TANF: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Alien is a commonly used acronym that in Britain means Nigel Farage, but in this country it means Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a federal program designed to help families with little or no income. TANF is an absolutely vital resource and also the underlying program. Mississippi's spectacular ongoing scandals involving former quarterback Brett Favre NFL Hall of Famer Brett Favre is under increasing pressure

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as a new court filing says the former football star waged a campaign to aggressively lobby for millions of dollars from the state welfare agency to finish building a volleyball. him facilities at his alma mater, the University of Southern Mississippi, where his daughter played the right sport.

Brett Favre had a hand in getting $5 million in tariff funds funneled into the construction of this volleyball stadium and I'm a little surprised you even need a stadium to play in. volleyball in I thought it was a sport played primarily outdoors by sexually frustrated men who don't wear shirts and sporting dogs who unexpectedly do, but clearly I was wrong about that, but the fake role in this scandal went far beyond volleyball which supposedly he also had. helped get about 2 million TANF dollars sent to a pharmaceutical company he invested in and personally received more than a million more for the promise that he would make public appearances or record public service announcements and in his text messages to a central figure in the plan, a woman named Nancy, the new father, seemed eager to keep the details of this agreement private.

Technological program. Farr was worried about what it would look like. He wrote: If you paid me, is there any way the media can find out where it comes from and how much news it has? He said no, but added, I understand that you're uncomfortable with that, yes, I am too, but Brett, I have terrible news for you. The media found out that's what's happening now. The story is just the tip of the iceberg because, shockingly, from 2016 to 2019 in At least $77 million in federal welfare money was stolen or wasted in Mississippi. So far, six people have been criminally charged and most have pleaded guilty, including the former director of the state's welfare agency.

This scandal is full of strange details and a strange number of former athletes. including retired WWE wrestler Ted The Million Dollar Man DiBiase seen here in his heyday looking great dvrc Annie's Ministry was apparently given almost two million dollars to, among other things, create a phone app to reach out to troubled teens and send them Bible verses, something that apparently never happened. probably better since it's hard to imagine this man helping any teenager who's in trouble, unless what they're struggling with is figuring out what it would be like if Steven Seagal somehow aged even worse and looked legit. tell him that both Valve and dbse maintained that they did nothing wrong and have not been criminally charged and fav wants us to tell him that he is returning the 1.1 million they paid him personally and says that he didn't know any of the money was coming. of welfare funds, although it's not clear exactly where he thought the money came from, perhaps he believes there's some pot of taxpayer money they can dip their sausage fingers into whenever he needs something.

I don't know, they hit him on the head. a lot, not enough, but a lot, but what is not discussed here is that for years there were people in Mississippi who desperately needed help and just couldn't get it. Tamara Edwards raised four children alone in Mississippi, applying for welfare benefits only once for child care while she worked when I reapplied I couldn't get back on it because they told me they didn't have the funds for it, which is quite infuriating to hear and it gets even worse when you hear about it in Mississippi. Last year, of approximately 190,000 children living in poverty, only 2,600 received TANF money, while if we remember Brett Favre in Mississippi, 100 percent of them managed to get five million dollars for this volleyball stadium.

It's enough to make you want to see Brett. Favre hitting the nuts with a football and the good news is that I can help you with some things on the practice field this

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and I got hit in the not so friendly area, oh that takes them all the way. I'm glad a brother like two notes happened on the local news team for adding the Boeing sound effect, great journalism, but it's important to know that while what happened in Mississippi led to criminal charges in states across the country , the TANF program has been abused for decades and completely legally in fact nationwide for every 100 families in poverty only 21 receive cash assistance from TANF, which means we have a program that is supposed to give money to families that desperately need it and four out of five of them just don't get it, so

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let's talk about TANF and Let's start with why it's so important TANF is the only federal anti-poverty program that provides monthly cash assistance, which makes it very different from, say, snap, formerly known as food stamps, because it can only be used to pay for food, while so contrast, the funds can be used for all kinds of other needs, from diapers to toothpaste and utility bills, so they can be an absolute lifesaver for families and the truth is, we've known for a long time how important cash assistance can be in 1935, FDR pushed the A2. dependent children program and back then the idea had broad support the well-being of a nation depends on the well-being of its children to support children who have lost their breadwinners the state and federal governments provide monthly cash payments so that these children can grow up at home with their own families help for children who are citizens of tomorrow need the security of home today.

