TANF: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. A description of TANF as written by a real human being

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or “TANF”, as it’s often referred to, is a block grant program that was created by the United States Congress in August 1996. A block grant is money that the Federal government provides to states and local governments, intended to for use as part of specific programs and services. TANF was signed by then-President, Bill Clinton, with the intention of replacing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children Act, often referred to as the, “AFDC”. The AFDC provided cash benefits to families with children starting in 1935, before it was replaced by TANF as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, or “PRWORA”, for short. The PRWORA is also sometimes referred to as the Welfare Reform Act. To best understand TANF, it is useful to know information about the AFDC. (Pilon, 2025). 

The purpose of the AFDC - which developed from its first iteration, the Aid to Dependent Children, or “ADC” - was to provide cash assistance to support children who did not have sufficient financial support or care from guardians, due to absence, unemployment, disability or death. As part of the Social Security Act of 1935, the AFDC was the federal government’s response to the need for support among the most vulnerable of the country’s population, including children, the elderly and disabled and the unemployed. When AFDC was in place, all fifty United States, as well as the United States territories of the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico had programs that followed federal guidelines to establish and administer assistance to families in need. Today, all fifty states and the previously mentioned territories have TANF programs. Following 1935, several amendments were made to the Social Security Act: some to increase access to benefits, and others to decrease access to benefits (ASPE, 2025). 

Like AFDC, TANF was created to provide federal funding to the United States and federal territories to empower them to create financial assistance programs in support of qualifying families. While the AFDC was intended to provide financial assistance to children in need, enabling mothers to stay home and care for their children rather than being out of the home to earn living wages, TANF was created for the purpose of temporarily supporting parents as they sought gainful employment outside the home. TANF’s replacement of AFDC was motivated by the decades-long debate regarding government “social safety net” programs. This was partially due to an increase in the number of families receiving financial aid, rising from 3.7 million in 1988 to 4.9 million in 1992, as noted in CRS Report RL32760.  In the book Whose Welfare, Steven Teles discusses opinion polls which suggested that sentiment that welfare programs were receiving too much government funding rose at the same time that the number of eligible families increased (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1998). 

Individuals seeking TANF assistance must apply with their state or local TANF authorities and programs. This website features an interactive map, with information and links for each state’s TANF agencies and programs. TANF eligibility requires that applicants are considered low-income, as defined by the federal poverty line. They must be pregnant or have dependent children, 18 years old or younger and they must participate in approved vocational or skills training programs. In Illinois, applicants may be pregnant or have children under the age of 18, or 19 if the child is attending high school full-time, must be a resident of Illinois, may be a U.S. citizen or a qualified non-citizen or immigrant. This study by the National Center for Children in Poverty found that the average monthly TANF payment to a family of three in 2024 was approximately $552. Illinois had the 15^th highest average payment of the fifty states, providing an approximately $725 per month to approved families. 

TANF funding is granted to United States and territories by the federal government and states are entrusted with the task of creating programs to provide aid to families in need. Use of funding is regulated and states must adhere to certain federal standards, such as creating and implementing employment programs and retaining participant quotas. States are required to spend approximately 75 to 80 percent of their 1994 spending in AFDC programs. They must provide narrative TANF spending reports to the Department of Health and Human Services. The United States Government Accountability Office, “GAO”, found, in 2024, that seven states had incomplete narratives or were missing entirely for 2022 (GAO-25-107235, 2025). 

While states must meet certain federal guidelines and provide reports on spending, they are entitled to flexibility in their compulsory application of TANF grants. The GAO reviewed TANF spending in response to a lack of detailed reporting on how states utilized it. In some cases, this lack of detailed reporting has been exploited, such as in the case of the diversion of $90 million dollars of TANF grant funding between 2016 and 2019. The state of Mississippi sued over forty individuals, including Brett Favre, in response to a range of misuses of TANF funds. Favre’s involvement, for example, included $1.1 million of TANF funds diverted to pay appearance fees to Favre for events he never attended and $5 million to building brand new volleyball courts on the campus of Favre’s and his daughter’s alma mater, the University of Southern Mississippi. 

TANF benefits can be useful to families who would be without critical financial support and successful vocational training and job acquisition programs can provide lasting improvements to quality of life. Every state receives TANF funding and has to provide access to resources and support for families in need to receive block grants. Combined with other programs, such as SNAP, TANF benefits are helpful, but they rarely provide sufficient resources and opportunities alone to sustain families in need. Recent revelations of misappropriation of TANF grants and declines in the value of some state’s TANF-funded employment programs have fueled criticism and calls for reform of the program. Some cite the regulations and eligibility requirements for recipient participation to reduce the overall benefit of the program as well. Efficacy of TANF programs seems to vary by state, so individuals may benefit more or less depending on the state in which they reside. 

