 So what I'm going to be talking about, as Elizabeth mentioned, is a very specific aspect of this larger red tape issue that we've identified, which is asset limits in public assistance programs. This is probably not new information to a lot of people in the room, but just for the sake of context. Asset limits are a cap on the amount of savings and resources that an applicant or participant in a particular public benefits program can maintain and remain eligible for assets. Asset tests vary widely across states and programs, both as far as the actual dollar value of the total asset holdings and as far as the specific resources that count towards that limit. For example, in TANF, which is temporary assistance for needy families, basically cash welfare, six states have now eliminated their asset tests entirely, while others range from a low of $1,000 to a high of $15,000. By contrast with SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, most states now do not have an asset test for the vast majority of applicants, though 10 states have maintained the federal limits of $2,000 per household. To prove resources and pass the asset test, essentially, applicants often must bring a burdensome amount of paperwork and information to their eligibility interviews, ranging from bank statements to car titles to even funeral agreements, which must in turn be reviewed and potentially verified by eligibility workers. This is a really time-consuming process, and the sheer paperwork requirements themselves have been found to deter some people from accessing the benefits that they both need and qualify for. One of the most obvious negative effects of asset limits is that they prevent the accumulation of sufficient assets to whether an emergency, like damage from hurricanes, for example. The asset poverty line is the level of savings that a family would need to survive at the poverty level for three months in the absence of income. That's currently $4,632 for a family of three. This is actually higher than the asset tests for SNAP and 10 states and TANF in 41 states, so these policies quite literally compel families to remain in asset poverty to receive any assistance. For this research, we chose to focus in particular on how asset tests affect the administration of the programs. This is a question that has important implications, both for our participants and for state and local agencies, particularly in light of recent state budget cuts and reduced staff. Furthermore, just in the past two years, two states that had previously eliminated their SNAP asset tests, Pennsylvania and Michigan, have chosen to bring them back. Additionally, there have been proposals in the recent Farm Bill debate to eliminate broad-based categorical eligibility, which is the mechanism by which states have been able to increase or eliminate their SNAP asset tests. So to gather this information about the effects on the administration of the programs, we sent a survey to state administrators from a wide array of states who've made different policy choices with respect to their asset tests in TANF and SNAP, and then conducted follow-up interviews with these administrators as well as with advocacy organizations, particularly in these states where these organizations played an instrumental role in bringing about policy change. So with that introduction, I'm just going to go through some of our key findings and some lessons that we learned from administrators that could be helpful to states that may be considering similar policy changes in the future. First, for every state that we spoke to that collected this data, we heard that very few applicants to either SNAP or TANF really had any assets to speak of. Their asset levels very rarely approached what the asset limit was or used to be. Just for example, in Alabama, the year before it eliminated its TANF asset test, only 15 out of over 21,000 denials and also 15 out of over 20,000 closures were due to excess assets. This is maybe one of the more extreme examples that we heard, but we heard similar figures and anecdotal data from almost all the states that we spoke with. I think what we can glean from this information is that evaluating assets is just not the most efficient way for eligibility workers to be spending their time since very few applicants would be disqualified based on these assessments. So another thing that we heard that sort of plays off of this first finding is that eliminating asset tests broadly reduce or increase administrative simplicity and streamline eligibility determinations. The process of verifying assets is full of rules and exemptions, and it's generally a very complex evaluation that requires significant documentation. Again, most of the reports that we heard about increased simplicity were more on the anecdotal side than based in solid data figures. And that's partly because many states eliminated asset tests in tandem with other simplifications such as simplified reporting, and this was difficult for them to isolate the effects of eliminating the asset test. Still, I will touch again on this momentarily, some states were able to offer cost estimates of eliminating the asset test prior to implementing the change. For example, in Virginia, prior to eliminating its TANF asset test, the state estimated would spend an additional $127,000 on benefits for 40 additional families, but this would be offset by about $323,000 in savings and