CONCORD – A Republican lawmaker wants to stop providing additional welfare benefits to single mothers who have children while receiving assistance from the program.

Single mothers on welfare who have another child should not be financially rewarded for it, Rep. Neal Kurk, R-Weare, told House budget writers Thursday.

“If we don’t have this kind of a program, a feeling will continue to exist that we are paying for conduct for which we don’t approve, and that’s not good,” said Kurk, a 13-term incumbent and former chairman of the House Finance Committee. “It makes no sense.”

Kurk’s bill, HB 1658, would stop the practice of increasing welfare benefits by $72.50 a month, which is meant to account for the additional cost of providing for another child. The bill would not apply to cases where the child is born fewer than 10 months after the family applies for and receives assistance, or in cases of rape or incest.

A family of three on welfare receives $675 a month.

Advocates for children and the poor said there’s no evidence that women on welfare have more children to receive the additional money. John Tobin, executive director of New Hampshire Legal Assistance, said the cut would further impoverish single moms who already can’t thrive on New Hampshire’s relatively low welfare benefits.

“Simply put, New Hampshire’s existing law doesn’t create an incentive for a mother receiving cash assistance to have another baby, and family caps have not conclusively been proven to work,” Tobin said.

There were 219 children born to welfare mothers during the fiscal year that ended last June 30. But only 74 of those came after the 10-month window, which opponents of the bill said proves that there isn’t a need for the legislation. The affected cases represent only 1.3 percent of all households that received welfare last year.

The number of children at issue amounts to fewer than 1 percent of the 8,530 children of those receiving state welfare.

Kurk’s bill would save the state roughly $34,000 a year, but the state Division of Family Assistance notes that it would take a $200,000 investment in new software to plug in this restriction and have it apply across the state.

There are 23 states that have some limit on their welfare benefits to mothers who have additional children while on assistance.

But Mary Lou Beaver, state director of Every Child Matters, noted that studies have shown that the increased welfare grant has not been an incentive for single moms to have more children.

These family caps have not dramatically reduced the number of children born in welfare families, she said.

“The policies are ineffective at best and misguided at worst,” Beaver said. “Instituting a family cap does not serve as a deterrent to women having fewer children.”

Tobin added that the bill perpetuates myths of welfare families being large and on assistance for long periods of time.

The typical single mom receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families has fewer than two children and is off assistance after 19 months; federal law sets a lifetime 60-month limit for anyone receiving these benefits.

Nashua Democratic Rep. Cindy Rosenwald charged that Republican-led cuts in family planning and contraception services could increase rates of child bearing.

“We have made it more likely they will become pregnant in the TANF program,” she said.

New Hampshire Municipal Association lawyer Cordell Johnson said the bill could raise property taxes, since city and town welfare budgets could be tapped to make up for the cuts in state benefits.

The bill is before the committee. They will study it and have until mid-March to report it with a recommendation to the full House.

Kevin Landrigan can reached at 321-7040 or klandrigan@nashuatelegraph.com.

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