What’s been designed here is a project that ensures a fossil fuel agenda, both in the literal and figurative sense.
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Department of Health and Human Services
• Pay damages to all medical professionals who were dismissed directly because of the CMS vaccine mandate.
ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES (ACF)
TANF. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program is a federal block grant that gives states significant flexibility to fund a broad array of programs aimed at helping low-income families break the cycle of poverty and achieve economic self-sufficiency. States use TANF to fund monthly cash assistance payments to low-income families with children as well as a wide range of services that include work activities, work supports and supportive services, childcare, administration and systems, tax credits, pre-K/Head Start, child welfare, and other services.
The TANF program serves 1.8 million individuals. Since 1996, when the program was reformed, federal TANF outlays have been $16.5 billion. The state match is $14.9 billion, bringing the total state and federal TANF investment to $31.4 billion.
The TANF statute requires that states engage 50 percent of single-parent families in work for at least 30 hours a week (20 hours a week for single parents with children under age six, though states have the option to waive the requirement for families with children under the age of six, and most do). States also have 90 percent work requirements for two-parent families to engage in work for 35 hours per week. Because of the “Caseload Reduction Credit,” states’ work engagement targets are reduced if their assistance caseloads have fallen since 2005. As a result, 21 states had a work engagement target of zero percent in 2017.
Generally, states apply their work requirement only to beneficiaries receiving basic assistance, who account for 22.3 percent of TANF outlays. The Trump Administration proposed a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) rule to “increase program integrity and reduce fraud, waste, and abuse” that would have prevented an individual from qualifying for SNAP simply because he or she received a pamphlet from the TANF program.” This rule defined non-cash benefits as those that are worth at least $50 a month and received for at least six months. The tenets of this rule should be applied to the TANF program as well. This definitional change would apply the TANF work requirements to any noncash benefit worth $50 a month and received for six consecutive months.
To increase transparency, HHS should clarify how states, in their quarterly and annual reports, ought to track and audit the outcomes from how they spend TANF funds to meet the TANF program’s four statutory purposes.
Additionally, TANF priorities are not implemented in an equally weighted way. Marriage, healthy family formation, and delaying sex to prevent pregnancy are virtually ignored in terms of priorities, yet these goals can reverse the cycle of poverty in meaningful ways. CMS should require explicit measurement of these goals.