing where you want to help bring the organization, making sure you communicate your expectations up and down to your seniors and people.

you cannot just come in and start this. you have to get the great ideas and get the buy-in from your people. inform people what is expected and give them leeway to help you achieve the goals and hold them accountable. you have to lean forward and get out of your comfort zone. you you will fail. failure is a great think. i am here to tell you to encourage failure. that sounds counter intuitive but when you fail you get up and go forward. fail forward. not because someone hits you but because you are reaching out of your comfort zone. look behind and pull people out. reach out the hand and bring people up. that is really how you lead at all levels. reaching out that hand. and everything i talked about today in this talk is a lot of

information but it comes down to leading at all levels is reaching out a hand and meeting people where they are and bringing them up to your level and helping them mature so they can replace you one day. as i finish up, we have come a long way even since i came in the coast guard. i am privileged to be standing here as the first female superintendant of the coast guard. i would like to be known as the 40th superintendent know, not the first female. i challenge you students -- what are you going to do to put that drop in that glass and fill that glass and make your mark so we have someone to replace senior general offices in your service

today. you are not too young to start developing goals and looking at the tough tradeoff decisions in what you want and be comfortable in who you are. i am going to finish on a positive note. i told you my speech is going to be positive on passion and pride and who we are and where we are going. we have a wonderful opportunity head. i envy you. i am on the downside of my career. you are starting. pick something you have a passion for that you can pursue and succeed at and be proud of. the future is really, really bright right here in this room. i feel the energy. i see the passion when i look around at this beautiful campus. the same at my coast guard academy. you all have the characters and values to become those leaders that can lead at all levels and

make our great nation get even better and be there for your kids and the next jgenerations. i wish you all the best in that journey you have ahead of you. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> we will need to learn again how to work together. how to compromise. how to make pragmatic decisions. in the upcoming mid-term elections americans will have choices to make about which path they want to go down and whether we will make the investments we need in the people. i will leave that discussion to others. but for a lot of us in the private and non-profit sectors have work to do. government doesn't have a

monopoly on good ideas. even if it wanted it couldn't and shouldn't try to solve all of the problems by itself. we have responsibilities to do what we can. >> hilary clinton's latest book is called "hard choices" about her time as secretary of state and how it shapes her views of the future. friday watch the coverage starting at 6 p.m. eastern and followed with a book signing in virginia live at 11 a.m. both events reair at 5:30 on saturd t saturday. the associated press is reporting that house majority leader eric cantor has been defeated.

bratt won in the 7th district primary contest in the richmond area. the associated press reporting that eric cantor lost his republican primary election today. tomorrow the house debates the agriculture spending bill. for details about what is in the bill we talk today a reporter for politico. >> the house takes up the 2015 agriculture spending bill and we are joining by helena bottemiller whose an agriculture reporter for politico. what key area and agencies does this bill cover and how much are they proposing to spend next year? >> it is about $20.9 billion in discreationary funding. it covers fda and usda. and the range of issues covered go from regulating cosmetics and

imported sea food at fda all the way to food safety at fda and c conservation and there is a broad range of issues talked about chatbut the central debat point is over school nutrition. there is a bill that will allow schools to opt out of key nutrition standards that have been championed by the first lady. and that is causing a lot of debate and really a lot of in nite fighting in the community. >> and you have been tweeting about this. house r's are pushing to relax the school lunches and looking forward to coming to battle with the senate. and the first lady saying we have the right to expect our hard earned dollars won't be

spent on junk food were our kids. and you write about how this evolved during the whitehouse and the school house association. what brokedown over the last six months or year? >> i think people in the nutrition circle are scratching their heads finding how they got in the position where the obama administration is fighting to keep these laws in place. the obama association and nutrition association that represents suppliers and they were all on the same team. today we have fighting over how to implement the law and the school new nutrition association and the republicans are looking to let the schools opt out

because they are having troubling implementing them and they are costing too much money making some schools operate in the red. all of this is causing contentious dialogue. it is interesting how forceful the first lady is about this. she has been holding meetings and pushing to keep the law in tact. >> the whitehouse issued their veto threat against the bill. and that must be the key reason for opposing it. >> this is an issue the first lady is showing unwavering support were this. she is calling out congress for putting politics above skins science. in her garden harvest event on thursday she is only having students from schools complying with the regulations. so the events have a theme of

don't rolling the rules back and no changes other than letting usda allowing schools to have more flexibility. usda has been in line with what the administration is asking for. it is going to be interesting to see how it goes. there is debate on the floor. sam far is going to make an amendment to strip out the amendment language and then it turns to what happens in conference. >> let's look at other issues that will come up for debate on the agriculture bill. >> horse slaughter. a ban on hours horse slaughter is in the law. there could be discussion over a rider that prevents usda from spending money on contract

issues related to poultry farming. we might hear debate about reforming sugar programs. you never know. we heard such a wide variety of issues coming up. >> one issues was the cuts to the food stamp program. does that come up in the 2015 agriculture spending bill? >> it folks on discretionary funding and the supplement assistance program is mainly debated in the farm bill. but you might here cuts about being implemented and they think states have gotten around making meaningful cuts to food stamp benefits. you might see discussion about it -- the other nutrition issues is allowing white potatoes in

the women, infant and children feeding program. up until you, white potatoes haven't been allow because the institute of medicine and the usda they argue small children and pregnant women are getting enough potatoes. but the white potatoes farmers don't thing it is okay to cast them as unhealthy and they have fought hard. and there is a provision in the house and senate bills to go ahead and let white potatoes n program so they are not the only vegetable left out. >> lots to look forward to in the debate. helena bottemiller evich. you can follow her on twitter. thank you for the update. >> happy to be here. >> tonight on c-span2.

a hearing on federal poverty programs. and then senate veterans affair committee on the house affairs for veterans and looking at negotiations with iran on their nuclear program. the house looked at federal poverty programs and how they effect the poor. james clyburn is the first hearing. the meeting begins with committee chair paul ryan. >> hearing will come to order. good morning, everybody and welcome. this is the fourth in the series of hearing on the war on poverty in the house budget committee. today we will pick up where he left off last time. last time we heard from people fighting poverty on the front

line. today we will hear from people that work on the supply lines and hear how the state and federal government can better support the war on poverty because if we have learned anything it is there is room for improvement. we spend $90 billion fighting poverty but the official poverty rate hasn't budged in years. people can get help if they fall into the poverty but far too many can't earn enough to get out of poverty and over the past three years deep poverty has been the highest since it has been recorded. clearly, something is not working and we need to try something new. given your history, i would say we are do for an adjustment. the last time we made big changes was welfare reform in 1996. that was almost 20 years. poverty among single mothers fell by double digits. work is crucial to fighting

poverty and before congress drafted legislation it allowed states to try out new ideas. work first programs, education programs and different mixes between the two. i think that approach with an emphasis on results and what works is just the mindset we need today. but times have changed. today the biggest tested programs are medicaid, snap and the earned income taxes. and we spend more on section eight housing than tannif. in deep poverty, it is especially difficult, many people in deep poverty face challenges like addition, homelessness, and disability. and all of them are

intrarelated. if we can provide better coordinated care we can help people get out of poverty. we will hear from two panels. the first is congressman james clyburn. he is going to brief us on the 10-20-30 plan he has been discu discussing. and we will not take questions for him to make sure we have time for all witnesses. on the second panel we will hear from three people. jason turner is first who worked for the wisconsin governor to reform the state's welfare program. and then robert doar who served under mayor michael bloomberg. and finally we have olivia golden who led the dc family and children's service agency from 2001-2004. i want to thank our witnesses for being here today. the question i want to answer is how can we improve?

