State welfare caseloads have risen slightly since the start of the economic slowdown but they remain considerably below the number when Congress and the Clinton administration ended “welfare as we know it” in 1996 and stressed the temporary in Temporary Aid to Needy Families. TANF is now scheduled for renewal, and the House has approved the Bush administration plan essentially as proposed while the Senate Finance Committee looked at how the service needs for those receiving TANF have changed since ’96 and assembled a very different plan.

To understand the change, consider that Maine’s caseload fell from a monthly average of 19,128 families in 1996 to 10,800 families last year; direct cash benefits fell from $85 million in ’96 to $49 million last year. A huge drop similar to many but not all states. The drop is why President Bush says that the program needs no increase in funding through the next reauthorization in 2007. But caseload is not the only number that has changed; the cost of support services for families has increased as cash assistance has dropped.

In 1994, a study in Maine found that 17 percent of families that were receiving or had received welfare cited illness of a family member as a reason for not being able to work. That number had increased among TANF recipients to 35 percent by 1997, and a recent study by the Maine Center for Economic Policy now puts the number at 52 percent. Healthy people with healthy kids often found work and left TANF while an increasing percentage of those left have justified medical reasons for staying on. Generally, people with more family illness have a harder time meeting the work requirements under TANF and require more support as a result.

The president also would flat-fund child care while increasing the number of hours an adult must work to receive assistance. But as many parents know, child care, when available, has increased in cost substantially during the last six years; adding work hours for parents makes care even more expensive. Sen. Olympia Snowe and Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut would increase child care funding under the Finance Committee’s plan by $5.5 billion, a responsible move matched by the committee’s compromise on the number of additional work hours.

Getting the Finance Committee plan onto the Senate floor then into conference with the House plan will not be easy in the few scheduled weeks remaining in the congressional calendar. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle had increased the pace of votes just before the August recess, but several large spending bills remain, as does the possibility of reconsidering a Medicare prescription-drug benefit. Sen. Daschle endured a stinging loss in July with the failure of four bills to fund the drug benefit, but he certainly was reminded of the important lesson that, when he needs 60 votes, GOP support generally falls for social programs as a proposal’s dollar amount increases.

The TANF reauthorization could have several amendments attached to it, including one the majority leader favors that would raise the child care increase from $5.5 billion to $7 billion. He might count votes before he lets the bill be brought up, or he might use a Finance Committee proposal that would add training for people who want to provide care to disabled children as a means to achieve the same end.

The most important thing is to get the committee bill on the floor with adequate time for a vote and avoid a continuing resolution that would leave funding uncertain for another year.