Secretaries' Innovation Group

The Success Sequence and the Middle Class - December 2024
* The Middle Class
   Jason Turner, Secretaries’ Innovation Group
* The Success Sequence: How are education, work, and marriage linked with Millennials’ financial well-being?
   Brad Wilcox, Professor of Sociology, University of VA; Visiting Scholar, AEI; Senior Fellow, Institute for Family Studies; and Director, National                Marriage Project

• The “Success Sequence,” a formula which if followed guarantees young adults will become part of America’s middle class.  The formula incorporates three stages which are within every young persons’ ability to control regardless of his initial personal family and economic circumstances..  The statistically proven formula is this - - get at least a high school education (anywhere), work full time after leaving school, and marry before having children. 
  
• Among millennials who have followed this sequence, 97% are above poverty and safely into the middle class when they have reached adulthood.   This fact has remained strong after this cohort of young Americans has reached their mid-30s, according to a new analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). Even those who follow the first two steps but not the third are 90% out of poverty.   But what exactly are the specific markers that indicate a family’s membership in America’s middle class? 
  
• Our SIG secretaries and directors directly or indirectly touch our young people at each of these three success stages.  We are going to spend the morning discussing steps our agencies and partners can take at each of the three success life points - - helping young people to graduate, get a job and remain employed, and get married before having children. 
  

Getting a job immediately after finishing school and staying in the labor force - December 2024
* Council for Adult and Experiential Learning
   Earl Buford, Executive Director, Council for Adult and Experiential Learning

• CAEL is a fifty year old national, nonprofit membership organization that supports the creation of education-to-career pathways supporting workforce agencies, industrial partners, and adult educational institutions. By helping diverse organizations find common cause in adult learners and workers, CAEL keeps education and training providers aligned in real time.  It focuses expertise and resources to ensure adult learners and workers can navigate the on- and off-ramps between education and employment.
  

Does work help make you happy independent of its economic benefits? - December 2024
* Nonfinancial Benefits of Work
   Erik Randolph, Director of Research and author, Non-Financial Impact ofNon-Work, Georgia Center for Opportunity

• It is said that work brings economic benefits and permits parents to be good role models for their children. This is WAY too narrow a point of view! First, work is society’s organized system of individual labor donations to members of a group (through the marketplace) thereby creating adherence, connections and loyalty to members of this group (tribe, society or nation). Such labor donations are necessary if not sufficient for individuals to seek and obtain true happiness - - as observed by Aristotle through Thomas Jefferson and never more so than now. Second, the merits of work independent of its economic benefits include these - - physical health; mental health; family health; abstinence from drugs; law abidingness; and freedom from temptation. The Center’s recent research paper is an extension of Randolph’s argument from his first SIG-. sponsored working paper presented in 2021 - - Non-Financial Impact from Non-Work.
  

The causes and reasons for the straight- line decline in male labor force participation with no interruptions since 1965.  And how are they surviving?
* Men Without Work: A Problem We Ignore At Our Peril 

   Nicholas Eberstadt, Wendt Chair in Political Economy, American Enterprise Institute

• Over the past two generations, America has suffered a quiet catastrophe. It is the collapse of work - - for men. In the half century between 1965 and 2015, work rates spiraled downward in a “flight from work”. The pandemic made it worse but work levels have not recovered. America is now home to an immense army of jobless men no longer even looking for work - - more than seven million alone between the ages of 25 and 55, the traditional prime of working life. 
  
• Over half the seven million non-working men between ages 25 and 55 are on disability and of the other half about half of these are living with someone on disability. Half take pain medication every day. The American time use survey indicates these men spend 2000 hours per year on screens (eight hours per day five days a week equivalent). Today fifty percent of men aged 18 to 30 say they are not looking for sex. What??? 
  
• Men are starving for meaning, for connections. You can take the technocratic approach to all this and pretend it is value neutral. But how will UBI fit in? Forget about bankrupting the system. Take a look at the time use of these men. Is that something we want more of?
  