how can we better focus on these program? how can we get more bang for our buck and get more people involved? i said we need to hear from different points of view and today we hear from people with first hand knowledge. and i would like to recognize the ranking member for his opening remarks. >> i am glad to have another opportunity to talk about what additional measures we should and can take to fight poverty in america. for all of those that can work the best anti-poverty measure is a job. according to the congressional

budget office if we raise minim minimum wage it would lift millions out of poverty. the house speaker refuses to allow a vote just like he does to extend emergency unemployment compensation program to three million american. but we know if we raise the minimum wage huge challenges remain and we must examine to past to chart forward. a january report did just that. it found 50 million americans remain in poverty. unacceptable and a high number. but it also found steps over the last 50 years have cut poverty in half from what it would be. 40 million more americans would be in poverty but are not. that is why we cannot understand

the disconnect between these hearings on poverty and the policies adopted by the republicans. they shred the safety net and push more americans into poverty. it undermine said the disabled, elderly, children, it slashes $700 million from the base medicaid program and repeals the optional state expansion in the affordable care act. now, by what logic do we reduce poverty for the millions of americans in poverty today by cutting programs that have helped lift about 45 million americans out of poverty? it is bad enough the republicant

targets the programs but it does so to protect special in the tact breaks for powerful healthy elites at the expense of mitted middle class families. the republican budget calls for a 1/3 tax cut rate for millionaires and refuses to close a single special interest tax break to reduce the deficit. it doesn't just slash safety programs designed to help people from hitting rock bottom it also cuts deeply into things that help you get out. early education, k-12 and higher education programs like pell grants and student loan programs. just this week while the president and many of us are working to reduce the debt

burden being faced by college students here in the house we are talk about permanent unpaid for tax break extensions for businesses allowing future generations to foot the bill. so in the end, mr. chairman, the republican budget will not create jobs, it will not make people more employable. it will reduce the ladder of opportunity and shred the middle class with cutting tax for the wealthy. when you get to the top of the republican budget you pull the ladder up after you. i hope, mr. chairman, week get to the bottom of issues here. we have a tremendous witness

here who has spent his life helping people with poverty rates. i am pleased to join you in welcoming mr. clyburn. >> now we set a nice productive tone. >> go forward with your budget. >> let's hope we can keep it that way. mr. chair ''man, members of the committee and ranking member, good morning and thank you for having me today. i want to thank the chair lady of the caucus and other members of the congressional black hawks who have adopted this formula as an appropriate way to tackle

this issue of persistent poverty. i know that all of us note know that it is no secret there are major disagreements among the members of the committee and our respected parties over the role the federal government should play in fighting poverty. they come down to a question of federal resources. i believe that we should target more resources to impovrished community than your proposed budget allocate. i believe we can do so efficiently and effectively. i was privileged to work through some of these agreements with you mr. chairman has a member of the budget conference committee.

results were not hundred percent of what either of us wanted were a reasonable compromiseamar on federal spending for next year. i was proud to support that agreement. now that we have determined how much the federal government will spend we must determine how to spend it more effectively. there is a lot of questions on how to allocate finite federal resources to get the most bang for the buck. i believe we need to work harder and more creatively to find common ground to make real strive to combat consistent poverty in america. there are 488 persistent poverty counties in america. so defined because 20% of the population has lived below the poverty line for the last 30

years or so. they are diverse. including appalachian counties in kentucky and west virginia. native american communities in alaska and south dakotas. latino communities in texas and arizona. and african american communities in alabama and the south. 139 of these counties are represented in this august body by democrats. 331 of these counties are represented by republicans. and 18 are split between the two parties.

persistent poverty should matter to all of us regardless of party, geography, race or ethnicity. in early 2009 when we put together the recovery act, i proposed language to require at least 10% of funds in rural development towns to be directed to projects in these persistent poverty counties. this requirement was enacted into law. in light of the definition of persistent poverty rates being consistent over 30 years. this became known as the 10-20-30 initiatives. as economic projects proliferated in counties across the country, the recover act funded a total of 4, 655

projects in persistent poverty counties totaling $1.7 billion dollars. i saw firsthand the positive effects of these efforts in my congressional district. projects were undertaken that would have otherwise not happened and jobs were created that would have otherwise gone wanting. among these investments was a 5.8 million dollar grant and $2 million loan to construct 50 miles of water line in marion county which i represented at the time but today is represented by our colleague who is sitting on this committee mr. rice. in lions couny mississippi,

$17.5 million was spent to install water line, elevated tank and two waste water pump stations providing water to mississippi and creating badly needed construction jobs. the district in brazos county in texas received a $38,000 mile line to connect 50 households to a new water source. i come before the budget committee to ask that as you decide how to allocate federal resources you expand 10-20-30 to other federal agencies. in 2011, i joined with our former republican colleague then representative emerson of

missouri to introduce an amendment to the continuing resolution that would have continued 10-20-30 for rural development and expanded it to 11 additional accounts throughout there federal budget effecting economic development, education, job training, health, justice, environment, and more. i hope to work with members of this committee to include similar language in future budget resolutions and other legislation. i want to be clear about two things: number one, 10-20-30 is not a license to be applied to an adequate budget. and number two, it does not, and i want to repeat this, 10-20-30

doesn't add one time to the deficit. it simply targets funds already authorized or appropriate d to needed communities. over the past 30 years the national economy has risen and fallen multiple times. during each economic down turn, while we have been focused on getting our economy as a whole back on track, we have not given adequate attention to these communities that are suffering from chronic distress and depression era levels of joblessness. as a result they have suffered even in good economic times. the 10-20-30 approach would provide a mechanism to address this deprivation in times of

want and plenty. in times of federal investment and in times of fiscal austarity. i published an article in the harvard journal of education and i discussed the history of the nation's effort to address chronic poverty and i will lay out the case of the 10-20-30 in a bipartisan fashion. i have included the full article in the record. >> without objection it will be entered. >> i encourage the members of this committee to read it when you have the opportunity. i look forward to working with you to eliminate poverty in

these distressed communities. thank you for having me here today. >> thank you, very much, mr. clyburn. very appreciate this and thank you for all of your hard work on this issue. >> thank you very much. >> we will now move to our second panel. jason turner, the executive director of the secretary's innovation group. robert doar, the mortgage fellow in poverty study at the american enterprise institute and olivia golden the executive director of class.