Wow, it's really comforting to hear that kind of voice saying such nice things, although given the time I suppose if he had kept talking he would have said something. Plus, nothing calms a hysterical child more than a good hit with a stick. That program continued to have support for years, although perhaps not coincidentally it was primarily white families like the ones you just saw who used it, but Barry prevented black families from participating. began to fall, people suddenly began to panic about whether these programs could really encourage laziness and dependency and the use of the official slogan of the United States, Ronald Reagan, made things worse because the conservatives of the 70s and 80s , led by Reagan, pushed largely or carefully curated narratives of fraud and abuse.

It got to the point where, in the mid-90s, a representative from Florida found this to be a completely acceptable way to talk about welfare recipients. We post these signs for several reasons, first because if left in a natural state, alligators can fend for themselves, working, gathering food, and caring. for their young, Secondly, we post these warnings because unnatural feeding and artificial care create dependency when dependency sets in these otherwise capable alligators can no longer survive on their own. I know people are not alligators, but I present to you that with our current brochure there is no work. welfare system we have disrupted the natural order, okay, there is a lot to analyze, from casually comparing poor people to animals to claiming that alligators work, which begs the question: are you talking about alligators not having jobs unless What do you consider to be like someone? putting a baby dragon in a panini press to make it a job, in which case yes, they are indeed working 24/7.

Now, at the time Arsenal was speaking, the federal government had already begun allowing and encouraging states to experiment with various so-called welfare to work. approaches with the goal of getting as many people as possible off government assistance and into the workforce, and back then both Democrats and Republicans took advantage of what appeared to be a successful program in Riverside County, California, that emphasized getting a job above all else and was said to have increased participants' earnings by almost 50 percent. The man who oversaw that program Larry Townsend was celebrated at the time even nicknamed the magic bureaucrat and was brought before Congress to share the results.

Secrets to Your Success Yes, if you call Riverside County and no one answers the phone you will receive a work ethic message. we have signs in the waiting room. We have produced a compact disc with work ethic music. one of the pieces of music is wellness, it's temporary, not a way of life and it's a beautiful piece of music now that In fact, it's true that Larry oversaw the production of this work ethic music album that they play in the office and, to the people who were left on hold now, are you right in saying that it was a beautiful piece of music?

Why don't you be the judge, here's a sample, come in together, you know, we finally have a recording that answers the question: what if we are the world? a cheap motivational poster and if you think every track on the album is limited to the Pop Soul ballad genre, you're really wrong because they also did a dance number that fair warning really puts the no to techno. I hate it so much that the song sounds like Daft Punk if it turns out People Under The Masks were Kevin O'Leary and Mark Cuban it's really hard to stop talking about this album because what am I supposed to do here?

Just move on to the rest of this story and not play the hip-hop song that would be ridiculous here. Wait for me because you can get a job in a minute. The moment you thought you knew how bad that was going to be, then you come in

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because you can get a job a little bit and it somehow gets worse now. It is interesting and important that later studies found that that man's show was not actually successful because of that album or anything else he had done, research suggests that his success was a fluke and actually the product of an already local economy. stronger rather than any reform, but the problem was that the whole concept of welfare to work had become popular in a huge The way Bill Clinton campaigned aggressively on welfare reform and once in office He worked with Republicans to craft a bill that he boasted upon signing would move millions of people into the workforce.

Today we are ending welfare as we know it, but I hope this day will not be remembered. for what it ended, but for what it began. Now, spoiler alert, it is remembered for what it ended, not what it started. It's really hard to think of a clip from the Clinton era that is worse in age than that one, other than of course this one from her inaugural ball we will be there for you we love you thank you and God bless you all thank you and thank you Kevin Spacey yes yes yes pretty remarkable right that they let that sexual predator get close to Kevin Spacey the point is that Clinton's welfare reform created the TANF program and in doing so, caused some major and catastrophic changes: first it changed the funding to a block grant basically instead of the federal government overseeing and sharing the cost of the program each year, it would simply give the states a lump sum of money. but in doing so, it established no mechanism to increase that sum over time, meaning that the amount each state receives has not increased since 1996 and, because it has not been adjusted for inflation or demographic changes, the value actual financing has increased.