The fact that by law the TANF block grants given to states have not increased since 1996, and thus have diminished significantly when adjusted for inflation, is evidence that the Congress (even when the Democratic Party held the White House and both houses of Congress, as has been the case for four of the 29 years since TANF replaced AFDC) is not interested in providing cash benefits to low-income families with children. The preference seems to be that we should provide in-kind benefits through SNAP (which has increased significantly recently), Housing Choice Vouchers, and Medicaid. If there are cash benefits, they should be bestowed by the IRS through the EITC or the Child Tax Credit. 

I have never found an estimate, but I would like to see one, of how many children are neglected because their single parents must go out and work in order to collect their TANF benefits, and they do not have adequate placements where their children could be supervised when they come home from school or enjoy a day off of school while their parents are at work. 

I am not so entirely opposed to the idea in TANF that low-income single parents ought to be getting trained and prepared for work, or ought to be doing some work. But I would prioritize their ability to fill their roles as mothers or fathers, and make their responsibility to become self-sufficient or financially independent a secondary goal—an important goal—but not as important as parenting.

SOURCES AND RESEARCH LINKS

Congress Creates TANF 

Explaining Block Grants - Investopedia 

2022 PovertyAction.org - TANF Fact Sheet PDF 

What is TANF?

About TANF 2024

Office of Family Assistance - Links Page

TANF Programs by State

TANF Data and Reports

Laws and Regulations

Policy Guidance

   Training and Technical Assistance

TANF Reporting Instructions

IL TANF - IDHS TANF Page 

Declining Cash Assistance 1993 to 2016 

Center on Policy Budget Priorities - Policy Basics: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

Increases in TANF Benefit Critical to Families  

TANF Cost Recovery In Child Support Program

How States Spend TANF Funds 

States Should Invest TANF Dollars in Basic Assistance

TANF Helps Families - But Not As Much As Claimed 

Ways and Means HRG on TANF

   

   

Student with experience as a human services caseworker reflects on services to help get people out of poverty

 Social service programs, welfare, public aid, food stamps, SNAP, and Medicaid; these are programs that are mostly used by working people. Not the stereotype of the single mother sitting at her housing project apartment relying on the government to take care of her and her five children that she does not know where any of their daddies are. Stereotypes always have some truth in them but they are not the truth. The truth is your average working person is on some kind of assistance, has been on it in the last year or will be on it within the year.

I have worked as a human services caseworker in the local office also known as the public aid office. Some of the saddest cases are not cases of the average person; they are, for example, cases like the single parent who wants better, but must face a great struggle with barriers for employment; or cases like the aged individual who is on a fixed income and cannot work any longer, but also is not quite poor enough to receive full benefits—they can receive $25, while a young able-bodied adult (with or without children) can receive over $200 a month. Yes you read that right. And no, you cannot make that make sense. Due to the great inflation of the past few years there have been some increase; however, some of the policies and working directives have not been changed or updated since their implementation. The policies need to be reviewed and updated.

Working as a caseworker in the TANF unit allowed me to get to know some of the clients and help them create plans of self sufficiency. During the Clinton administration, welfare to work programs began with the intention of getting people from welfare income to working income. These were additional benefits to their welfare benefits. That is, in addition to the cash benefits, we offered supports to help recipients identify and overcome barriers to getting and keeping employment—and the supports included education. Such supports are very important to making a plan to get off of welfare and become self sufficient. These programs were good because they helped welfare recipients with things like transportation to and from work, child care, budgeting classes, resume classes and help, job skills training and help, and career training for entry level jobs in sectors like hospitality and office work. Those who received TANF were helped with job searches. Sometimes these supports and services were offered by the caseworkers in the local office, and at other times these services were offered by a third party contracted with the state of Illinois to provide the service. Some of these things may appear to be hand holding or extra giving of free things to recipients. However they were designed to be supports for the family. This is especially important when the government also began limiting the number of months a person can receive welfare benefits over their lifetime. Here in Illinois that amount of time is 60 months, or five years.