>> make sure that every witness knows it is against the law to provide false testimony to a committee of congress. we will begin a new committee practice that is occurring in every committee of swearing in all of the witnesses. this doesn't reflect any distrust in a witness. we are taking this from recent guidance given from the department of justice. please raise your right hand. do you solumnly swear the testimony you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? >> i do. >> let the record reflect the witnesses answered in the aff m affirm. we'll start from the right.

hold it down a couple seconds. >> testing? >> there you go. >> mr. chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear before this commit eatecommittee. i am the executive director of a group reporting to their governors and representing 34% of the population of america. we exchanging ideas of straight programs and press for solutions that have family, health and budget security. we proposed a policy recommendation that would rebalance the relationship between states and federal governments and these remarks are adapted from the policy as developed and agreed upon by the 17-member secretary. whenever the organization meets with congress, our secretary ask

for less money and more accountability. our members re quested through the food stamp policy proposal a fixed allocation with a 50% federal and state fair risk of benefits going up and down either way rather than the 100% risk born by there government. adapting this last year into an initiative we proposed allow willing states to 100 percent self fund a food stamp program for similar snap recipients with benefits resulting from increased work levels shared 50-50. our members were pleased to advance this partnerships with representative steve southerland. and it was enacted into law.

the first new federal work program since 1996. two other proposals for ui and disability. we proposed models on an opt-in bases with the state owning the overall system to be -- to better run the program. the federal shared risk model could be adapted to entitlement base expending going to to individual citizens. the member secretary is a pool of risk managers who are willing and able to consider shared risk models as proposed by congress in exchange for program management and operating control. the adoption of tanif unleashed energy and adults finding jobs and case workers working first

and time limits reducing urgency and the promotion of two-parent families. it is an example of how it is possible for the states under proper federal state partnership to make improvements to poverty and dependency and employment. it eliminated the entitlement for forever benefits, it provided work in marriage, third it set work activation and participation and allowing states credit for dependency reductions resulting from employment. if permitted states to experiment with multiple programs. and they were allowed to use them for more benefits other

than cash benefits. and finally, its fixed allocation capped the growth in the program as compared to the former entitlement program and induced greater budget discipline. i saw that in my own home state in wisconsin where after the program began to grow under the governor the instructions came down to redouble the effort to get people employed and manage the case load better and that occurred. my written testimony has specific examples of what tan tanif-life authority could do. i'll leave that in my written testimony. here i would like to share our

proposal to the committee in which we would propose that states implement demonstrations and adaptations. >> i will have you do that in my q and a. we will try to stick to a five minute rule to get to everyone's questions. >> it is now 50 years since the call for a great society and 18 years since the welfare reform bill. we have made progress with elderly, reducing material deprivation and promoting work pay there is frustration and disappointment with the current status with the nation's war on

poverty. 47 million americans are classified as poor and too many are not earning their own way above the poverty line. but based on our experience in new york city where i worked with anti poverty programs we know what works to reduce poverty. work works. if you focus strategy on what government can do help and recipie recipients working you will reduce loads and increase labor force and reducing child poverty. we don't need to get too creative. the keys to success are work requirement said and expectation in return. the earned income credit, food stamps for working people and medicaid. states addressing individual needs and not being afraid to

talk about families especially fathers and raising two-parent families. and nurture a job producing economy that produces job. doing all of that here is what we accomplished in new york. we reduced welfare from 1.1 million to 346 thousand. increased labor force participants for single mothers and reduced poverty. and during the most recent period from 2000-2012 of the 20 largest states in america new york city was the only one that saw no increase in poverty. it was related to labor force participants ours went up and the nation's went backw pbacked. why were -- we were not afraid to talk about two-parent families that told the truth about the consequences of teen pregnancy and raising children in single-parent families.

going forward we need to focus on where we are weakest now and that is low-income men who are out of rigor of welfare reform work requirements. there is no ability for state and local agencies to bring them into the workforce in the way that welfare reform allowed us to work with single parents and they are left out with the work support that allow us to shore up low wages. we need to reinvigorate tanif. the focus on work and work participation rates are lost in the messages from washington. we need look at the extent that snap has replaced work and not up supplemented work. and consider work requirements for portions of that population. and look at the affordable care act and impact on work

incentives because of the disincentive because they would lose their affordable care act may chose people to not work or work at all and that is a terrible problem. we need to do everything we can to reduce disincentives to hiring in our economy. and finally, i think given the differences and strengths in the economy we need to consider relocation assistance that allows for people in concern areas where there are opportunities that are weak to move to other areas with greater opportunities. my general impression after 18 years of working for a governor and mayor the lessons of welfare reform are good lessons and we don't need to turn away from them. work requirements, work support, nurturing a strong economy that doesn't disincentive employers to hire people and not being

afraid to be honest about the consequences of raising children without two involved parents in their lives. we put so much on what government can do to replace families. we need strong families and better policies. thank you. >> thank you. ms. golden. >> good morning, chairman, ranking member and members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to testify. i am olivia golden and i bring experience administrating programs in new york city state, washington, d.c. and assistant secretary for family and children at hhs in the clinton administration. in my writen statement i

highlight several benefits of the war on poverty. just a few themes from this discussion. researchers found the war on poverty cut the rate in half in 2012 and changed the lives of low income family by improving children's access to health and nutrition and that matters because research shows life long impacted from children that get the help in their early years. at the same time the war on poverty programs made a difference to families so have dram dramatic work increases as wale. in 1975 a third of mothers with a child under age three were in the labor force by 2012, 70% of all mothers and 60% with

children under the age of three. 1-5 children are poor today most in families with one worker. in addition, low income workers without dependence including no non-cu non-cu non-custtodial parents. and the next section of my testimony five lesson learned from the war on poverty. first, the core programs that evolved from the war on poverty are designed to support work not discourage it. reforms in the 1990's, changes to child care and medicare and snap ensured the federal

packages support work. research shows when low income families get these packages they are better to keep a job, move up sand thrive. we are working with six states that are influenced by this research and their own experience to improve working families access to snap, health and daycare. the governor of ohio said his state is working to achieve goals of enter and succeed in the work place. and effective programs help children thrive and parents work. since the war on poverty began, we have seen increases in mother's work and major breakthroughs in the science of young children's development.

support is behind. third, affective programs like snap is counter cycle meaning resources go up and child care subsidies don't respond to clashes in the economy. third, we are trying to address the gaps in coverage. and achieving strong outcomes for childrens, families and the nation requires a blend and national accountability to achieve goals. flexibility doesn't compensate

for inadequate funding. in conclusion, i propose five next steps in the written testimony, strengthening economic commuter for low wage workers, enabling parent toes work and care for children, improving access to strength grants, and strengthing ties for you youth. i look forward to talking about these in the question and answer session. in the question and answer period. >> perfect. all done within five minutes. >> thank you. >> that was good. thanks. okay, so mr. turner -- mr. turner, let me pick up where you left off, because i cut you off to stick with the five minutes. what i'm interested in >> i want to get your sense on how it would be more effective to have states coordinate programs and let's start with

the example you want to mention and talk about how states can better coordinate assistance. >> by all-americ means. if states are able to manage under a system which they own and control and can focus on the right thing instead of the other things i think we would see one consolidation of programs. snap and tanif and you could add public housing where these programs are operating secondally with parallel and overlapping objectives. you could introduce competition.

