Only one more vote is needed to send a welfare changes bill to Gov. Jay Nixon.
On a 25-9 party line vote, Missouri senators on Tuesday passed the conference committee version of a bill reducing the total amount of time a family can receive temporary assistance for needy families (TANF) funds.
"Right now, there's a 60-month lifetime benefit on the TANF program," Sen. David Sater, R-Cassville, explained. "The Senate bill reduced that to 48 months, and the House, in turn, reduced it to 30 months.
"So, the compromise position that the House and the Senate could take is 45 months."
The compromise bill also sets aside "2 percent of TANF funds for alternatives to abortion, and healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood" programs, Sater said.
The Legislature's conference committees involve 10 lawmakers - five from each house, with three majority party and two minority party members from each chamber.
Only the six Republicans signed the conference report.
One of the Democrats who didn't sign the conference report, Sen. Jill Schupp, D-Creve Coeur, thanked Sater for allowing her and other Democrats "to try to make the best we can out of a bad situation."
She agreed the ultimate goal of the TANF program is to "help these families who currently are in need of assistance get back to work and be able to support themselves and their children."
But, Schupp said, dropping the lifetime limit for assistance from 60 to 45 months means "we will be eliminating what is estimated to be 6,320 children from being recipients of TANF benefits. That is over 3,100 families and close to 10,000 people total - so, this is not without some loss to people, who were in compliance" with the current program rules.
Sater noted the current, 60-month deadline is set by federal law.
"And we're not the first state that has done this" reduction, he said.
Sen. Jason Holsman, D-Kansas City, reminded Schupp that he had been the only Democrat to support the original Senate bill when it was passed Feb. 23, "because I do believe the reforms we were making would have a net-positive benefit on these folks who are trying to get to work."
But the House changes dropped the bill "below my lowest (acceptable) number to support this legislation," he said.
So Holsman joined the Senate's eight other Democrats Tuesday in voting against the bill.
But, with 25 Republican members - seven more than needed to pass any bill - the compromise measure was sent to the House.
"My intent is to get people back to work" instead of using the welfare benefits, Sater told Holsman.
"What was missing right now is that we don't have a structure."
Sater told Sen. Paul LeVota, D-Independence, that the bill was needed because only 14 percent of TANF recipients showed any "work activity" as required by the federal government.
"The federal government itself says that should be around 40 or 50 percent," Sater said. "Our work activity rate was the lowest in the nation."