To help with transitions from welfare to working the SNAP program has an automatic extension of benefits for 6 months when a head of household finds a job and their income increases. In times past, recipients have reported jobs and then been cut from receiving their benefits, and since the offices are working a month in advance it was easy for a recipient to report getting a new job and have no benefits in the next month—often before a full paycheck had even been received. So transitional benefits—especially SNAP or food stamps or EBT—are good for the person who has received a new job. They have now been given and opportunity to get accustomed to budgeting and using funds from the new job without the undue stress of the gap of waiting for the first paycheck after the last benefit has been received. Medical benefits are for an extended period of time. There are programs to assist with transportation costs, including car repairs, up to a limit. There are funds and things available. Sometimes it is a matter of both the client and the caseworker knowing they exist and how to implement them.

This description of some of the services and how they are used offers classmates insights into how policies are supposed to help people transition from a bad economic moment to a more prosperous future. However, as you have pointed out, some of the people getting services are elderly and “cannot work any longer” or they are single parents facing a “great struggle with barriers for employment”.  A significant barrier to employment might exist when employers aren’t hiring new workers, and after applying for scores of jobs, a person hasn’t even received any invitations to interviews. A frequent suggested from the left we have been hearing for decades is that the government ought to offer employment when the free market does not. 

One objection to this suggestion is that as an employer of last resort, whatever work the government was accomplishing with employees who were hired after they failed to find a private sector job would be done badly (because the employees would be inferior, having been rejected by private employers).  Another objection is that this would require the employment (and salaries and benefits) for about 1.5 million to 2 million more government sector workers, which would be more costly than simply providing EITC, TANF, SNAP, Unemployment Benefits, and Medicaid to underemployed and unemployed persons.  Another objection is that most of the persons who are poor are either going through a phase, and without government employment options they will eventually find employment and get out of poverty, or else they are afflicted with some sort of chronic health problem, mental health issue, personality disorder, or addiction, and they will be unfit to work for government just as they are unfit to work for private sector jobs. The first group doesn't need the government employment, but the second group would not be able to take advantage of public employment.

On the other hand, arguments in favor of universal employment through new public sector employment suggest that we could use more public employees to fill gaps in services that the private sector is failing to provide, such as creation of affordable housing, provision of affordable long-term care, environmental science projects such as species surveys, and public infrastructure construction and maintenance. Also, with full employment, wages and benefit levels at the low-end of the income distribution would generally increase, since the private sector would need to at least approximately match the wages and benefits offered in the public sector employment. Involuntary part-time employment would also be replaced by full-time employment as federal full-time jobs became an option and private employers decided to match such options. Guaranteed public sector employment might be more politically feasible and less revolutionary compared to basic minimum income stipends, and the guaranteed public sector jobs might also help to essentially eliminate poverty and homelessness, if the public sector jobs paid well enough to take all employees out of poverty while at the same time boosting the supply of low-cost housing.

Daniel Blake and Getting Benefits

 After watching I, Daniel Blake in this class earlier in the semester I felt moved to take a deeper look into the welfare system. I became curious about some of the most typical reasons why people are unable to secure benefits when they need them. Some reasons that I found and will explain in this essay are that welfare services are too difficult to enroll for, some programs have biases against married couples, and will give them less aid than singles, or people who genuinely need aid but do not qualify for it. 

The social welfare system is meant to help those with financial instability, get them back on track and self-sufficient again. Still, it isn’t easy to receive aid if the person in need cannot figure out how to apply for benefits. Many who report struggling with their applications cite applying for food stamps, or SNAP benefits, as one of the most stressful because of the expensive fines and jail time associated with reporting false information on the form. Some Latina or Hispanic people also report difficulties with applying for aid, possibly due to language barrier issues or because they have to deal with different eligibility requirements as non-citizens. In the film I, Daniel Blake we see Daniel struggle to apply for his aid because he does not have easy access to a computer nor does he know how to use one very well. I am sure that there are many senior citizens like Daniel who also struggle to apply for their benefits because they cannot use a computer well either. 

People who are elderly, non-English speaking, and technologically inept are not the only ones who feel excluded from the welfare system. One complaint that I saw repeated throughout my research is that many couples would like to get married but chose not to because they want to maintain the benefits provided to them by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF. The specific policy that keeps most couples from tying the knot is the marriage promotion policy, which was created to promote marriage and strong families. If someone is receiving welfare benefits and then decides they want to marry someone who has a higher income than them, even if that “higher income” is still incredibly low, the person receiving aid will lose some—if not all—assistance they previously received. This leads to many couples living at or around the poverty line choosing to cohabitate unmarried instead of making it official. The policy is meant to encourage a lack of dependence on welfare for families, but it ultimately backfired. 