right now it says this can be done by non-profits or government employees and what we found in new york city under commissioner doar and the mayor is that when we told the vendor get paid for people going to work the first year after we did that the total amount of the budget used for that purpose went down by a third and jobs doubled. you can permit lower levels of government such as counties to integrate. pennsylvania did that. they allowed them petition and run their own programs. you can focus energy on the true sources of social dus

disillusion. you could required universal engagement and appropriate work activities. you could recommit savings from effective programs for other purposes including support to working families. ... cluding supports to working families. these are all kinds of things that you could do if you had the proper shifting. so now i'll be quick, because i know that -- i know there's a time constraint. excuse me for coughing. the secretary's innovation group has proposed that states be able to implement demonstrations that the adaptation of tanf and other programs, and the simplest way

to think about this is that it's the reverse of the current law which is hows tanf funds to go to other programs, for instance transferring funds into social services bloc grant. but this would be the reverse. the principle is if funds could be transferred from other programs like food stamps and housing into a tanf special account with individuals who had been eligible for the former benefits now eligible for similar benefits. but with some of the components of tanf such as work as other provisions integrated into the merged program, and finally, mr. chairman, i'd like to commend to this committee hr-4206 which has been proposed as introduced by representative reed of work state, and that proposal would do many of the things that our member sents would like to see having to do with experimentation and consolidation. thank you. >> thank you. mr. doar i want to ask you a couple quick questions. >> sure.

>> i'll start with my last one first. eitc childless adults. this is a particular area, especially with labor force participation rates, that -- i'm not sure what that is. never mind i guess. childless adults. this is an area where we are particularly concerned about low labor force participation, it's especially problematic for young men. what is your take on how or if we should modify the eitc for childless adults. and then i want to ask you another question -- >> the difference in the benefit is very significant. it's tax average for adults something a little bit less than $500 for households with children it gets up to over $5,000. so it doesn't have the same effect in promoting and supporting work. and this group, particularly for young men, between the ages of about 18 and 25 who are really

out of the workforce, i believe it could be an important way to help them get in to and stay in the workforce and to make work pay. mayor bloomberg proposed something about this back when i first joined bloomberg administration, and i thought that it was something to do. the only issue with eitc that is a problem is the error rate. i ran welfare programs, cash assistance, medicaid, i'm familiar with error rates. and the error rate in the eitc is too high. >> what's the best way to deal with that? >> well, i think that the irs has to take it more seriously and gather more information and do more data matches against their samples of returns that they receive. >> may i add to that? >> but there has to be a solution, because you can't expand a program that has an error rate of 20%. >> reputation in the program itself suffers as a result and therefore its popular support is undermined and lost as well. did you want to add to that? >> yeah, i just wanted to add two things on the eitc for childless adults and for younger men, i'm not sure if that was in your proposal but in the president's also bringing the

age down i think we share believing that that's important and it also has the potential for addressing some of the issues of marriage and family formation because there's certainly some evidence there. on the error rates, my experience broadly in operating a range of the programs, and in reading the inspector general and gao reports is that errors often arrive from complexity, and one of the insights about the earned income tax credit is that one area of complexity is who has custody of minor children and is entitled to claim them so that single adults is probably less likely. but more broadly i think the lesson is that clarity and explaining and training are key aspects of reducing errors. >> is this something ways and means can take up? this is definitely an area we want to get into. that was a flood warning. don't worry, we're not under any imminent threats here. mr. doar -- since we're on the second floor. could you -- i want you to expand on reducing disincentives

to hiring and relocation assistance. can you expand the points you were trying to make there? >> well, under mayor bloomberg in new york city, the mayor never made any apologies for all of the things he did to create jobs of all kind, and to have an environment in which employers were comfortable about hiring. so that included possibility jobs, retail jobs, and tourism jobs, and health care jobs, some of which wages may not have been as high but the encouragement was always on hiring. increasing hiring. and i think that there are some aspects of the affordable care act particularly higher up the income ladder that the -- and on businesses, that they are reluctant to hire to the extent that they might have given the uncertainty or the requirements in the program. and that's just very difficult for people who are on welfare programs trying to help low income people get into jobs. because, sometimes those jobs are discretionary hires.

you know, they may not really need them or may not want to necessarily do it but they need to have an environment where they're comfortable and happy and positive about hiring people of all kinds of skills. and i think that we don't have enough of that in the country, and that's part of the reason why people are not in. and frankly, particularly on men who have struggled in the labor force a significant increase in the minimum wage up to $10.10 nationwide, regardless of the economic circumstances of a particular area, is not helpful to encourage their employment. so that's another disincentive to hiring. >> mr. turner, one minute. provider competition. this is something i'm very enamored with, which is a lot of times we have, you know, one vendor, or one unit of government providing a benefit measured based on inputs not on outcomes. can you give me an example basically of how provider competition can help improve outcomes? >> absolutely. yes, mr. chairman.

i'm pleased to note that the proposed compromise on wia includes a provision which would require the wia boards to issue rfps. that's currently not the practice. and states get waivers from that, local boards do, and it's not helpful, because they put out a cost-plus contract in which people get paid whether they get somebody a job or not. in a pay for performance contract, you only get paid for putting somebody in a job that lasts at least 30 days, and then you get paid more if they remain in the job for six months. so those are the two indicators. and what that does, we've seen that in new york, in particular, it mobilizes the agencies around not only placement but following up with the employer, finding out if there's problems on the job because as you know, with many people who are not used to working, getting up and going to work and coming back, day after day after day, it's a work habit

that they don't have, not necessarily a work skill. so, the best way to move that forward is to continue to work with people up through at least for six months. >> thank you. i think that's very, very important. mr. van hollen? >> thank you, mr. chairman. and i thank all of you for your testimony. mr. turner, with respect to your idea of having a jumbo tanf grant where you put other programs into that, are you proposing to include medicaid as part of that? >> no. >> the reason i ask that is so you know, medicaid is the largest of our means tested programs that we look at here in the budget committee. >> of course. >> lots in the budget. now dr. golden mentioned that one of the benefits of programs like medicaid, and s.n.a.p. is

that when you have any kind of recession or depression, you have a countercyclical impact. and the concern many of us have with a strict bloc grant program is that you are providing a fixed amount of federal support to the states in both good times, but also very bad times. how would your proposal address try and hope with the poverty and an economy goes through a cycle that collapses, isn't that a legitimate concern and how would you address that? >> one way to address that is you can include as tanif does now, a provision if unemployment rate goes up, there is an automatic adjustment to the bloc grant. a program that is oftentimes

