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Washington • A new bill would require states to block welfare recipients from using their benefits at casinos, liquor stores and sexually oriented businesses or face a reduction in federal funds.
It is one of two bills Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., have authored recently. The other would allow states to pitch better ways to spend foster care money and was introduced in the Senate on Tuesday.
Baucus and Hatch are the top senators on the powerful Finance Committee and while they often spar on issues ranging from taxes to health care, they seemed to have found some common ground on these social service issues.
The welfare legislation was inspired by an investigative report in The Los Angeles Times that uncovered nearly $4 million in state-issued benefits withdrawn at casinos and tens of thousands withdrawn at adult entertainment businesses. The money amounted to only 1 percent of the state's welfare benefits but caused an uproar that led to a change in California's program.
"Misusing funds that were intended to prevent families and children from falling through the cracks is an affront on working Americans across the country and an abuse of taxpayer dollars," Hatch said.
The Utah Department of Workforce Services already blocks welfare recipients from using their debit cards at liquor stores, but department spokesman Curt Stewart said the state currently does not block "Horizon card" users from accessing their cash at sexually oriented businesses or casinos in neighboring states. (Utah outlaws all forms of gambling.)
Stewart said the state would follow any federal restricts but added: "People can use their cards at ATMs so if people want to be foolish, people can be foolish."
He noted that the average welfare recipient in Utah is a single mother with two kids receiving slightly less than $500 per month.
The Baucus-Hatch bill on foster care funding stemmed from a hearing in March and seeks to reinstate a decade-old program that expired in 2005.
"The Senate Finance Committee has a long history of collaborative work on child welfare issues, and I am pleased that the tradition continues," Hatch said at a recent hearing.
That legislation would allow states to seek federal waivers to use money meant for foster care on programs that would seek to reduce the number of children who enter the foster system or improve their transition to adulthood.
Hatch said this flexibility will "provide states with a greater capacity to keep struggling families together."
The proposal is supported by a group of Utah state lawmakers and the Utah Department of Human Services. The state never asked for a waiver previously, but Cosette Mills with the Utah Division of Child and Family Services says the department is interested in diverting part of the state's $18 million in federal funds to a program that would try to return foster children to their parents faster.