Like married couples, some people need benefits but do not receive them because they are not eligible. In the case of SNAP benefits, whether or not someone is eligible is typically based on their gross monthly income, net income, and assets being worth under a certain threshold. Some groups are never eligible for SNAP benefits regardless of their income or assets. Some of these people would include people who are currently on strike, undocumented immigrants, some college students who are taking slightly too many hours to be considered part-time, and in certain states people with drug-related felony convictions. While this is not always the case, many of these people are groups that are prone to poverty or financial struggles and would benefit greatly from the aid provided by SNAP. 

This was just a very brief overview of some of the obstacles that stand in the way of people receiving what could be life-saving services ultimately. I think it is important to note that while researching for this paper it was much easier to find information about reasons why it is more difficult to get off welfare than it is to get on. The system is inaccessible to some and hard to get approved for initially but it seems that it is not designed to be easy to quit either. The system typically gives people enough to get by but not enough to flourish. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/01/25/welfare-benefits-low-income-struggle-for-access/11069891002/Links to an external site. 

https://www.cato.org/publications/welfare-reformLinks to an external site. 

https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/50591/311349-Getting-On-Staying-On-and-Getting-Off-Welfare.PDFLinks to an external site. 

https://digitalcommons.law.udc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=udclrLinks to an external site. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559763/Links to an external site. 

https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-quick-guide-to-snap-eligibility-and-benefits#:~:text=Some%20categories%20of%20people%20are,certain%20people%20with%20drug%2DrelatedLinks to an external site. 

That's a good collection of sources.  Because people at low incomes must have consumption levels that are significantly higher than their earned incomes, but persons with middle and high incomes must pay taxes so that their net consumption is significantly below their earned income (I’ll check my taxes, but last year our estimated total contributions to local, state, and federal governments was about 30% of our income), there is an income range (probably from about $30,000 to $50,000 where loss of benefits more-or-less matches increases in earned income so that there are very slight increases in consumption for increases in earned incomes. This is somewhat a mathematical necessity, but the ways income increases create benefit decreases ought to be structured so that you never have loss of benefits that exceed 66¢ for every $1 earned.

I think it's pretty easy to get off Medicaid.  Doesn't Medicaid send recipients a letter asking for proof that someone still qualifies, and if you don't respond with evidence of your low income within a certain time, you lose your Medicaid benefits?  That is how it used to work.  Other benefits may be more difficult to get off. 

A student shares their opinions about TANF

A social welfare policy that grabs my attention is TANF. TANF is a cash assistance program to help families buy basic necessities to survive. This program even provides transitional services to help families become self-sufficient. In class we learned that TANF is the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. In February of 2018 the Office of Family Assistance at Health and Human Services published a report documenting that total combined federal and state costs for TANF (and the states' maintenance-of-effort expenditures that go along with TANF as part of the same policy) were $30.9 billion. However, only a relatively small portion of this expenditure (seemingly about 36% at most) went to cash assistance. Much of the spending went toward work, education, and training activities; child care; child welfare services; pre-kindergarten and Head Start; services for children & youth; work supports; out-of-wedlock pregnancy prevention; and program management. In any given month during 2015, about 1.63 million families with 4.17 million persons were receiving help through TANF.  About 48.6% of those on the TANF caseload were in child-only cases (families with no adult; the TANF support was for children).  The average monthly assistance for persons getting TANF benefits was valued at just under $400.  

There are things I agree with and disagree with about the TANF program.  One reason I like the TANF program is because it provides families with temporary financial assistance. I also like that you must be a U.S. citizen; however, I don’t like under certain circumstances immigrants can receive TANF. They should be U.S. citizens. Families can receive TANF for five years. I feel like this is a little long for people to be on this program. I would think three years would give someone plenty of time to get back on their feet.

People on TANF must have a plan to become self-sufficient. This is the number one reason I like this program. Since this program requires people on TANF to work towards being self-sufficient, I would think it would motivate people to get out and get back on their feet. I know not all people want to live on welfare programs for the rest of their lives.  Another thing I like about TANF is most families are also eligible to receive SNAP. SNAP benefits help families buy food. SNAP is the supplemental nutrition assistance program. 