remarked upon as being good for anti-cyclical reasons has created lots of problems. that's food stamps. in 2001, there were 2.3 million total nonworking food stamp house holds, and yet in 2006, a good economic year, that had gone up 4.2 and now it's 8.5 million.holds, and yet in 2006, good economic year, that had gone up 4.2 and now it's 8.5 million. i don't see how cutting a swath deep into the middle class with food stamps and the growth of food stamps has been helpful for work. though it may appear to be anti-cyclical, it's anti-cyclical in a dependency-inducing way. >> first of all, if you look at

the congressional budget office projections for snap, if you look over the coming years, they project significant reductions to snap because they expect more people to get back into the work force as the economy improves. their assessment of our nonpartisan analysts is very different. secondly, and there's been a lot of misinformation about this. what the congressional budget office tells us and dr. golden, if you could respond, is that currently four out of the five individuals who receives snap are either children and the elderly or disabled who are not expected to work or people who are working, but they're in a job where they don't earn enough income to be in the middle class, and therefore, are eligible for food programs which we would hope we would want to provide to them and their families. >> yeah. let me say a little about the accurate facts on snap and talk

about your original question which is what is the consequence when you have a cap program in a recession. so snap, as you say, the cbo notes that its increase has been due to the recession. some other evidence that suggests that is that case loads are starting to go down. they stabilized and are now starting to go down. when you look state by state at the increases and the impact of the recession, they fit together. the largest increases were the largest recessions. a large share of those snap households that aren't elderly, disabled or children are working, so that a key effective snap is -- i mentioned in my written testimony and briefly in my oral that among poor children, fully 1/3 live with somebody who is working full time, full year and still can't bring the family out of poverty. about 70% live with someone who is working, even if in 2012 they weren't able to work full year. there are a lot of people that need supplement to their work.

snap responded in the way it was meant to. tanif and the childcare bloc grant were capped and unable to respond to the recession. in the childcare block grant led by a paper in my colleague's class we are down lower than a decade, in tnff it's led to case loads that barely responded to the recession overall, went down overall since the good times. and that puts states in a bind where their family need goes up when state budget goes down, and therefore, states made choices that constrain children. the spread among states got larger. >> just from my experience in new york city, we came out of the recession much earlier than the rest of the country. we were large proponents of food stamps as work supports for

low-income people. our case load grows to 1.9 million. as we came out of the recession it did not drop. i don't think there isn't any question while there are a lot of people working and receiving food stamps, and there are elderly and children, there are an increasing number of people who are not working and still getting food stamps. it is a problem. it may not be as severe as mr. turner said but not something we can ignore. >> let me ask you on that point, mr. doar. with respect to able-bodied adults, we have time limits on how long they can be on food stamps. i think it's three months out -- >> that requirement was waived almost entirely by the obama administration except in new york city where we kept it in place. >> let me ask you a question. >> sure. >> thanks. >> we all would like to encourage work. as i said in my opening statement, a job is the best anti-poverty program. i hope we can all agree on that.

>> we agree on that. >> if you are going to say in order to get food and nutrition assistance for a family, for example, working below the minimum wage, or another family you should work, okay, are you willing when you have 6%, 7%, 8% unemployment to ensure they have a job? during the recession in the recovery bill there was a provision for states to allow public federal dollars to help provide work. in fact, governor barber of mississippi was a big advocate of that. if you are going to require people to work as a condition of getting food and nutrition assistance when the economy is sinking, are you also going to make sure those who want to work have a job? >> the way the work requirements work in tanf and abod, you need

to be engaged in activities that lead to work. there are alternatives not necessarily having a job, job search, certain work fair program. it doesn't depend on the exact existence of a job right away. in a low wage economy there is a tremendous amount of churn and change. i would say in my experience running these programs in new york city with very good job placement agencies, that if you leave people out of the requirement or the expectation they get into work, you're really harming them because you are not encouraging them and bringing them in to this fold that allows a case management person and an organization that is helping them move into work. >> if i could ask dr. golden -- we want to encourage people to work. what do do you? >> two comments. my perspective on what's

happened in tanif is the assistant secretary in the clinton administration implementing it, states had resources both within tanif and childcare medicaid snap to invest in families and have a good economy. today what you've heard from mr. doar is not typical of states as a whole. states are different from each other. with a bloc grant, not only is cash assistance at a low level, investments in any of the work and training activities is at a low level. i had a chance to look at current state expenditures. what happened in the recession, states shifted money to fill holes in other parts of their budgets. they were under enormous stress. it was hard for them not to. >> this is exactly the concern, right? we all want to encourage people to get in the work force. at the same time, states are cutting back on their programs. last point i want to make, mr.

doar mentioned eitc. we want to expand for able-bodied adults. that costs money. the president's proposed that in his budget. it's about $60 billion. as we have this discussion, our concern is we remain focused on trying to address the poverty issues. if you save money as a byproduct of that, that's one thing. but starting with the assumption you are going to save hundreds of billions of dollars and then working backwards is not the way you do it. >> thank you. gentleman's time expired. >> dr. price. >> thank you. i want to thank you for holding this hearing on an important topic and one going on a long time. america is a generous country full of compassionate people. for many folks the big picture is frustrating. we spent nearly $20 trillion in the last 50 years in the war on poverty. rates have come down somewhat, most people looking at that amount of expenditure would say we should have gotten, as some

folks have said, a greater bang for our buck. mr. clyburn in his testimony talked about finite resources. we agree with that. it seems that the question ought to be how do we improve the programs that are in place? are they working? are they working as well as they can? what can we do to make them work more efficiently? mr. doar, you mentioned snap oftentimes replaces work. i wish you would expand on that. >> well, the feeling in the period after the end of the recession in new york city was that we had pushed the snap enrollment efforts as a work support and countercyclical efforts to help people going through difficult times to such an extent that the case load, then as the economy recovered, that there were maybe households and families and individuals taking advantage of the benefit and not working to the extent they could have. we actually tried to, using volunteer programs, and we had a

work requirement, to push people into our work programs to help them get the jobs. if you do look at the data there is a portion of the case load that is not seniors, it's not children, it's not disabled, but doesn't appear to be working. -just thought that that appeared to be a problem that we ought to address. you can't live on food stamps income alone. so something was going on there that was missing out in the work push of the tanif program we ought to address. >> and you saw positive results when you did? >> when we had people come in and take advantage of the work employment programs that are tied to tanf and we expended to it some food stamp recipients, they got jobs. >> there is a remarkable graph in your written testimony as jobs go down, poverty goes up. it's a pretty significant correlation, is it not? >> the economy is the key

ingredient to improving lives. >> when we look at some of the programs the federal government institutes, oftentimes there are byproducts that may or may not have been intended. one as a physician closely looking at the aca over the implementation, we've seen, and you mentioned there are significant disincentives to work within obamacare, within the affordable care act. can you expand on that? >> casey mulligan has done interesting work at the university of chicago indicating, and this is not for the poverty population. it's more likely to be people much further up the income ladder who are receiving a subsidy, but the subsidy is tied to their income. to the extent their income goes up, they may lose more in the subsidy for health care, and i believe the congressional budget office wrote a report saying there was a job reduction aspect to the affordable care act. that's a concern. >> may i add on poverty -- >> on the testimony of the cbo

director before this committee a couple of months ago was aca has disincentives for work within it. you mentioned you felt we should reinvigorate tanf. how would you reinvigorate a program that has worked in the past? >> as i look at the statistics across the country and look at what i see coming from the federal government, i sense an ambivalence from the work reform program. the role of the federal oversight is significant. how often are they in your office? how often did they write you aler or ask why your statistics aren't getting better? in some programs, child law enforcement, food stamps, there was a significant involvement, in my experience in new york city. i had not seen that in the tanf.