Early considerations regarding a possible experimental work-only system of benefits in  Columbus, Ohio
* SNAP Work Status  and Exemptions Dashboard
   Matt Damschroder, Director, OH Jobs and Family Services

• At our SIG meeting in July, a presentation of a 1990s work-only system implemented in Wisconsin showed very favorable employment and other outcomes. Aspects of it are now under consideration by Director Matt Damschroder of Ohio who may offer his comments.
  

​Legislative Overview - July 2024
* House Ed and Workforce Updates

   Marek Laco, House Ed and Workforce
* Paragon Health Institute​
   Brain Blase, Paragon Health Institute
* War on Poverty​
   Robert Rector, Heritage

• ​We are joined by the staff directors of the committees advancing our program objectives in the House and Senate, along with analysts from AEI and Paragon Health.   We will learn of all the legislative developments in each of our program areas of responsibilities. 
  

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of the State Workforce - July 2024
* Human Services - Personalization and Policy Goals with AI

   Stephen Goldsmith, Harvard Bloomberg Center on Cities​   

• ​We are excited to have former Indianapolis Mayor and deputy NYC Mayor Steve Goldsmith join us at our upcoming meeting. Goldsmith is now at Harvard’s Kennedy School and its Center for Cities.  Steve and SIG’s Turner teamed up in 2004 to help execute the privatization of Indiana’s welfare eligibility and work system under Governor Mitch Daniels, and Steve last presented to SIG more than a decade ago along with Charles Murray.
  
• Recently this former deputy NYC Mayor provided ideas to NYC’s police department on how AI can help predict and act on crime.  His presentation to SIG will be suffused with actual operational experience from years in the cities, and we will be left with some predictions as to where AI can and will be implemented first on a large scale in our business. 
  

Food Stamps is where we will find and meet the need for state labor - July 2024
* Work and Nonwork among SNAP Recipients (Nonelderly adults, Oct 2019-Feb 2020)
   Douglas J. Besharov, U-MD
* Wisconsin Works
   Jason Turner, Executive Director, SIG
*  Kansas SNAP Reforms
   Steve Greene, former Kansas human service administrator

• The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities claims most Food Stamp participants who can work are doing so, because in a typical month 74% of working age non-disabled adult beneficiaries worked within a year before or after the month of Food Stamp receipt.  This is highly misleading because for CBPP just one hour counts as working, and many non-workers are not counted at all in this calculation.  Presenters Besharov and Call show that at a given point in time, out of 100 Food Stamp working age adult beneficiaries, only 17 are working twenty hours or more.  This is where the tens or hundreds of thousands of non-workers are residing that our governors keep asking us to find on behalf of labor- starved businesses.  
  
• Once we know where to find them how do we activate able bodied Food Stamp recipients to enter and remain in the labor force?    This is where the second part of our session begins, because we have a former very active SIG state, Kansas, which implemented and enforced common sense work requirements for Food Stamp ABWODS in October 2013 under Governor Brownback.  Just two and a half years later the results were amazing with virtually no negative consequences including these:
  
  • Nearly 60 percent of those leaving food stamps found employment within 12 months. Their combined income from food stamps and employment changed from a baseline of 50/50 benefits and work to 100% income from work and a 23% higher net total in just the first two years (while wages from earnings alone went up by more than two times).
    
  • The ABWOD caseload dropped from 27 thousand to 9 thousand in a year and 7 thousand in two years, or minus 74%. Average recipient time on benefits dropped from 14 months to 7 months.
    
  • ​Total state-funded administrative costs were reduced by 7% in just the first year because of the reduced caseload (while nationally state funded admin costs increased 4% over the same period).  The Kansas payment error rate dropped from 4% to just 1% the year after the change.
    
• Jason Turner will describe the work-only system in Wisconsin’s W-2 reform.  The two Kansas Brownback administrators who implemented their change will explain how they did it and what you could expect in your state. 
  