Some people take advantage of the welfare programs. We always hear stories about the one on welfare who don’t get out and try to help themselves. They want everyone to do it for them. We never hear about the ones who are working their butt off to try to get back on their feet and make a better living for themselves. My question is, does the Illinois Department of Human Services follow these guidelines?   I know there are some exceptions. One exception I know of is if you are in a vocational program that will finish within six months of the 60-month deadline. I agree with this exception, because there is a light at the end of the tunnel. This person is working towards bettering themselves. They have proof of trying to better themselves too. 

Self-sufficiency is indeed a noble goal, and something most people can achieve.  Of course, while we want people to be self-sufficient, we must realize that most of the persons who receive benefits from TANF are children.  Nearly half of the TANF cases are children without adults, and among the families with adults, most of those families do have children.  We don't expect all those children to be self-sufficient, do we?  Not yet, at least.  What are your thoughts about persons who don't seem likely to achieve self-sufficiency?  I'm not just thinking of persons who have significant mental illnesses or developmental disabilities or physical impairments or chronic health problems—what about the people who are not very intelligent and have had horrible childhoods so that they are fragile and not very competent?  What if such persons can't get and keep a decent job?  What are we to do with them?

You also mention your opposition to non-citizens receiving TANF benefits.  I hope you will look into this issue.  One group of immigrants who get TANF for up to eight months are Iraqi and Afghani refugees. Do you think we Americans have any special obligations to refugees from those countries? Also, what about legal foreign residents who are fleeing from spousal abuse?  There are 28 states that allow TANF benefits for battered spouses and their children, but do you really think that the 22 states that don't make this program available to that population have a superior policy?  It's something to think about.

TANF may help families out of poverty, but it is too limited

Here is another student paper about TANF

For this assignment, we were asked to examine a policy that was related to welfare. I chose to focus on TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). I want to point out the positives, the negatives, and give reasons for why I believe it should become a policy change. TANF is a federally-funded program that is run by the states; it provides limited cash assistance to low-income parents and their children (Family Equality Council, 2016). The program was designed to help families reach sustainability and eventually be able to provide for themselves. In order to receive this assistance there are requirements that must be met.

Since TANF is run by the states, some requirements may be different for who can qualify for this assistance. TANF is temporary, so the requirement of receiving cash assistance from federal funds cannot exceed sixty months. “However, states can exceed the 60 month limit for up to 20 percent of their caseload based on hardship” (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2015). Work requirements are also set for the individual to receive cash assistance. The states are to impose sanctions (reduce or terminate benefits), if the individual is not meeting requirements of work activities. Most states have chosen to create the “full-family” sanctions. This simply means that failure to meet the requirements will result in removing benefits for the entire family.

This welfare program has many positives and many negatives. For instance, it allows for the opportunity of eliminating poverty for families who receive the benefit. Many of the causes of poverty are lack of jobs, inadequate housing, and poor nutrition. This program allows for the family who may be receiving low income, to receive a little extra to feed their children, pay rent and utilities, and get a car fixed up so it can carry a parent to work. This is always a benefit of cash benefit programs compared to in-kind benefit programs.  The TANF program in some states also allows you to meet with caseworkers in order to set goals. These goals include future plans to stop receiving TANF and be able to be stable with finances. The program is just not a free ride for people who do not want to work or be lazy. You must go through meeting requirements, and meet multiple times with your caseworker.

Although it seems that trying to help assist a family financially is great, there are also drawbacks of this program. The idea that you have to prove yourself eligible starts with the assumption that applicants are unworthy or undeserving until they have proved otherwise. Why not start with the idea that the amount of income you receive is not good enough to support a family of three, and this is a program that may help you? The other issue that ought to be disparaged is the time limit. While the time limit may cause the individual to want to get goals arranged for the future, what if this is the only option? For some people, they have tried multiple things and it seems no matter what, they cannot reach their full potential. After their sixty months have run out they will still have no source of income, and they will be unable to provide for themselves or their family.  Consider all the possible cases: persons who don’t quite meet the diagnostic criteria for a cognitive disability, but really have intellectual limitations that make them difficult to employ; persons who don’t meet the criteria for a full disability, so they can’t qualify for SSI or other forms of assistance, but in fact, they are very close to being disabled, perhaps due to mental or physical health problems; persons who have reoccurring health problems that make them not very dependable as workers (they miss too many days), so they lose jobs and can’t find and keep work for more than a year at a time, but over the course of fifteen or twenty years they have used up their five years of TANF; persons who are in fact a little lazy, a little sneaky, or a little unpleasant to have as employees, but they aren’t actually criminal or menacing or belligerent or entirely non-productive, they are just minimally productive.  Society has people like these, but capitalism doesn’t offer much scope for these people to succeed and become self-sufficient. TANF could be a policy that kept these people out of harm’s way, preventing them from ending up in homeless shelters, jails, hospital emergency rooms, and courtrooms.  