i looked at a chart to the extent which states had been in penalty status as a result of failing to need to work participation rates, and i don't think any state has been in penalty status in the united states in five years, which just shows there may be less of an enthusiasm about the work requirement aspects of tanf. >> if i could comment on that, the federal government encouraged states to recruit food stamp recipients and they give bonuses for the increase in food stamp recipients that states have measured as a percentage of everybody that's potentially eligible. this is a counterproductive policy. i think it contributes to the increase in the nonworking food stamp case load, excluding aged and disabled. >> so i would add on -- >> from the able-bodied 2.3

million. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you the witnesses for appearing. i have half the time they had so i hope you would answer my questions very quickly. how are you, mr. turner? >> very good to see you again, representative moore. >> it is. we do have a history, mr. turner. i know a lot of your experience you've done fantastically in your career was based on your work with tommy thompson at a time when i was a state senator. and so i do have some questions related to that. i'll just get right in there. are you concerned that some of the policies that you are promoting really promote women becoming a permanent underclass

in our economy? the reason i ask that is because you focused on, for example, work first. we all know sitting here, all of us are educated in this room. that some kind of post secondary education gives you more opportunities in the job market. while there's a lot of agreement work certainly helps your income-earning potential, the strict denial in limited educational opportunity really cuts that off. the day we passed so-called w-2 in wisconsin, 10,000 women in wisconsin lost their opportunity to go to technical college and higher education. that's my first question. >> yes. you'll also recall, senator moore, that milwaukee -- >> representative moore now. i'm entitled to both the titles. >> okay. i'm sorry about that. representative moore.

the milwaukee poverty rate went from 34% to 26% in the first five years of w2. >> let's back up though because the economy is not doing well. >> yes, but that's because so many people were streaming into the labor force. just because they are not enrolled in a program doesn't mean people don't take jobs. >> we didn't keep data and statistics whether they were going into work or not. that was a deliberate activity. i was there. let me ask you another question. when you talk about the 29% of tanf dollars don't go for benefits, and you say they are going for more productive uses. what was your thought of the $18 million in profit that went with that first round of tanf dollars? what productive use was that in the milwaukee area? i ask that question because i believe that all it did was

incentivize people who were not necessarily public workers, as you propose, to keep people from getting benefits. remember we had these diversion specialists. you could walk in with a big belly, nine months pregnant, two kids hanging on you and it was their job to deny you as many benefits as possible. i want you to respond to what productive use you think the $18 million was. >> the 29% figure, representative moore, is the current proportion of tanf federal funds that go to cash benefits. that means 71% of all that tanf block grant money is going to childcare, working families, some going into the state. >> okay, good. i have one more question because my time is waning. you gave us an example section 8 housing in your review of the

welfare state. $16 billion for section 8 to provide people with stable housing opportunities, low-income people, and they've been receiving these benefits too long. there is a moral hazard dependency. what dependency does the $70 billion a year we spend on the mortgage interest reduction, which i look forward to every year, what kind of moral hazard is it and what productive use is the mortgage introduction of $70 billion versus $16 billion to our economy? >> as you may know, if you get a section 8 certificate, that can be worth $250,000 in that present value, yet there is no connection between what happens once you get take a voucher like that and your obligations to go to work or to move on. >> i mean, do you have to go to work to get the mortgage

introductieres interest deduction? i'm dependent on it. >> it's outside my area of expertise. >> it sure is. thank you. and my time is expired. >> miss rice. >> thank you for coming today. i'm a small business owner from texas. we still employ people. i appreciate you all being here today. i guess my statement would be this. the best way to tackle poverty we talk about today is to create a job. we all agree to that. however, you create the job through opportunity, not through a guarantee. a guarantee is not a job. an opportunity to grow and expand is. increase and hiring is up to the private sector, i believe, not

the federal government. the private sector offers you an opportunity. the federal government offers you a guarantee. we talked about distractions in hiring today. i can tell you big distractions in hiring. i'm glad to hear some of my colleagues on the other side agree the economy is not fixed. it is not good. distractions in hiring would be minimum wage increase. minimum wage increase does nothing but cost jobs and make prices go up. we should not be a country of minimums, we should be a country of maximums. we should be able to compete for workers. high tax on business is another job destroyer where small business owners cannot, they are paying too high taxes. then obamacare is a real disaster when it comes to small business owners and what we can plan and who we can hire, not hiring this many people so we don't have to be involved in the program. there is no work unless businesses can hire. small businesses, we are playing defense every single day. we don't know regulations, we

don't know rules, we are not hiring people. i think the idea we talk about states and states competing is always a good thing to reduce unemployment, come up with good ideas. i guess my question would be to you, mr. doar, based on your experience with the welfare reform, do you think these programs we are talking about, as well intended as they may be have the effect of trapping people? trapping people in poverty and creating incentives for them to become dependent on the government? focus on having a guarantee in their life rather than opportunity in their life? >> i think they can if they are not run well. they are not run with a focus on employment as being the most important thing and a willingness to do everything you can to push people into work. so i think they can be, but i don't think they have to be. there isn't any question that as the welfare commissioner both jason and i lived off the opportunities that were

available for people who were seeking assistance but really wanted to work. and we also, and we should point this out, we were successful because the people we asked to go to work, went to work and they did it. and they wanted to do it. i think that we have to set up a circumstance that says to folks that are in need, we have high hopes and high -- we believe in you and we believe in your ability to go into employment and want to make every opportunity available to do that. >> to do that, you have to tell small business owners it's okay if you make money, it's okay to take risks and reward hiring people. i want to hire people. i'm afraid to hire people unless they are on commission. that's a real problem in our country. thank you for your testimony, all of you. i yield back, mr. chairman. >> mr. pascorale.