Universal Basic Income and its potential negative impact on society - July 2024
* New Local Guaranteed Income Pilots
   Les Ford, Ford Policy Solutions

• Universal basic income (UBI) is a social welfare proposal that would give citizens a regular, unconditional guaranteed cash payment without conditions based on income level or employment.  The post-COVID relaunch of the expanded Child Tax Credit is a step toward UBI and has all the negative features of the pre-reformed welfare but on a much larger scale.  Many forms of unconditional transfer payments have been tried and tested in the past.  All of these lead to less work and accountability from the beneficiaries which our presenter Leslie Ford will describe   Local lawmakers with or without state participation, are currently piloting versions of UBI which SIG secretaries should be aware of.
  

Acting on opportunities to implement a WIOWA consolidated single state agency and adopting Empowerment Accounts to promote individual self sufficiency - July 2024
* ​Alliance for Opportunity
   Rachel Barkley, Alliance for Opportunity
* Workforce and Social Services Reform Task Force Developing Louisiana’s Vision for Integrated Workforce       

  Development
   Aly Rau, Louisiana Department of Children and Family Support

• In 1997 Utah Governor Leavitt consolidated workforce and benefit programs into a single state agency, the Department of Workforce Services.  The recently passed House WIOA bill HR 6655 would permit four low population demonstration states (up to eight in Senate under consideration) to consolidate their WIOA workforce system into a single state agency.  Louisiana has begun to take certain steps in this direction.
  
• Our presenter will also describe empowerment accounts (EAs) which would provide benefit funding to certain eligible recipients on a debit card. To qualify, individuals would need to be working, training, or following an education program while meeting with a community case manager to help attain financial cogency and to act on savings opportunities.

The non-monetary benefits of work - July 2023
* Nonfinancial Benefits of Work
   Angela Rachidi, Senior Fellow and Rowe Scholar in Poverty Studies, American Enterprise Institute
​ * Why Work Matters: Refocusing the Safety Net on Work and Opportunity
   Leslie Ford, Adjunct Fellow, Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility, American Enterprise Institute

• With our obsession over poverty (which is merely an income measure) as an indicator of family and social well-being, we overlook the more important aspects of work - - and we don’t just mean work as role modeling for children. Work is society’s organized method of gift-giving to other members of our human social organism. By providing useful goods and services to others, work is as central to personal thriving as it is to society itself. We will look at what the research and experience shows about the non- monetary benefits to individuals of this essential human activity.
  

Is “full engagement” in work activity as a condition of benefits dead? And what about those not ready to work for health reasons? - July 2023
* Full Engagement: Just “Process” from the Past?
   Grant Collins, President, FedCap 

• Former HHS (ACF) official, NYC contractor and program manager Grant Collins will argue that adopting WIOA employment metrics are not the best measures for determining state level of effort at engaging those residing on the couch into activities leading to employment. WIOA measures capture people already working and count them in the numerator, leaving the rest Grant Collins, FedCap alone, a fact few non-specialists recognize. Perhaps counter-intuitively, a better overall system for TANF and food stamps is to count “engagement”, or the level of work related attendance andactivity, especially for those underprepared for work.

​Overview of the situation after the election on the Hill and on the ground - November 2022 
* Welfare, Marriage and Abortions
   Robert Rector, Heritage Foundation 

• We have the top right-of-center thinkers, researchers and congressional subcommittee directors to join us for a comprehensive look at where we are now and what we should focus on post-election. Polls look good - - Republicans to sweep all before us!
  

Overview of the Situation on the Ground - June 2022
* Safety Net Benefits in the Pandemic and Beyond
   Matt Weidinger, American Enterprise Institute​
* The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): Quick Hits and Updates
   Jennifer Tiller, House Committee on Agriculture   
* Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Reauthorization Expanded Waiver and Demonstration                Authority to Spur Innovation
   Mason Bishop, WorkEd
* Amending WIOA
   Erik Randolph, Director of Research, Georgia Center for Opportunity
   Les Ford
* The Impact of Welfare Reform and Work-based Welfare on: Marriage, Non-Marital Births and Abortion
   Robert Rector, Heritage Foundation
* Child Poverty Has Been Cut in Half Since 1996 Welfare Reform
   Jamie Hall, Heritage Foundation

• With trillions of new dollars spent and unpaid for, new and expanded benefits at the same time we are fighting a labor shortage, what does it mean for society and our agencies to manage through these shoals?  This session will review the evidence - - what has happened to the budget, the extent of new welfare and child credit distributions to lower middle class, and how we can advance our objectives of work, self-reliance and healthy families under the current environment.
  