With both the pros and cons of the TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Family), I do believe that there should be some policy change. The time limit should be extended to families who need it. As a caseworker, you should be continuously taking into account how a family is benefitting from the program. However, if you notice that a family may almost be to their full potential and needs and extra month, extend their cash assistance. I also believe that there should be a set amount of money to be given to family sizes throughout all of the states. The federal government should be able to provide each state with the same amount of funding so that one family does not receive more than the other. Who says that this parent is not meeting the same requirements, but not receiving the same amount? With these reasons I believe the TANF program does work to help assist families, however could definitely be improved.

References

Policy Basics: An Introduction to TANF. (2015, June 15). Retrieved March 1, 2017, from http://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-an-introduction-to-tanf

Temporary Assistance for Needy Familes. (n.d.). Retrieved March 1, 2017, from http://www.familyequality.org/get_informed/advocacy/after_doma/tanf/

A student considers the TANF program

A social welfare system provides assistance to needy individuals and families.  The types and amount of welfare available to individuals and families vary depending on the country, state or region.  Examples of social welfare in the United States include Medicare, Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, food benefits, and Section 8 housing assistance.  

The 1996 welfare reform enacted by the Clinton Administration ended Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) as an entitlement program and replaced the program with a block grant, called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).  TANF is a federally-funded program run by states that provides limited cash assistance to low-income parents and their children.  To be eligible for TANF, individuals must participate in work activity within two years of receiving assistance, and families are limited to a total of five years’ assistance in a lifetime.  If an individual refuses work requirements, states have the option to reduce or shut off assistance to that family.  Another important feature to TANF concerns minors.  Minors who are parents cannot receive TANF assistance unless they are living at home with their parents or in another adult supervised setting.  Minors must attend high school or an alternative educational program as soon as their child is twelve weeks old. 

TANF is funded not only by the federal government, but also by the states.  The federal government gives states a fixed block grant each year.  States that meet specified criteria may also qualify for federal contingency funds.  In 2013, states reported spending about $15 billion of nonfederal money on services intended to meet TANF’s goals. The Federal government spends about the same amount, with about $15.8 billion expected for TANF grants to the states from the Department of Health and Human Services for 2017.

TANF comes with multiple positives and negatives to the program.  Positives to the program include:

1. TANF has helped provide people with food, medical assistance, and other services.  
2. The program helps individuals stay motivated and teaches them to meet their needs.  

Negatives to the program include: 

1. Some people abuse it and do not tell the truth about their status.  
2. Since it is a cash assistance program, individuals who receive the cash can spend it on anything.  Although the money is supposed to go to necessary items such as food, clothing, and rent, some individuals are spending their cash on alcohol, tobacco, and drugs.  
3. There are also people who do not want to be part of the program because they are embarrassed or for other personal reasons. 

Today, there are many different flaws in the TANF program.  TANF only exists on a short-term basis leaving those who depended on it hopeless.  The continuing growth of the human population is making TANF become ineffective because of the insufficient budget.  Another flaw within the program is that while states can set their own time limit policies, they cannot provide cash assistance from federal TANF funds for longer than 60 months to a family that includes an adult recipient.  This leaves individuals without a source of income. 

In conclusion, there are many positives and negatives to TANF today.  TANF over the years has helped low income families stay on their feet, pay for food, and put a roof over families’ heads.  While TANF aims to assist in the prevention of poverty, it only serves to keep its individuals on the brink of poverty.  

Here is another list of benefits and harms of the TANF program:

1) It is a cash benefit.

This is beneficial because it allows recipients to have some autonomy and dignity, as they may manage their own money.  It also maximizes their freedom, because it allows them to use the money for whatever is their most pressing need.

This can be harmful, because some TANF recipients have very poor financial literacy, and they may waste or squander their cash benefit.  Some who suffer from addictions will use their benefits on pursuing their addictions.

2) It offers only very little money.

This is beneficial because the small benefit levels do not attract people to become poor so that they qualify for benefits.  It also is so low that even when people receive TANF, they need more money, and so they will look for work to earn more money, and that will help them become independent and get off of welfare.