administrative costs. Another issue that we looked at was the overlap in caseloads among programs with different asset tests in place. Nationally around 8% of SNAP households also received TANF, and about 81% of TANF households also received SNAP. Among the surveyed states, there was significant variance in these figures. In California, for example, a full 20% of the SNAP households also received TANF, and practically speaking, that means that even though the SNAP asset test has been eliminated in California, 20% of SNAP recipients will still be subject to the $2,000 TANF asset test. Overall, this speaks to the problem of how inconsistent rules in programs targeting families with similar needs can both perpetuate confusion about eligibility and limit the ability of a reform that occurs in one program in isolation to reduce red tape and burden some paperwork requirements. I think this also says that there needs to be a recognition that a single family may qualify for and be subject to different rules in, for example, TANF, SNAP and Medicaid, unless even a well-intentioned rule that simplifies eligibility in one program will have diminished practical effects if similar requirements remain in others. On a related note, some states described issues with implementation of asset test reforms that mitigated their effectiveness. For example, in Louisiana, we heard about case workers still asking applicants about assets, even if they shouldn't be subject to an asset test, in part just because there was inadequate training of some of these workers following the policy change. Similarly, many states reported that their applications had not been updated to reflect changes to their policy. At least 22 states with combined applications still ask applicants for asset information, even if they are only applying for SNAP, and they've gotten rid of the SNAP asset test. I should note that in general, combined applications, which typically allow applicants to apply for SNAP, TANF and Medicaid all at once, have facilitated more efficient access to benefits for families that are most in need in that sense of help cut down on the red tape that we're talking about. But the fact is that this underlying lack of coordination among the programs included on the applications can perpetuate misconceptions about eligibility and compel applicants to provide burdensome and unnecessary information. Finally, I just want to touch on the actual impetus for eliminating the asset test in a few of the states that we spoke to. States reported a variety of different motivations for implementing this policy change. First among them, again, was administrative simplicity. As I mentioned before, the calculation of cost savings was something that some states did before implementing their policy change as a way to sort of explain its economic basis. Others also found that they would, well, they forecasted that they would have shorter application processing times. For example, in Colorado, which is the most recent state to eliminate its TANF asset test, the Department of Human Services found that eliminating the TANF asset test would probably cut back on about 15 minutes per case interaction, and therefore up to 20 minutes during the first 45 days of a new case when they anticipated that there'd be five to six case interactions with that new client. Other states eliminated their asset tests to improve their payment accuracy. Ohio in particular eliminated its SNAP asset test when it was facing $3 million in sanctions from the USDA Food and Nutrition Service because of its high error rate in SNAP. The state hired an outside consultant to kind of think of some ways that it could lower its error rate, and one of the ideas that it came up with was implementing broad-based categorical eligibility and eliminating the asset test. As like I mentioned before, determining asset eligibility and making these evaluations is really complex, because the rules and exceptions are often unpredictable and seemingly arbitrary in a lot of cases. So it's an error-prone assessment. And since Ohio did eliminate its SNAP asset test, it's found its error rate has declined significantly. Lastly, several states noted that their motivation for eliminating an asset test was because they recognized the tension between having these asset limits in place and the missions of the programs that they were administering. Specifically in Louisiana, the state chose to eliminate its TANF asset test in part because they recognized it conflicted with initiatives that had in place to promote savings for college and retirement for TANF recipients. In Colorado, administrators also noted that having their TANF asset test kept families in a state of financial vulnerability and therefore created barriers to long-term self-sufficiency, which could actually increase the time spent on benefits. So now that was a lot of information condensed in a short period of time. There's much more where that came from in the paper that we are just releasing today, and you can find some copies on the table outside. And we're also going to be producing a data site to put some of this information into a more visually accessible forum over the next few weeks. But just to include, I'd say, an overarching lesson of this research was that eliminating asset tests not only cuts red tape for applicants, but also eases the burden and potentially the costs of administering these programs. Thank you.