Mar. 20, 2010 - Two new CBP fact sheets document the impact of Governor Schwarzenegger's proposed cuts to the CalWORKs Program by county and legislative district. CalWORKs provides cash assistance to low-income families with children, while helping parents find jobs and overcome barriers to employment. More than three-quarters (77.9 percent) of CalWORKs recipients are children.
The CBP's analyses show that the Governor's proposal to cut monthly payments by 15.7 percent would reduce or eliminate cash assistance for more than 1.4 million low-income children and their parents by nearly $650 million between June 2010 and June 2011. The Governor also proposes to eliminate the CalWORKs Program effective October 1, 2010 if the federal government does not provide California with $6.9 billion in new funds to help close the state's budget shortfall. Eliminating CalWORKs would cause California to lose three-quarters ($2.8 billion) of the state's federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant in 2010-11, and to lose the state's entire annual $3.7 billion TANF block grant every year thereafter. California would also be at risk of losing more than $500 million in 2010-11 from a new allocation of federal funds established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that Congress is considering extending into 2011.
The fact sheets include county and legislative district estimates of the number of individuals whose grants would be reduced or eliminated and the total dollars that would be lost to local communities.