This is harmful because even poor persons should live with dignity and have their basic needs met.  During the periods when people need TANF, they need to focus on their parenting, or focus on building their skills, or focus on finding a good job.  If the benefit level is so low that they must hustle around and try to make ends meet, they will not have the energy or time to devote themselves to the tasks that are more important.  Also, the low benefit levels may make it impossible for people to have phones or cars, and so they may miss opportunities to take jobs or study.

3) There are time limits.  If you have not found a job in a certain amount of time, you benefits can be cut.  After five years in of receiving benefits in your life, you may never receive any more benefits.

This is beneficial because it makes it impossible for people to become dependent over a long period of time.  Since people can lose their benefits if they don’t find employment, they will be more willing to enter the labor force and work for an employer. This should make poor people more subservient and diligent in their work, since they will fear being fired, especially if they have no benefits left to gain when they are out of work.

This is harmful because some people may have chronic health problems or mental health issues or other life circumstances that put them in a situation where they need assistance for more than five years, or may take them a long time to find a reasonable employment opportunity.  The time limits will cut off support for the children as well as the parents, so that children with parents who have lost their benefits may suffer. 

4) It can be humiliating and complicated to apply for the TANF benefit, and the regular monitoring of your situation by a caseworker can be an invasion of your responsibility.

This can be beneficial because fewer people will apply for benefits.  Also, people who receive benefits can be closely monitored and coached or encouraged by their caseworkers, so that they will be less able to cheat, and more able to work toward their plans for self-sufficiency.

This can be harmful because the stigma associated with receiving TANF may push families who could use the cash benefit away from gaining it, and they will have even more financial trouble while going through a spell of economic hardship because they have not gained access to the resources that are supposed to help them. The caseworkers may treat TANF recipients with contempt or might try to enforce their own values on the recipients, possibly giving bad advice or generally making clients miserable.

5) the program is generally too small, offers benefits that are inadequate, and is too harsh in its sanctions and benefit limits.

This can be beneficial because it reduces government spending and punishes the poor for whatever behaviors brought them to the point where they have become poor.

This is harmful because it feeds the American hatred of poor people, and punishes people for life circumstances that are usually not their fault, which is unfair.

Temporary Assistance has some pros and cons

In this reaction paper, a student considers the pros and cons of TANF. 

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, also known as TANF is a program that is run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; it provides temporary assistance in the form of cash payments to needy families who are income-qualified.  In 1997 TANF started, and since then has helped roughly over two million families per month; most of those families have been headed by single mothers. 

When talking about TANF there are many pros and cons to the program.  One of the positive aspects of family assistance is the requirement to determine a plan for self-reliance within the family.  Instead of just receiving cash assistance for life, you must meet with a caseworker and come up with a plan that helps you to eventually stop needing to rely on TANF.  I believe that TANF is helping the people find their right path and provide them with ways to stand on their own again.  Another advantage of TANF is that it is a time-based program.  Most states only let families get government money for so many years just so that individuals are not signing up for it repeatedly.  TANF helps individuals pay rent, buy food, pay for utilities etc. 

When I think about the program and its negative aspects, I think of welfare fraud and individuals who abuse it.  I think that there are many people out there coming up with fake names and using other people just to receive cash assistance, just like in the book we read for class (Two Dollars A Day).  Another problem with TANF is helping individuals who do not deserve it.  I think that the individuals who can work should do so and that only the truly poor and disabled should receive cash assistance.  This would stop from helping individuals who make poor choices and suffer from drug and alcohol addiction.  There are needy children not receiving the help and care they need because their parents are worried about getting the cash in hand so they can spend it on things that do not matter.  

In considering the pros and cons of a welfare policy or program, it is often helpful to think in terms of how it fits within a moral framework.  There are also questions we can raise about effectiveness and efficiency. 

I think that just about everyone shares a moral value in which we prefer a situation in which an adult person who is not yet venerable in age is self-sufficient and independent to one in which the person is dependent on others or generally oriented to life with an outlook of what they can get from others instead of what they can produce for themselves.  On one hand, this is obviously related to some sort of sense of fairness.  When we are children or after we reach advanced age, we ought to depend on others, but while we are “working-aged” adults, we ought to “carry our own weight” and “contribute our fair share” to the general civilization.  I think the value of liberty and equality also prefer situation in which people are independent and autonomous.  There is something that distorts our spirit and tarnishes our character if we must be too obviously dependent on others, or if we think so much of what we can get or should get from others.  This is some sort of mental enslavement or subordination, and it violates our sense that everyone ought to be free and equal in life. 