It's actually fallen 40 percent since then, so it wasn't worth as much in the mid-90s and is worth even less doubt, think of it as a single bathtub hit of chumbawambers. I don't know if you're under 30, you think I'm having a stroke right now, but I swear everything I just said is a real word, the big promise of these block grants was that they give states the flexibility to spend them however they felt worked best for them, the only real requirement was that they had to be used. for at least one of four incredibly broad purposes to provide assistance to needy families so that children can be cared for in their own homes or in the homes of relatives either to promote job readiness for work and marriage or to prevent and reduce the incidence of pregnancies outside marriage seems a little strange and encourages the formation and maintenance of two-parent families, so you can immediately see that not only is it incredibly moralistic, but it is fundamentally a fairly broad mandate and states have taken advantage of that freedom, for example.

For example, some have appropriated tons of money for college scholarshipsthat may end up going to middle-class students since 2007 Michigan has spent about $100 million each year in welfare money on college aid largely to benefit families well above the poverty line and the state has justified it saying that college aid helps prevent pregnancies outside of marriage, which of course makes sense, doesn't it? The university is famous for being a place where no one, meanwhile, Oklahoma at one point spent millions of dollars on marriage counseling classes, including one called Forever For Real. Would you like to see an advertisement?

Well what a shame, here it is, it's the most important decision you can make in your life - to marry someone, so you know who wouldn't want a closer and stronger relationship once we decided we were ready to move forward in the relationship what we wanted. to protect what we had and that's why we decided to go to Forever Pharrell to invest in ourselves. We know that our relationship will not always be easy, but it will be forever, forever, really. Now relationships come with instructions. Well, first, the chemistry between that couple. It's too much in the graphics and doesn't help.

They tried to set the mood by lighting candles when the rest of the room is lit like the freezer aisle at a Kroger. A journalist attended one of those classes and found that the participants were surprised to learn that they have been paid with welfare dollars because they consider themselves quite well off and financially stable, but because remember that maintaining a two-parent household is one of the four purposes that Tana funds can be used for, what Oklahoma did is completely legal and although they finally ended it. program in 2016 which was only after 17 years of spending TANF dollars on it and it's absolutely worse that the money can be used in actively harmful ways like funding crisis pregnancy centers, we've talked about them before on this show.

They are basically fake abortion clinics designed to persuade people to carry pregnancies to term. Often by spreading misinformation, and yet at least 10 states have diverted millions of TANF dollars to pay for them. As of

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year, Texas had allocated 45 million in TANF funds to these clinics and I just heard some of the misinformation that one of them was telling people, how does the Center work in the Dallas area? A volunteer told our producer that they do not offer abortions. can cause infertility when asked about the abortion pill the volunteer said my job is not to scare you, you will never stop seeing that baby and then pointed to a small plastic model like this saying can you imagine one of these in your panties, holy your taxes? that were meant to help poor families, were instead directed at someone who uttered the rudest phrase in the history of words, the only appropriate response is: can you imagine how weird you would have to be to say the word panties to a stranger? as he shows you his collection of nesting Russian fetuses and look, I'm not saying that states don't give even a lick of funding to families in need, but in many cases they seem to be pretty low on the list of priorities in Oklahoma, in view of those sterile marriage classes that The state was spending only nine percent of its TANF block grant on cash assistance and what states managed to keep their talent roles incredibly small was to set the barrier to accessing them insurmountably high in more from 25 states.

A family of three living on half the federal wage. the poverty line earn too much to qualify for tanith which is just absurd just listen to these women in mississippi who were told they were too rich to qualify we are the people those programs are supposed to help and they are not helping us Helping. When you were turned down for TANF for making too much money, how much were you making? It couldn't have been more than eleven dollars an hour. I was actually making nine dollars and they denied me how can I make too much money with three kids? rent utilities transportation like how can I make too much money?

