ISSUES:
The Stand Together Minnesota Coalition works to protect Minnesota’s poorest and most vulnerable residents from dangerous budget cuts.
Because the programs that serve people in poverty and crisis are often in the crosshairs of budget cutters, we need to be sure that Minnesota’s budget:
• protects General Assistance and
• retains MFIP assistance for families with disabled parents or children.
LEARN MORE:
General Assistance
Who uses General Assistance? About 33,000 adults with disabilties or incapacitating illnesses who are living on less than $300 a month. They have serious illnesses, physical disabilities, blindness , low IQs, serious mental illnesses, and/or are elderly and/or homeless. They do not have children living with them. Some are teenagers living on their own with no custodial families.
What is General Assistance? Up to $203 a month in assistance for an adult and up to $260 for married couples.
What is the Governor’s proposal? To eliminate this assistance and replace it with an emergency program that offers once-a-year help. The Governor eliminated exactly that program – Emergency General Assistance – with his unallotments last year. (The Governor would continue the part of General Assistance that pays for people in group homes.)
Isn’t an emergency program a good idea? Emergency programs work when one-time assistance can help people out of an immediate crisis. But one-time help is pointless if there is no income to pay the next set of bills.
Aren’t these just people who move to Minnesota to get on our assistance programs? No. According to the Minnesota Department of Human Services, 87% of the people who were new to General Assistance in 2009 had lived in Minnesota had least a year.
Aren’t we just encouraging dependency? Most people use General Assistance for short periods of time: 40% use it for less than six months at a time and over a nine year period the average time on General Assistance was 23 months. This makes sense: because 64% of the people who turn to General Assistance are incapacitated with illness. General assistance supports people through a period of serious illness when they cannot earn other income. (More than 75% of the adults on General Assistance also rely on General Assistance Medical Care.)
Don’t people just claim they are ill or disabled to get General Assistance? No. A medical or mental health professional has to verify the condition and that it has been present for at least 30 days.
With the state’s budget crisis, don’t we have to focus on costs that are growing more expensive every year? The forecast anticipates less than a 1% increase in costs (0.7% in the 2010-2011 biennium and 0.8% in the 2012-2013 biennium.) The forecast calls them “small increases”. (p.18, Minnesota Department of Human Services Forecast, Feb. 2010.)
Minnesota has not increased the assistance people on General Assistance receive since 1986. General Assistance accounts for only 1.1% of the Human Services budget – and only 0.1% of the overall state general fund spending. Caseloads have grown in proportion to the aging of Minnesota’s population and also in correlation to the growing backlog in the federal system for determining whether someone is eligible for federal disability income.
This cut generates a $14.6 million savings in 2011, $19.8 million in 2012 and a $17.7 million savings in 2013. This includes accounting for $5.9 million lost in federal reimbursements next biennium. A number of the people on General Assistance are found eligible for federal Supplemental Security Income for the Disabled and the federal government reimburses the state the cost of General Assistance during the application period.
Minnesota Family Investment Program
What does the Governor’s budget proposal suggest? To end welfare-to-work assistance to at least 7,000 families and to cut child care assistance to 900 families that have a parent or child with disabilities.
What sort of disabilities are involved? The parents often have serious and persistent mental illness, low IQs due to developmental disability or traumatic brain injuries, and debilitating chronic illnesses. The children’s disabilities are across the board – severe physical disabilities, mental illness and developmental disabilities.
Who determines an individual is disabled? The federal government, through a process that can take up to two years, and results in a determination that the individual is unable to sustain on-going and full-time work.
What will these families live on? A mother with a disability and with two children would go from having about $1,100 a month to pay for rent, food, clothes, transportation, etc. to having $674 a month, the maximum disability assistance available to an individual through the federal Supplemental Security Income program. That is $8,000 a year, a level the Census Bureau recognizes as extreme poverty.
What will happen to the families? Many of these families will lose their housing and those who have struggled with unstable housing already are likely to join many others in those counted among the long-term homeless.
What will happen to the children? Homeless children with other risk factors miss more school, score the lowest on standardized test scores and fail to show advancement in school compared to all other students, including other very low income students.
With the state’s budget crisis, don’t we have to focus on costs that are growing more expensive every year? The forecast anticipates a slight decline (a $4.2 million decrease) in spending for grants to people on the state welfare-to-work program, the Minnesota Family Investment Program – without these cuts.. This decrease is a continuation of a trend that started in 2009. (p.15 Minnesota Department of Human Services Forecast, Feb. 2010 )
Minnesota has not increased the amount of cash assistance it provides families since 1986. A family of three still receives $532 a month at maximum.