The Pandemic and its Aftermath - November 2021
​* Adjusting TANF to the Social “Infrastructure” Bill
   Doug Besharov, University of Maryland
* Largest Welfare Increase in U.S. History Will Boost Government Support to $76,400 per Poor Family
   Robert Rector, Senior Research Fellow, Heritage Foundation
* The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
   Jennifer Tiller, House Nutrition Committee

• Today social security pays monthly checks to 55 million retirees. President Biden  and the Congress have exceeded this number in one fell swoop by adding 65 million  children in 39 million families to a new state of dependency equaling 30 percent of  ALL households in America through the child tax credit. Previously the non working income available via average national benefit levels (TANF and Food  Stamps) was about $11,500 per year; now to $19,500 with the new tax credit. Our country is facing an acute labor shortage at the same time tens of millions are facing  work as merely an option. 
  How will the retreat from the idea of mutual obligation, e.g. work in exchange for  benefits, affect individuals making life choices and the body politic? How will the explosion of new entitlements in all areas of the welfare state affect the  responsibility of Americans to act as productive economic units and supportive  family members? We will discuss the current national state of affairs with  conservative’s top thinkers in program and budget matters spanning all human  services and workforce programs.
  

Tennessee Requests Guidance - August 2021

* TANF Opportunity Act Overview

   Clarence Carter, Commissioner, Tennessee Department of Human Services

• Longtime SIG secretary member from AZ and later Deputy Assistant Secretary for ACF at HHS, Clarence is newly in the position of TN Commissioner. When he showed up for work his first day he was told the state was in possession of $700 MILLION in unexpended TANF funds. To productively use this windfall, Clarence intends to authorize seven pilots around the state, paying for outcomes not process, with an emphasis on growing healthy families and economic self-reliance and independence from government programs. Here is the fun part for SIG secretaries - - he has asked all of us to brainstorm with him on how to best use these funds to achieve his objectives via the seven pilots, nothing is off the table. This will be the subject of the session.
  

Misused Poverty Statistics - December 2019

* Measuring Poverty and Deep Poverty in the United States

* Examining Extreme and Deep Poverty in the United States

* Five Myths About Welfare and Child Poverty

   Robert Rector, Senior Research Fellow, Heritage Foundation

• ​​Recently published research asserts that rates of extreme poverty, commonly defined as living on less than $2/person/day, are high and rising, amounting to 3.6 million non-homeless households. This absurdity is disproven by common sense. Two dollars a day is barely enough to provide calories to survive. So from where did this commonly asserted misinformation make its way into common academic discourse?
  In another mis-used statistic, critics of American prosperity often attempt to tarnish that title by claiming income is distributed less equally in the U.S. than in other developed countries.
  These critics point to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which ranks the U.S. as the least equal of the seven largest developed countries. But the OECD income-distribution comparison is biased because the U.S. underreports its income transfers in comparison to other nations. When the data are adjusted to account for all government programs that transfer income, the U.S. is shown to have an income distribution that aligns closely with its peers.
  

Administration for Children and Families - July 2019

* An ACF/State Initiative Moving the Disengaged to Work​

   Steve Wagner, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children & Families 

   Clarence Carter, Director, Office of Family Assistance

• Roundtable all matters ACF, including TANF, child welfare, child care, child support, and more. Clarence Carter has asked SIG for time to present his vision for a future welfare system wholly constructed around healthy family self-reliance. Time will also be devoted to new opportunities for state implementation of at-risk alternatives to disability with funding from SSA and demonstrations approved by ACF.
  

ACF and TANF - November 2018

* Up … Not Off: Moving from Medicaid to Self-Sufficiency

   Steve Wagner, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children & Families          

   Clarence Carter, Director, Office of Family Assistance

• ​We will cover all other topics including TANF, child support and child welfare. 
  

