109-171 , S. 1932 ), a budget spending reconciliation bill signed into law February 8, 2006, included a scaled-back version of welfare reform reauthorization. The act extended funding for the basic Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant through FY2010, increased the percentage of TANF families who will be required to participate in work or work activities, increased funding for child care, revised the Child Support Enforcement program, and established healthy marriage promotion grants and responsible fatherhood initiatives. President Bush submitted his welfare reauthorization proposals to Congress in February 2002. As in previous years, efforts to pass comprehensive free-standing welfare legislation in the first session of the 109 th Congress were unsuccessful. However, a scaled-back version of welfare reauthorization legislation was ultimately included in broader budget spending reconciliation legislation, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 ( P.L. In crafting the DRA ( S. 1932 / P.L. Although the full Senate had failed to act on welfare reauthorization legislation prior to assembling and considering the DRA, early in the 109 th Congress, the Senate Finance Committee did approve a welfare reauthorization measure ( S. 667 ). Further, previous welfare reauthorization proposals had included $200 million per year in grants for healthy marriage promotion—$100 million per year for matching grants to states and tribes and a second $100 million per year in research and demonstration funding controlled by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). The level of mandatory child care funding has been a contentious point of debate over the past four years. The Deficit Reduction Act includes an increase of $200 million per year (from $2.717 billion to $2.917 billion per year) in federal mandatory child care funding, or a total increase of $1 billion over five years. The increase reflects twice that proposed earlier in the House-passed budget reconciliation bill ($0.5 billion), mirroring the funding level passed by the House in welfare reauthorization measures of both 2002 and 2003. The $1 billion increase stands in contrast to the proposed increase of $6 billion over five years included in the bill reported out of the Senate Finance Committee early in 2005 ( S. 667 ). The Deficit Reduction Act's $1 billion in additional federal child care funds requires state matching. However, a number of factors are likely to limit TANF's ability to contribute more child care funds, specifically: (1) the block grant will remain frozen at the same levels as it was in FY1997 ($16.5 billion) and inflation continues to erode the purchasing power of those dollars; (2) the DRA will have the likely effect of increasing the percentage of TANF families that will have to participate in work activities, increasing the TANF work costs in addition to child care costs; and (3) allocating additional funding to child care would mean cutting back on other initiatives that have been funded with TANF dollars, for instance TANF's contribution to funding child welfare benefits and services for children who have been subject to, or are at risk of, abuse, neglect, or family breakup. The Finance Committee approach was to generally expand the activities that count toward the participation standards, in part by increasing the amount of education that would have been countable under TANF work standards. Responsible Fatherhood Initiatives

Enforcement of child support orders is only one dimension of current efforts to connect noncustodial parents (usually fathers) with their children.
Enactment of the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) of 2005 (P.L. 109-171, S. 1932) on February 8, 2006 concluded a four-year saga of legislative attempts to reauthorize Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and related programs. The original 1996 TANF law authorized five years of funding, through September 2002. Between October 1, 2002 and the DRA's passage, the program operated under a series of 12 "temporary extension" measures. Efforts to pass comprehensive free-standing welfare legislation during that period failed to reach fruition.
Instead, a scaled-back version of welfare reauthorization legislation was ultimately included in broader budget spending reconciliation legislation. The DRA of 2005 extends and maintains the basic TANF block grant at a funding level of $16.5 billion annually through FY2010; increases the share of TANF families required to participate in work activities; increases child care funding by $200 million per year over the FY2005 level of $2.7 billion, for FY2006-FY2010 (i.e., a total increase of $1 billion); provides federal cost-sharing for child support passed through to TANF and former TANF families, but prevents federal matching of child support incentive payments reinvested in the program; provides up to $100 million per year in demonstration grants for the promotion of "healthy marriages"; and establishes $50 million per year for "responsible fatherhood" initiatives.
The Administration originally proposed its welfare reauthorization plan in February 2002. The debate that ensued was dominated by controversy over child care funding levels and the Administration's proposed changes to TANF work participation standards. The reauthorization debate also reflected a renewed focus on noncustodial parents (usually fathers) and on family formation issues. The DRA includes responsible fatherhood initiatives and a scaled-back version of the President's initiative to promote healthy marriages.
The DRA ultimately included the same child care funding increase that was proposed in earlier House-passed welfare reauthorization measures in 2002 and 2003 ($1 billion in additional mandatory child care funding over five years). In the 108th Congress, legislation introduced in the Senate likewise proposed a $1 billion increase over five years (down from the $5.5 billion increase approved by the Senate Finance Committee in the 107th Congress); however, Senator Snowe led efforts pressing for a larger increase. The bill approved by the 109th Congress's Finance Committee (S. 667) reflected those efforts, with a proposed increase of $6 billion over five years. However, S. 667 was one of the free-standing welfare measures that was not taken up by the full Senate, and the child care funding increase was set at $1 billion in the final passage of the DRA.
With respect to the work requirement issue, while the DRA requires states to increase the share of their families participating in TANF work activities, it does not include the Administration's original proposal to set a 40-hour workweek standard or revise the activities that count toward it. This marks the final version of this report; it will not be updated.