Repeal MFG Makes Women’s Caucus Priority List
Continuing their push for a #StrongerCA and reminding their colleagues and the public that families and women must be the state’s priorities, the Democratic members of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus unveiled their priorities on Thursday, February 11.
Among the legislation making the priority list – repealing the Maximum Family Grant rule (#repealMFG), a long-standing priority of CWDA. State law prevents parents receiving assistance through the CalWORKs program from receiving a grant for any child born to the household while any member of the household is receiving aid.
The MFG rule is based on the faulty and disproven premise that a women gets pregnant just to receive a paltry increase to her family assistance. The only thing it drives up is childhood poverty. The MFG policy is intended to control impoverished parents’ choices about the size of their families and when to conceive through the threat of economic hardship.
As Sen. Holly Mitchell(D-Los Angeles), the long-time champion to repeal the MFG rule and author of the measure said at Thursday’s Women’s Caucus press conference, the rule “has been the leading driver of childhood poverty.”
CWDA could not agree more. That’s why we will once again be relentlessly working with our partners this legislative session to end the poverty-inducing MFG rule.