Washington Roundup September 12, 2003
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Senate Passes FY 2004 Funding Bill that Would Provide Increases for
Drug and Alcohol Treatment and Research Programs,
No Funding for the Treatment Voucher Program, and Cuts for
the Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities Program

This week, the Senate passed its FY 2004 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill by a vote of 94 to 0. The Senate bill had less funding to allocate than the House Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill and this funding shortfall did impact some drug and alcohol treatment and prevention programs.

This bill would provide new funding for drug and alcohol treatment and research, including $50 million for the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant and $10 million for the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. However, it would provide no funding for the President's new drug treatment voucher initiative.

Like the House bill, this bill also would beat back most of the Administration's proposed cut to the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention with an allocation of $194 million, just $3 million below the FY 2003 funding level. However, it would cut $47 million from the Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities' State Grants Program, which would greatly reduce funding for school and community-based drug and alcohol prevention programs.

Both the National Institutes on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) would receive increases, with NIDA receiving a $36 million increase over FY 2003 funding and NIAAA receiving a $15 million increase. Both of these funding increases are slightly more generous than what the House bill allocated.

Presently it is unclear when leadership from the House and Senate Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations Subcommittees and other key Congressional leaders will be negotiating (conferencing) a final FY 2004 funding bill. First Congressional leaders must decide how much money to allocate for the final bill, since the House and Senate bills have different funding levels. Once this decision is made, the final negotiation process (Conference Committee) can move forward in earnest. It is possible that the bill may be combined with other funding bills into an omnibus appropriations bill in order to facilitate Congress finishing the appropriations process more quickly. However, it is unlikely that Congress will finish before the September 30th deadline which signals the end of the 2003 fiscal year.

OVERVIEW OF DRUG AND ALCOHOL TREATMENT, PREVENTION,

EDUCATION, AND RESEARCH PROGRAM FUNDING

Senate Finance Committee Passes Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF/Welfare) Reauthorization Bill; Includes Provision that Would Count Drug and Alcohol Treatment as Work for up to Six Months

This week the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), passed the Personal Responsibility and Individual Development for Everyone Act (PRIDE), which would reauthorize the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF/Welfare) program. The PRIDE Act was introduced by Senator Grassley (R-IA) and would makes significant changes to the existing 1996 welfare law which expires on September 30, 2003. The PRIDE Act is similar to H.R. 4, the Personal Responsibility, Work, and Family Promotion Act of 2003, the Republican-sponsored reauthorization bill passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year.

Several issues were addressed by the Committee and in the legislation that are relevant to TANF recipients in recovery or seeking treatment for alcohol and other drug addictions. These issues include:

o A "treatment plus work" provision, which Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) added to the bill. This provision would change existing TANF law to allow adult TANF recipients to participate in a variety of rehabilitative activities, including substance abuse treatment and other barrier removal activities, for six months out of a 24 month period with a requirement that the second three month period consist of a combination of treatment with work or job readiness activities. Current law does not count drug and alcohol treatment as a work activity and the House bill would only count it as a work activity for three months as opposed to six months.

o A provision that would count 10 hours of optional barrier removal activities as work. This provision would permit States to engage individuals in a broader range of activities after the 24 hour minimum of core work activities is met, including substance abuse treatment, post-secondary education and training and other barrier removal activities.

o Repeal of the Drug Felony Ban on TANF and Food Stamps and the addition of fleeing felon provisions affecting social security and housing benefits. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) offered an amendment that would have repealed the federal drug felony ban on TANF and Food Stamps benefits by giving States the choice to "opt in" to a partial or full ban for individuals with felony drug convictions, while simultaneously extending the ban to individuals with rape, sexual assault and murder convictions. The amendment also included a provision to deny social security old-age and survivors benefits to fugitive felons and individuals fleeing prosecution and a provision to require public housing agencies to evict fugitive felons.

The amendment was withdrawn and not voted on by the Committee after Senator Grassley (R-IA) requested that the Committee add technical language to the Social Security section. Senator Grassley stated that he did not have a problem with the content of the amendment and that he expects to consider the amendment during the floor debate on the bill

o Funding for a Business Links and Transitional Jobs program. Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) offered an amendment which would have provided funding for a Business Links and Transitional Jobs program that would assist eligible individuals with barriers to employment by providing work and training opportunities in collaboration with employers, or by providing transitional jobs programs which combine time-limited employment with skill development and activities. This amendment was also withdrawn after Senator Grassley (R-IA) agreed to try to include some version of it in the final bill that goes to the Senate floor.