>> when we fail we go back to the aca. i would ask you to finish what you were trying to say, what is your take on that? >> my take on the aca as it affects families in poverty, those states that have taken the medicaid expansion have removed one of the worst disincentives to employment for parents. in those states that have not taken it, the eligibility limit for health insurance for a parent is typically 50% of the poverty level or less. if you are working minimum wage, more than a few hours and you get the chance to work steady part time or full time, you are placing your health insurance at risk. if a state takes the expansion, you have the ability to keep that health insurance and sleep secure at night knowing you have it. >> thank you. mr. doar, in your testimony today you state the earned income tax credit, the childcare

assistance, public health insurance, food stamps can all be important work supports that make earnings go farther for a family. love is not enough, sometimes work is not enough. correct? >> what do you mean? >> well, your job may not pay what you really need to support your family. >> that is absolutely true. wages can sometimes be lower than what is necessary to support a family in certain places. that's why we have these work supports. >> i think it's important to acknowledge how difficult it can be for americans to have jobs and working for low wages, and how important a robust safety net is for those folks. what you are trying to do is reposition the chairs on the sinking "titanic." it seems to me if we want to look at ways to reduce our

spending on these safety net programs, one of the most obvious way is to raise wages to the point where the families no longer need public assistance. >> well -- >> i didn't ask the question yet. we can do that most effectively by raising the minimum wage, unlike your position. let's use an example. you like to use examples, let me use an example. many americans would be surprised to learn that walmart, the nation's largest private sector employer, private sector employer, is also the biggest consumer of taxpayer-supported aid. the corporation's employees

receive a total of $6.2 billion in public assistance each year. why do they need public assistance? there is nothing more than corporate welfare that allows walmart to continue to pay poverty wages and it's the taxpayers who pick up the tab of up to $5,815 in assistance for each employee and $1.75 million per store. so mr. doar, do you believe federal spending on means-tested safety net programs for walmart employees would be reduced if these employees were earning a higher wage? >> okay. there is a trade-off. if the wages go up and the people's ability to go into the labor force diminishes, they are going to need to come to welfare

and need assistance without the work. do we have a safety net built to help them? what we built through many years bipartisan effort is a work support system that shores up low wages. that's what we do and i think it's more successful than having more people out of work depending upon a safety net system. >> they could be working at a job that does not afford them the ink they need to raise a family. and therefore, they are going to have to look to public assistance. public assistance is not for someone totally out of work or a child or older person who can't move. do you agree with that? s. >> yes. that is what a work support system is. >> thank you very much. i'm glad you support the system that exists. >> par for the course. >> i thank the chairman. i thank the witnesses for their compelling testimony.

do you have any final response to mr. pascrell? >> no. i'm fine. >> sometimes we have single entry book keeping. walmart is one of the biggest wealth creators in the country because of the pressure they put on suppliers in producing low prices. when you take away their right to have a low-priced economy, you are also hurting the people that are consumers there, as well. and they are low-income people. >> great point. thanks for adding it to the record. i also add speaking with the ceo of mcdonald's, the franchisee started out at the cashier. a minimum-wage paying job. i would cite that as one of the country's best and most

efficient, most successful upward mobility programs to raise folks out of a life of poverty. >> may i also comment on upward mobility for low-income workers? a professor of georgetown looked at a data set and took people earning less than $12,000 three consecutive years and looked what happened six years later. these years were in the early 1990s. only 29% of the people that were in that category were still low wage six years later. the median increase in their income was 86%. the point here is getting on the ladder is going to move you up wagewise. a manufacturer in wisconsin told us we hire $18,000 employee from the ranks of proven $9 an hour employee, not through people in

a government training program. >> you raise the minimum wage and you can't get on the ladder. i notice when representative van hollen was questioning you, there was agreement that the best anti-poverty program is a job. i appreciate that that was recognized. then he said there were time limits put on welfare recipients of the snap program. >> in the food stamp program there is long standing policy concerning able-bodied adults without dependents who should be working and have a work requirement. during difficult times, states are given the option of waiving that requirement. >> under the law or begin by the administration? >> under the law. then in the first act of the obama administration, they

extended it for the whole period of the recession. most states took advantage of that. one place that did not was new york city. we kept the requirement because we felt the economy we felt had enough activity churning it. we believed in saying to people seeking assistance that work is where we need you to be headed. >> i'm sorry. mr. turner, you were having an exchange with representative moore. it seemed from trying to digest this that you made a point about snap recipients or coming back into the work force. her comment was, well, i was there. i saw the data and something is not correct. did you want to respond to that at all? do you kno i'm talking about? >> i know what she said, but i'm not exactly -- i think what she said is the private companies

made a profit and that profits made by private companies helping to put people to work were somehow illegitimate. i have the opposite point of view. >> please expand. was commissioner in new york city, we had 138 employment vendors, which we reduced to 13 prime providers with subcontractors, and they were only paid if they got people jobs and retained them. when we did that, the first full year after we switched to performance contracting, which included for-profit vendors, our total budget for employment and training went down by 1/3 and our recorded placements doubled. some of the money that went for that purpose went for profits, but it's not like nonprofit organizations don't have profits

of their own. they have indirect costs, but it's the same thing. you have to make a profit if you are going to run an operation. >> thank you. >> i have a few questions. i wonder if dr. golden would like to respond. you were trying to respond on the question of work waivers under snap. >> the main point was that the law allows states to not have a work requirement for the able-bodied individuals when unemployment is high enough and that problem will be solving itself over the next few years as state unemployment rates get stronger. it's part of the statute and reflects a reasonable responsiveness to states' economic circumstances. >> thank you. one of the questions congress has been wrestling with that has an effect on poverty or puts many americans in jeopardy moving from the work force into

long-term poverty is the loss of extended federal unemployment benefits. in michigan, for example, the governor and legislature rolled back from 26 weeks to 20 weeks of unemployment. it typically takes a working person, a person in the work force who lost their jobs, about 37 weeks to find that next opportunity. i just really nervous about what happens to those families in the 17 weeks on average that it takes them to survive on nothing, and whether or not that potentially puts those families at risk of entering the cycle of poverty they otherwise would have been able to avoid. if you would quickly answer. >> sure. yes, losing unemployment benefits is damaging to families and to children. unemployment insurance is important as a way of keeping families out of poverty. i think one of the things i would highlight about our whole conversation today is we are, to a large degree, talking about parents often with young children. we know a lot by now from

research, far more than we did at the time of the war on poverty about the life-long effect not having economic security, good nutrition, stability in your life as a young child. i think you are right to worry both about the immediate and longer term effects for families. >> thank you very much. i wonder, mr. doar, there's been some discussion about minimum wage. i wonder if you might comment on minimum wage in this regard. it was your position, i believe, that raising the minimum wage would have a negative consequence on those young workers that are trying to enter the work force. is it your position that the current federal minimum wage is precisely correct in order to accommodate entry into the work force? or it would be your position that we should reduce the minimum wage in order to increase, by theory, access to the work force? >> no.

it would not be my position we should reduce the minimum wage. i should also say i also support not having the federal government determine the minimum wage for the whole country. >> no minimum wage whatsoever? >> no. that there should not be a minimum wage that is established at a level that will discourage work at a high level for the whole country. that's what a lot of people are raising concerns about a $10.10 minimum wage. i don't think it's an anti-poverty program. i think it will hurt the most vulnerable, not help them. the current proposal. i don't object to the minimum wage where it is now. >> this is where i struggle. we hear about this and we hear objection to the establishment of a higher minimum wage, but we won't own the notion, the implication behind that, which is that either there should be no minimum wage whatsoever, which apparently would support this notion, this theory that

lower wages are better because they allow walmart to offer lower prices, which allow people making poverty wages to afford foreign-produced products at a very low price, that does not stimulate the american economy. to me, what we are describing here -- i'm sorry mr. williams is not here -- is a race to the bottom. he describes this notion we ought to aspire to do well. the aspiration to do well should not be one that is just limited to people who own the so-called businesses who are the so-called job creators. the aspiration to do well should apply to everybody. i'm really curious about this notion that lower wages somehow supports lower pricing for retail outlets, and that somehow has a positive net impact on our

economy. i was always thought that the notion was to have a cycle that takes us all up, not one that takes us all down. >> i think we want a cycle that takes us all up, but to get on that cycle you need to get a job first. the concern is that disincentives to hiring will lead to fewer opportunities for people on the ladder going up. >> thank you, mr. kildee. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, panelists, for being here today. i'm curious. i think the state employment rate is 6.3%? >> i don't know what it is. >> that is the state and federal rate. do you think that is an accurate reflection? >> no. it doesn't include individuals not included in the employment rate.

