Scott has failed to tighten work rules for welfare clients

Gov. Rick Scott believes in personal responsibility and wants Floridians to get a job. And that applies to folks on welfare, too.

During his 2010 campaign, Gov. Rick Scott promised to impose "more stringent standards on non-compliance with work requirements" for welfare recipients. But we found no evidence that he had taken any steps and gave him a promise Stalled in 2011 and 2012.

Near the end of this third year in office, we decided to check on his progress.

The work welfare requirements relate to those on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (commonly referred to as welfare) -- there are about 92,000 clients in Florida.

According to state law, TANF recipients face penalties starting at losing benefits for a matter of days.

A spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Children and Families told PolitiFact that there were no new stringent standards on noncompliance with work requirements.

In July 2012, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that states could apply for a waiver to implement pilot programs to meet the goals of welfare's work requirements, particularly to help parents find and keep jobs.

No state ended up applying for a waiver, and Scott spoke against them in 2012: "People need to be going out and looking for a job," said Scott. "We believe in personal responsibility, and we're going to have that in our state."

(The U.S. House of Representatives voted in March 2013 to block the waivers but the Senate never voted on that bill.)

We are separately tracking Scott's related promise to drug test welfare recipients. That promise stands at Stalled, because the state has been losing a challenge by opponents of the drug test law. While the case remains pending, there is a preliminary injunction in place so TANF recipients are not being drug tested for now.

Scott has failed to deliver on his promise to strengthen work requirements for welfare recipients. If Scott or the Legislature pursue this goal during the 2014 session we will revisit it, but for now we rate this Promise Broken.