Yes, that's a great question because it's ridiculous that a father of three struggling to make ends meet has too much money to receive a lot of assistance while the state was more than happy to throw in cash for both of them. . Brett Favre and Ted DiBiase, a wrestler whose firm poses Hello everyone, I just robbed an ATM, but it's not just that the income threshold can be prohibitively low, it's that the application process itself can be deeply invasive, for For example, states must offset any amount of money they give to single mothers by pursuing biological fathers for child support money that the government often keeps for itself, so in some states mothers Single women applying for public assistance are forced to identify the father of their child, his eye color, his license plate number, and the exact date they became pregnant, often under penalty of perjury, which is the most humiliating way to identify to the father of her child and that it does not involve Maori Povich, but there is one more twist here because even if you qualify and can get assistance it can be extremely easy to lose it and then not only do some states set time limits on how long you can tan, if Arizona fires you after just one year, the money comes with the obligation to perform work activities such as searching for employment and training recipients.

I have to participate for a certain number of hours each

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, but for struggling parents, who this program is for, let's remember that it can be very difficult, especially if you don't have access to child care and I've lost cash assistance three or four . Sometimes due to the fact that you don't know Transportation, no one can take care of my child. They want you to go look for a job. How do you hire a kid for a job and ask them for an application? It's not easy taking your child to a job interview. that's why most job applications don't come with a big extra maze and a crayon and it's not that your state welfare office doesn't know that you have a child, they know they may even know the exact date you were conceived by for some reason and If you don't fulfill your obligations, States can be quite ruthless in cutting you off, just listen to one woman who was kicked out of assistance despite having an objectively sound excuse.

Kimberly Thompson spent two and a half months in the hospital last summer after an infection devastated her. body almost half of that time she was in a coma, to make matters worse, although while she was coming the county kicked her off government assistance, well I was in a coma and didn't show up at this, I was supposed to report a once a week, so since then I didn't report, they just cut everything off. Finding out you've lost government help has to be one of the worst things you can hear when you wake up in a coma, and in fact, we now call him President Trump. and most of the dogs you knew are dead and the thing is, all of this, the many hoops you have to jump through before receiving assistance and the requirements you have to meet to keep it, are for an abysmally small amount of money in cash benefits from 15 states. the levels don't even reach 20 of the poverty line, which is equivalent to about $386 a month for a family of three and if you think about it, maybe the states just don't have the money, not only have you seen that some of they spend instead, but you should know that perhaps the most shocking thing some states spend their Talent money on is absolutely nothing, as last year states had $5.2 billion in unspent Tana funds.

Tennessee alone had 790 million, the largest pool of unspent funds. welfare funds in the country and you know, it's like the famous saying goes, everything is bigger in Tennessee, no, wait, that's Texas, oh no, why is someone writing down everything I say? Take that off the record, I sound like an idiot, why do you keep writing? I'm serious, stop writing, if you don't stop writing, I'll make you so stupid that you'll have pens in your mouth. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and when you put all this together, it's no wonder most people on TANF don't. In fact, moving from welfare to work in 2018, only one in four TANF cases were closed because clients generally found work, the rest were kicked out for one of the many reasons we've mentioned tonight, basically, This lifts people out of poverty in the same way.

The way one of those claw games pulls stuffed animals out of the machine, that is, it easily drops them right where they started, and in many ways the whole process is a behemoth for kids. Now the good news is that there are things we could do here if we wanted to, we've talked before about some of the big, broader changes that would help ease the pain of poverty, but even when it comes to just tanith there are options: we could set a minimum level of benefits and relax some of the requirements so that it is as easy to lose assistance and if we are going to continue giving block grants (which I would say we should not do at all), they should at least adjust for inflation and the population growth and a certain amount must be spent on direct funds. cash assistance, look, the strangest thing here is that our current system was created under the assumption that poor families simply couldn't be trusted to receive welfare honestly, but the last two decades have shown that actually politicians are and government officials who have been relentlessly abusing.

This system, to borrow a phrase, we have been feeding the alligators in state government and that has created dependency, so we need to fundamentally rework things so that this money and ideally much more can go where it is needed most and if Some legislator thinks that sounds too difficult and I tried to ignore it. I have a song with a powerful message that I'm pretty sure will inspire you exactly.