for instance, the disability case load has gone through the roof. the food stamp case load has gone up. people not actively looking for work are not counted. so our employment rate has been going down. >> thank you. m mr. doar, do you believe it is an accurate picture? >> know. the better is the labor force participation rate which is remarkably low. >> i think it helps us see trends. in every recession we ever had, the recovery for those on the bottom takes longer than those better off so for low income mothers raising kids, it takes longer to come back than it does are for the average across all 6.3%. >> mrs. golden, you said that the aca medicaid expansion was, took away a disincentive. it doesn't take it away, it just moves it further up the income level? if you're at 130% of the federal

poverty rate and you are considering a job you lose that subsidy? >> not until 400% which is a decent level. in other words you have support through medicaid then you have support through the subsidy on the exchange. the law is designed so that by the time that help fazes out you are in better position to take care of your family needs. >> there is disincentive once you approach that 138? >> i'm not a health economist. i look at these issues from the poverty perspective. i think it will depend a lot about the specifics of how your state has organized that exchange. in the states i'm working with, they are trying hard to have a smooth transition, but i don't know the answer to exactly. i also suspect it would be different by person exactly how it would play out. but the key design of the law when a state takes the expansion is that there is ate about it to get help fazing out all the way

until you are secure enough to pay for it. >> what is a living wage in san francisco? >> i don't know the answer to that numerically. >> what is it in south carolina? >> it's interesting. i'm doing work in south carolina. i would say what people share around the country, and that's one of the reasons i think increasing the minimum wage is important, is the need to be able to feed their families, have secure work, good quality care for their children. it isn't, as we've been hearing, isn't only from the minimum wage, it's the intersection of a better minimum wage which will help low-income people reduce poverty. >> san francisco, is the living wage the same in san francisco? >> i think we always had a federal level we thought achieved a decent standard of living everywhere and higher levels in some places. >> is a living wage the same? >> no. it's not. >> mr. turner, is a living wage the same in san francisco as in

dillon, south carolina? >> of course not. >> one-size-fits-all federal mandate, isn't that going to create hiring disincentives in areas around the country? >> yes, it will. >> okay. >> all of y'all mentioned that work is the best aleafation for poverty, right? you mentioned we need to do away with federal disincentives to hiring and federal disincentives to work. can you name the primary federal disincentive to hiring, in your opinion? >> i don't even know where to start there. certainly the excesses of the great society taken as a whole have weakened families, driven men out of the labor force and are responsible for some of the social problems, much of the social dissolution we see today. >> we've got disincentives to

work and disincentives to hiring. can you name your primary disincentives? >> in hiring, i'm not a business economist. i want them to be as few as possible to hiring people in trouble economically. on the federal policy, i looked at casey mulligan's work. unemployment insurance extensions are a principal culprit followed by concerns about what's happened with disability insurance. frankly, the welfare programs are not as significant players in this disincentive to going to work as they might be. >> thank you. mr. cardenas. >> dr. golden, did you want to answer that last question? >> sure. i was going to highlight that a key issue for employers is the quality of workers and their skills. so i do think when the federal government doesn't invest enough

in early childhood education in k-12 and access to longer-term educational opportunities, particularly for kids who start out behind, that that, in turn, ends up as a disincentive to hiring. failing to invest sufficiently is one of the things we should have on the list. >> early investment seems to pay very well when it comes to the economy on the macrolevel down to the individual work level and individual household level, correct? >> yes. >> on that note, walmart was given as an example the biggest private employer in the country. would you say they are more of a short-term investor in our economy when it comes to what you just described or are they a long-term positive or short-term positive? >> again, i'm not an economist expert in individual firms. maybe i'll comment on low-wage work more broadly. >> excuse me. what i'm referring to was talked about earlier. disproportionate percentage of walmart workers are actually on

public assistance. in that context, is that a good short term or more of a long-term effort, so it seems? >> it's clearly -- two things. the first one is that i do think having a safety net that's able to provide, for example, health care no matter whether your employer provides it or not is an important place to be. i think that's part of it is having the public safety net. in terms of the employer like walmart, clearly, when employment is unstable and low wage, i think one of the other issues we've been working on at clasp that is a contributor to big problems for families is schedules that make it impossible to raise a child and work. when employers carry out those practices, low wages and a whole set of lack of benefits and bad practices, they are not

successfully investing in the work force they need in the long run. i would say from that perspective, it's not long run either for them or for the country. >> one of the things that really bothers me, i think most americans have an idea of what the face of poverty is, what an individual in poverty actually looks like, and i think these recent times people realize it affects everybody, rural, big cities, small communities, et cetera, of every color, every persuasion. today as it stands, do any of you know whether or not when it comes to the percent of people on public assistance, is the majority of people on public assistance nonwhite minority or nonminority white? anybody know that figure? >> i don't know the figure. >> the most recent figures you've been aware of? >> i can tell you about child poverty for the broad programs like medicaid, i would be almost sure it would be nonminority

white. that covers a broad swath including the elderly disabled. for child poverty, that's divided roughly 1/3, 1/3, 1/3, white, african-american, hispanics, slightly more hispanic children are poor, but it's pretty close across the three of them. >> the reason i ask that question is because what frustrates me is every time we see people getting a welfare check or something they always go to the poorest inner city places and show a line of people and it tends to be of one color. when you step back and look at the nation as a whole, it's my understanding it's well over 50% white people 0 on public assistance, closer to 60%, actually. that is not the picture america sees. i think that adds to the stigma and idea people are lying on the couch. >> when you see the picture, you don't see the person working long hours. i'm struck in the work i'm doing in these six states. the people they see on snap or medicaid don't have time to

stand in the welfare office for four hours to get their benefits because they are working a couple of low-wage jobs. and trying to take care of the kids, as well. that is another aspect of the accurate picture that doesn't get shown. >> dr. golden, what is your answer to this question? should poor families be able to save money while they are still retaining benefits? >> yes. i think there is evidence that contributes to stability in the long run. that's why so many states have chosen where they have the possibility not to enforce tests that would get rid of all their savings. >> i felt the move to eliminate asset tests for medicaid receipt and snap receipt has been a mistake. there is no limit on assets in new york to offering up an option. people can have hundreds of thousands of dollars or