Overall, the PRIDE Act maintains the five year time limit on benefits, offers the same core activities for work, maintains the current block grant funding level of $16.5 billion a year, and maintains the same sanction policies (although the legislation would require states to make a "good faith effort" to conduct a pre-sanction review). Changes to the current law that the bill would make include:

o Increase the work participation rates for states by 5% each year, from a 50% rate in 2004 to a 70% rate in 2008.

o Increase the minimum hour requirement for participation in core work activities from 20 to 24 hours.

o Increase in the standard weekly average of work hours from 20 to 24 for parents with a child under the age of six and from 30 to 34 hours for parents with a child over six. This includes adoption of a tiered approach that assigns credit along the range of hours worked by the participant. This would allow states to claim partial credit for hours an individual works below the standard hour requirement. This is a change from the current requirement that a recipient only counts towards the state's work participation rate requirement if the recipient meets the standard hour requirement.

o Permit those caring for a disabled family member to count as meeting work requirements if the disability is verified by a "medically acceptable clinical or diagnostic technique."

o Provide $100 million a year in matching grants for marriage promotion, $100 million a year for research related to marriage, and include a provision to promote responsible fatherhood.

Senator Baucus (D-MT) offered a Democratic substitute bill in the form of an amendment for Senator Grassley's (R-IA) PRIDE Act, which was rejected. The Democratic substitute was similar to the WORK Act, the bi-partisan TANF reauthorization bill approved by the Finance Committee last year. The PRIDE Act was approved by the Committee by a vote of nine to eight. It is still unclear whether the bill will be considered by the full Senate before the expiration of the current TANF program on September 30, 2003. If the Senate fails to act on the bill before September 30th, Congress could temporarily authorize the program through a continuing resolution.

Report Released Details Costly, Widespread Nature of Underage Alcohol Use;
Calls for Cooperative National Strategy to Combat Teen Alcohol Abuse

This week, the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine released a report entitled, "Reducing Underage Drinking: A Collective Responsibility." The report, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, cites a dramatic need for a comprehensive strategy to eliminate teenage drinking. Highlighting both the great social and financial costs of underage alcohol use, the report's recommendations would require Congress, the alcohol industry, the entertainment industry, state and local governments, parents, and community members, to work together to curb teenage alcohol use. One of the report's explicit aims is to deter both young people and adults from alcohol abuse.

The report included the following recommendations:

o Federal and state governments should work with private entities to educate the public about current laws prohibiting underage drinking. Public and private institutions should provide financial assistance to help community-based initiatives that work to combat teenage alcohol use.

o Certain federal funding to the states should be contingent on how successful a state has been in ensuring that businesses are complying with underage drinking laws.

o The federal government should fund the development of a national media campaign to encourage people at the local level to discourage underage drinking.

o The alcohol industry should work to stop advertising in venues where a large portion of the audience is underage, and should refrain from types of advertising that may appeal to young people. The industry should also create an independent nonprofit foundation that exclusively focuses on preventing and reducing teenage drinking.

o The entertainment industry should use rating systems that will decrease the likelihood that young people will be exposed to favorable messages about alcohol consumption. The recording industry should institute a stricter rating system to assist parents in determining what type of music their children are listening to.

o The Department of Health and Human Services should regularly review advertising, movies, television programs, music recordings and videos that are offered to audiences featuring young people, and should report their findings to Congress and the public.

o Excise taxes on alcohol should be increased in order to fund many of the above recommendations, and to dramatically increase teenage alcohol use prevention funding in general.

The Congressionally mandated study found that more young people drink alcohol than use other drugs or smoke tobacco, and that underage drinking costs the United States roughly $53 billion every year. Richard J. Bonnie, director of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, chaired the Committee on Developing a Strategy to Reduce and Prevent Underage Drinking, which wrote the report. The report can be found online at: http://www.nap.edu/books/0309089352/html/