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When and how to fight spurious studies from the poverty industry - November 2018​

* Kansas Model for Welfare Reform

   Steve Greene, Kansas Department of Children and Families

• We have all experienced written reports from academia or think tanks from the Left claiming that state efforts to improve parental responsibility and obligations for employment will harm both children and the parents themselves.  Now the University of Kansas claims that work programs and time limits are throwing children into foster care (see excerpt below). The published report gained lots of publicity but the state did not take it lying down. Instead, they contracted for a more credible academic study of their own.
  
• From a KS NPR report - - A University of Kansas study supports the suspicions of lawmakers and advocates who believe there’s a link between additional restrictions on welfare benefits and an increase in foster care cases.  The researchers say their initial findings show that while Kansas was reducing the amount of time families could receive cash assistance through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and increasing the requirements they needed to meet for that assistance, the number of child abuse and neglect cases went up. Abuse and neglect are the leading reasons why Kansas kids enter foster care.
  

Administration for Children and Families - June 2018

   Remaking the Safety Net (RSN) Demos Welfare to Work Projects

   Clarence Carter, Director, Office of Family Assistance

• Round table all matters ACF, including TANF, child welfare, child care, child support, and more.  Clarence Carter has asked SIG for time to present his vision for a future welfare system wholly constructed around healthy family self-reliance.   Jerry Milner will share his concept as to how child welfare systems can make prevention a priority, even before first contact with the agency. Angela Green will ask SIG states for help in identifying implementation issues under the new law so as to help ACF understand and support the federal responses necessary.
  

Full Work Engagement in TANF​​ - December 2017

* Maine TANF Breaking the Cycle Achieving Targets and Outcomes: First 8 Months
   Grant Collins, Senior Vice-President, Fedcap

• Welfare to work vendor, Fedcap, has increased Maine’s work participation rate since they began there only nine months ago, from 16% to 50% - - and have boosted exits due to employment fourfold over the same period. 
  

The Five Myths of Welfare Reform - July 2017

* Are We Still Married? Family Structure and Family Policy in the Emerging Age of the Unformed Family
   Robert Rector, Senior Research Fellow, Heritage Foundation    

• Public discussion of welfare is often misdirected because it is informed by faulty assumptions.  For example one myth is that the welfare state in the U.S. is small, particularly compared to Europe.  This and four other faulty commonplaces will be debunked.   
  

TANF Reauthorization -  November 2016

* Lessons from Welfare-to-Work Experiments and Related Studies
   Jim Riccio, Director, Manpower Demonstration Research Corp.​

• On the year of the twentieth anniversary of TANF, a lookback and discussion of changes as proposed by Ways and Means and other options to the program in light of reauthorization. Grant Collins will describe thinking behind the Bush Administration’s TANF 2006 changes which were codified into current law. Jim Riccio of MDRC was part of the team that conducted the seminal experimental studies on the net impacts of various approaches to welfare and work, and will describe the results.   Ohio Director Cynthia Dungey will help facilitate discussion among secretaries of the pros and cons of prospective changes to federal requirements.  
  

Kansas Ho!​ - June 2016          

* Kansas 2015 Session Welfare Reform Bill, HOPE Act

* Kansas HOPE Act

• Information on Kansas welfare policy reform and the HOPE Act

* Kansas New Welfare Work Requirements

• Statistics on the new Kansas welfare reform policies

Family Income and the Welfare Effect - June 2015​          

* The Income Effect of Welfare
   Robert Rector, Senior Research Fellow, DeVos Center for Religion and Domestic Policy Studies, The Heritage Foundation
* Modeling Potential Income and Welfare Assistance Benefits in Illinois: Findings and Recommendations
   Erik Randolph, Senior Fellow, Illinois Policy Institute

• Stacked welfare benefits with phase outs make it very difficult to increase family income as a result of wage increases.  
  

November 2014
* A Tale of Two Decades: Post-Welfare Reform Progress Reversed
   Robert Doar, Morgridge Fellow in Poverty Studies, American Enterprise Institute

Important Research Findings - June 2014
* America's Entitlement Epidemic: Dimensions and Implications
   Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy, American Enterprise Institute

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Conference Materials: Requiring and Supporting Work

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