Congressman Dave Reichert (R-WA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the Committee on Ways and Means, today announced that the Subcommittee will hold a hearing titled “Improving the Safety Net: Better Coordinating Today’s Maze of Programs to Ensure Families Receive Real Help.”  The hearing will focus on how current safety net programs often fail to work… Read more

This is the second in our series of three hearings on welfare reform. In our first hearing, we learned that programs designed to help low-income families often don’t do enough to help recipients go to work and get ahead. Today, we will explore what we know about the effectiveness of such programs, how we can hold more programs accountable for their performance, and how we can ensure… Read more

Hearing on Evaluating Efforts to Help Families Support their Children and Escape Poverty _____________________________________ HEARING BEFORE… Read more

Friday, July 12, 2013 marks one year since the Obama Administration first declared that it had the authority to waive the work requirements for welfare recipients. Work requirements were created in the 1996 welfare reform law, and they have been key to the success of welfare reform in increasing work and earnings and reducing poverty and welfare dependence. No prior Administration has… Read more

Congressman Dave Reichert (R-WA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the Committee on Ways and Means, today announced that the Subcommittee will hold a hearing titled, “What Really Works: Evaluating Current Efforts to Help Families Support their Children and Escape Poverty.”  The hearing will review evidence about the effectiveness of programs designed to… Read more

“Welcome to the Recovery” said then-Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in a New York Times op-ed published in August 2010.  In Geithner’s view back then, credit for the “recovery” rested squarely with the Obama Administration’s stimulus and related economic policies:  “The economic rescue package that President Obama put in place was essential to turning the economy… Read more

Washington, DC -  June 30, 2013 marks the fifth anniversary of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program, the current “temporary” Federal unemployment benefits program created in June 2008 under the Supplemental Appropriations Act, P.L. 110-252.  As that anniversary approaches, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) and Ways and Means Human… Read more

Washington, DC – Committee on Ways and Means Human Resources Subcommittee Chairman Dave Reichert (R-WA) and Ranking Member Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) issued the following statements upon this week's House passage of H.R. 1896, the “International Child Support Recovery Improvement Act of 2013.”  The legislation which passed June 18 by a vote of 394-27, makes no-cost… Read more

Welcome to today’s hearing. Today is the first hearing in a series on what government does to help low-income families get ahead, whether that is effective, and how that can be made to work better. Today we will start with a review of our current system and how much we spend, but more importantly whether that spending is effective in encouraging work and higher earnings by… Read more

“A well designed recovery plan will not only create numerous jobs, but also many jobs paying good wages and providing full-time employment.”   - Obama Administration’s “Romer Bernstein Report” on their trillion-dollar economic stimulus plan (officially titled “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan”), January 2009.   Now   "Real average hourly… Read more