Minnesota has federal welfare-to-work money still available from the stimulus bill that is intended to prevent just this sort of cut. Instead the Governor proposes moving it around through the tax budget to pay for a $28 million general fund cut.
This is a cut of $20 million in 2011 and about $32 million a year in subsequent years.
Who uses General Assistance? About 33,000 adults with disabilties or incapacitating illnesses who are living on less than $300 a month. They have serious illnesses, physical disabilities, blindness , low IQs, serious mental illnesses, and/or are elderly and/or homeless. They do not have children living with them. Some are teenagers living on their own with no custodial families.
What is General Assistance? Up to $203 a month in assistance for an adult and up to $260 for married couples.
What is the Governor’s proposal? To eliminate this assistance and replace it with an emergency program that offers once-a-year help. The Governor eliminated exactly that program – Emergency General Assistance – with his unallotments last year. (The Governor would continue the part of General Assistance that pays for people in group homes.)
Isn’t an emergency program a good idea? Emergency programs work when one-time assistance can help people out of an immediate crisis. But one-time help is pointless if there is no income to pay the next set of bills.
Aren’t these just people who move to Minnesota to get on our assistance programs? No. According to the Minnesota Department of Human Services, 87% of the people who were new to General Assistance in 2009 had lived in Minnesota had least a year.
Aren’t we just encouraging dependency? Most people use General Assistance for short periods of time: 40% use it for less than six months at a time and over a nine year period the average time on General Assistance was 23 months. This makes sense: because 64% of the people who turn to General Assistance are incapacitated with illness. General assistance supports people through a period of serious illness when they cannot earn other income. (More than 75% of the adults on General Assistance also rely on General Assistance Medical Care.)
Don’t people just claim they are ill or disabled to get General Assistance? No. A medical or mental health professional has to verify the condition and that it has been present for at least 30 days.
With the state’s budget crisis, don’t we have to focus on costs that are growing more expensive every year? The forecast anticipates less than a 1% increase in costs (0.7% in the 2010-2011 biennium and 0.8% in the 2012-2013 biennium.) The forecast calls them “small increases”. (p.18, Minnesota Department of Human Services Forecast, Feb. 2010.)
Minnesota has not increased the assistance people on General Assistance receive since 1986. General Assistance accounts for only 1.1% of the Human Services budget – and only 0.1% of the overall state general fund spending. Caseloads have grown in proportion to the aging of Minnesota’s population and also in correlation to the growing backlog in the federal system for determining whether someone is eligible for federal disability income.
This cut generates a $14.6 million savings in 2011, $19.8 million in 2012 and a $17.7 million savings in 2013. This includes accounting for $5.9 million lost in federal reimbursements next biennium. A number of the people on General Assistance are found eligible for federal Supplemental Security Income for the Disabled and the federal government reimburses the state the cost of General Assistance during the application period.
Minnesota Family Investment Program
What does the Governor’s budget proposal suggest? To end welfare-to-work assistance to at least 7,000 families and to cut child care assistance to 900 families that have a parent or child with disabilities.
What sort of disabilities are involved? The parents often have serious and persistent mental illness, low IQs due to developmental disability or traumatic brain injuries, and debilitating chronic illnesses. The children’s disabilities are across the board – severe physical disabilities, mental illness and developmental disabilities.
Who determines an individual is disabled? The federal government, through a process that can take up to two years, and results in a determination that the individual is unable to sustain on-going and full-time work.
What will these families live on? A mother with a disability and with two children would go from having about $1,100 a month to pay for rent, food, clothes, transportation, etc. to having $674 a month, the maximum disability assistance available to an individual through the federal Supplemental Security Income program. That is $8,000 a year, a level the Census Bureau recognizes as extreme poverty.
What will happen to the families? Many of these families will lose their housing and those who have struggled with unstable housing already are likely to join many others in those counted among the long-term homeless.
What will happen to the children? Homeless children with other risk factors miss more school, score the lowest on standardized test scores and fail to show advancement in school compared to all other students, including other very low income students.
With the state’s budget crisis, don’t we have to focus on costs that are growing more expensive every year? The forecast anticipates a slight decline (a $4.2 million decrease) in spending for grants to people on the state welfare-to-work program, the Minnesota Family Investment Program – without these cuts.. This decrease is a continuation of a trend that started in 2009. (p.15 Minnesota Department of Human Services Forecast, Feb. 2010 )
Minnesota has not increased the amount of cash assistance it provides families since 1986. A family of three still receives $532 a month at maximum.
Minnesota has federal welfare-to-work money still available from the stimulus bill that is intended to prevent just this sort of cut. Instead the Governor proposes moving it around through the tax budget to pay for a $28 million general fund cut.
This is a cut of $20 million in 2011 and about $32 million a year in subsequent years.
