Tom Reed announced his support for legislation designed to help families around the country break the cycle of poverty. “We care about the families in poverty, including the 19 million New Yorkers that struggle every day to make ends meet,” said Reed. “As a nation, we can and should reform our social safety net to incentivize work, promote self sufficiency and care for the vulnerable."

Last week the House Committee on Ways & Means, on which Reed sits, passed several bipartisan bills aimed at reforming the broken welfare system.

The first bill, the Social Impact Partnerships to Pay for Results Act, would encourage private sector involvement in social service programs, with the government only paying if the program is successful in moving individuals from welfare to work. The second bill, Accelerating Individuals Into the Workforce Act, encourages businesses to hire low-income individuals by subsidizing up to half of their wages. The final bill, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Accountability and Integrity and Improvement Act, would prohibit states from artificially inflating state spending on TANF commitments by counting outside spending as their own.

“This action represents an important first step in bringing commonsense reforms to our federal anti-poverty programs, and paves the way for further success in the future,” said Reed. “I look forward to continuing to promote work requirements, drug testing, school attendance and self-sufficiency through several of our own legislative proposals moving forward.”

According to the New York State Community Action Network, in 2015, over 19 million New Yorkers are in poverty, including 4.2 million children.