On the heels of state budget cuts, anti-poverty advocates are pressing for lawmakers to include a sizable boost in cash assistance grants for low-income families in next year’s spending plan.
Members of the Lift Our Kids Coalition, which includes 160 different groups, met with legislators on Thursday, urging them to write a 20% increase in Transitional Assistance to Families with Dependent Children benefits into the fiscal 2025 budget.
“Deep poverty is harmful. But we have to say it. We have to name it,” said Betsy Gwin, an attorney focused on economic justice at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. “And we have to remind legislators, as they’re making their budget asks, that this needs to be a top priority, in order to lessen the harm in terms of health and emotional damage, the toxic stress faced by families, impaired school performance, and also the impact on housing and homelessness.”
The coalition has pressed for years to raise cash assistance amounts to help families living in deep poverty — those earning below half of the federal poverty level — and lawmakers have picked up that charge in recent budget cycles. Gwin said the state’s TAFDC benefit levels were “frozen for decades,” with no increases from 1988 until 2000, and then again until 2021.
“This means that these grants lost an incredible amount of value, as every single year inflation goes up, cost of living goes up,” she said. “Prices in the economy are going up, but grants did not go up.”
For a family of three with no income, the maximum monthly grant is currently $783, according to the coalition.
That number was slated to rise to $861 this coming April, but emergency budget cuts Gov. Maura Healey made last month forestalled the bump. Gwin said that leaves “even more ground to make up” next year.
After six consecutive months when state tax revenue collections landed below benchmarks, Healey cut $375 million in spending across an array of accounts.
“I am reducing this amount to the amount projected to be necessary to maintain current benefit levels that have increased by an average of 30% since FY21,” Healey wrote to describe her roughly $13 million cut to the TAFDC line item. The reduction left the program with more than $431 million, almost $60 million more than it spent the previous year.
Budget writers are expecting sluggish revenue growth for the fiscal year that starts in July, leaving lawmakers and Healey to make tough choices about where they can afford to spend more money.
State Sen. Sal DiDomenico, an Everett Democrat, said a “critical mass” of lawmakers will need to make the benefit boost a priority to secure it a spot in the budget — for instance, 10 or 12 of the 40 state senators. He told advocates they might face questions about its chances of becoming law in next year’s budget in light of this year’s cuts.
“We’ll fight that battle down the road,” he said. “If we don't get it into our budget, then there’s no battle to fight later on.”
