Please call House and Senate conferees.
Ask them to “Take the House position on the Family Cap.”

Senators (Start with Sen. Lourey and call the rest if you can)
Tony Lourey 651-296-0293
Richard Cohen 651-296-5931 (Senate lead on conference committee)
David Tomassoni 651-296-8017
Charlie Wiger 651-296-6820
Terri Bonoff 651-296-4314

Representatives:
Lyndon Carlson Sr. 651-296-4255 (House lead on conference committee)
Tom Huntley 651-296-2228 (Encourage him to stand strong)
Tim Mahoney 651-296-4277
Paul Marquart 651-296-6829
Jean Wagenius 651-296-4200

This session, one of our bills — to undo the Family Cap, starting July 1 — has a chance of passing. If we win, many families will see an immediate increase to the monthly cash grant starting July 1.

The Family Cap* is a terrible law that punishes babies for being born. Last year, we were successful in getting it repealed, but the legislature delayed the repeal until 2015! This year we are fighting to get the terrible Family Cap repealed ASAP.

HF3172, the Omnibus Supplemental Finance bill, in Conference Committee. The House version includes our bill, the Senate does not. So we want the House version to pass.

The reason that the Senate did not pass our bill is because Governor Dayton’s Department of Human Services told Senators that they could not “program their computers” in time to undo the cut in July. We feel that is untrue (they certainly cut families off at the drop of a hat)!

In any case, the House language (authored by Rep. Patti Fritz) calls for the DHS bypass the computers, if need be:
“The commissioner of human services shall implement the repeal of the MFIP family cap July 1, 2014. The commissioner shall make every effort to complete systems modifications by that date. If systems modifications cannot be completed in time, the commissioner shall implement a manual procedure to implement the change.”

So, please call the conferees today!

*Under the Family Cap, the monthly cash grant does not increase when a new baby is added to the family. For example, a family of three affected by the family cap is living on $437 per month. If our bill passes, that family would be getting (a whopping) $532 per month. The cash grants have not gone up in 28 years. 70,000 kids are living in EXTREME poverty because of the low grant levels. The governor and legislators refused to raise the grants for everyone this year. They can at least bring some kids from SUPER extreme poverty up to extreme poverty.