Pearl River      When President Bill Clinton, working with Speaker Gingrich, passed their deform welfare bill thirty years ago, converting the program from an entitlement for the lowest income Americans, women with dependent children, to block grants from the federal government to the states, ending in Clinton’s words “welfare as we know it,” it was a political and personal tragedy for many.  There can’t have been any doubt in Congress or the White House that when they retooled the program into block grants that the poor would see less direct cash support.  Thirty years on, we have to wonder what the full extent of the cynicism and logrolling was behind these maneuvers?  There’s little doubt that the new welfare queens are the governors on the receiving end of more than $30 billion along with their legislative and bureaucratic enablers, since TANF, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, has now for many become little more than a “slush fund,” as the Wall Street Journal describes the program recently.

Two charts that accompany the Journal’s report document the tragedy of this gross misdirection of resources for the poor.  Remember these are welfare payments.  They are supposed to go “needy families” as the program is titled.  One chart shows that the percentage of TANF funds spent on such basic assistance to US families has fallen in the last 30 years from over 70% to hardly 20%.  The other chart indicates that in 2000, twenty-five years ago, 2.6 million families received TANF aid directly, but in 2025, that number was only about 850,000, less than a third.

Of the $30 billion between federal and state matches, if all of the families were getting an equal share that would be over $35,000 per family.  None of us are fools, so we know that’s not happening.  A family of three in Arkansas now only gets $204 per month max and in Minnesota $1370 in 2024.  Some estimate that 20% of the money is misspent by states annually, that’s $6 billion.  “States now award most of the money to nonprofits, companies and their own state agencies.” In 2024, “…the GAO identified 37 states where recent audits found 162 deficiencies in financial oversight…” lending credibility to one conservative researcher’s observation that the TANF program is “fraud by design.”

To restate the obvious, this is not fraud by the recipients; this is fraud by the states.  For all the old tired saw about welfare queens, they are living in the governor’s mansions.  Congress and federal government are enablers here, constituting the political shame that accompanies the financial scandal. They know this is wrong and do nothing to stop it.  Trump is making hay over a scam in Minnesota, and trying to restrict payments to five blue states, while looking the other way at documented rip-offs in Mississippi, Texas and other states.   TANF money has been used for anti-abortion clinics, college scholarships for middle-income children, foster care, plugging unrelated budget shortfalls, and other programs, even those that have other funding streams, with the Department of Human Services and the Governmental Accounting Office doing precious little about it, even as they acknowledge state reporting is weak to nonexistent in many places.

Clinton was right.  This is not welfare as we knew it.  Welfare as we knew it, even meager and tightfisted, at least got to families.  This is just politicians and governmental bureaucrats at the state and federal level literally taking the food out of the mouths of hungry children and ripping the clothes off their backs while diverting the funds to pad their own pockets and programs.

Shame. Shame. Shame.