That said, most of us would allow people to be “dependent” or at least “interdependent” in some cases while they are “able-bodied working-aged adults”.  For example, a person may need help for a period of months or years during an economic downturn, or after the loss of a job, or after the birth of a child, or after suddenly taking on unpaid caregiving duties with a child or sick person. Someone must take care of children and sick and disabled persons, so in some sense the person who ceases to earn an income so they can take care of others is really doing a valuable to service to us, and in that circumstance, the “aid” they receive from us through TANF might instead by considered as a sort of “payment” in exchange for their performing duties as good parents, dutiful siblings or children or friends who aid a sick or injured person, and so forth.  But of course we worry whether they are actually earning such payments, which is why you remark on your concern about parents who may only care about having money so they can spend it on things that “do not matter” (or even things that are harmful or wicked).  

There is also this problem to consider: the children in poor families are expected to be dependent.  We do not expect them to go to work in the mills and mines, or the strip malls and industrial parks, to earn their housing and bread.  And, even if the parents are undeserving, it is simply more efficient and cost-effective to preserve families and provide money to parents, and let the parents spend that money on their children.  What is the alternative, removing the children and placing them with a more “responsible” parental figure who can accept the financial assistance we give for child-rearing so that we can adequately punish the parents by denying them assistance and allowing them to face the hunger and homelessness and deprivation that seem appropriate to us as the just consequences of their choices?  And so we are stuck.  We must take care of the parents as well as the children, all together as a family, or else we must punish the parents and their innocent children all together as a family because of choices made by the parents.

But even that is too simple.  For, as it turns out, in many cases the parents who are single mothers have not made especially wicked choices.  Many single mothers are reared in unsupportive families.  Many become parents when they are young and relatively inexperienced, and the fathers are often much older.  In many cases the parents or single parent were working, or are working, but the jobs they hold or held paid low wages, and the cost of living is too high.  Or, they have lost their work, and no employer is willing to hire them.  In such cases, it seems wrong to punish the parents, because they are willing to work and simply cannot find employment; and it is even more obviously wrong to punish the children, as they are blameless in any case, as they are not responsible for the actions of their parents.  

By keeping TANF benefits low, and by restricting them over time, we succeed in our aims of depriving poor parents of the means to pay their rent, pay their utilities, or buy clothing.  We may still provide SNAP to prevent starvation, but even that can be terminated if a parent cannot find work within a certain time period. But, what do we achieve by this?  If we make poor parents homeless, we make their children homeless.  If we turn off the electricity or water or heat for a family, we subject the children to dangers of unsanitary conditions, dehydration, heat stroke, or exposure. Without electricity and internet, we deprive children of access to the Internet, and that must have consequences in their education. By subjecting children to such costs, do we impose a greater long-term burden and cost on society than we do by “saving” money by spending less on such poor families?  It may satisfy some people’s sense of fairness to stop sustaining poor families when the parents fail to meet our expectations that they conform to the demands of capitalist rigor and the free market and get themselves a satisfactory job.  But, we also have values of compassion and altruism that make us want to provide families with at least a minimum of what they need to participate in society with dignity.  We may also have a sense of freedom and liberty in which we do not think there is any value to forcing people to bow down to the principles of the free market and capitalism.  Some of us think that human freedom and dignity come first, and that should be secured for everyone, and then we can use the free market or capitalism to give extra rewards to those who do the best or the most within the commercial and industrial aspects of life. I’m not opposed to using capitalism and the free market to make some of us wealthy, but I see no reason to “punish” persons who want to exert their freedom to disengage from capitalist production, perhaps doing so for six or seven years while they rear a child.

You say that people who can work ought to work.  I agree.  But, do you mean that such persons ought to work to earn money?  I am not sure I do agree. Some work is unpaid, like the work of rearing children, or caring for elderly and sick or disabled siblings or parents or grandparents. There may also be work of improving one’s skills and knowledge. I’m in favor of everyone who can work being put to work, but I’d like to recognize that there are worthwhile types of work that earn nothing, and I’m glad to provide a decent living stipend to anyone engaged in those activities.  Also, capitalism and the free market just doesn’t provide a sufficient range of job and career opportunities.  I’m also in favor of the government creating jobs (especially jobs that provide public goods and aren’t easy to use in the process of extracting surplus labor to make profits).  If the government offered more worthwhile employment opportunities so that the unemployment rate was down near 2%, then I might be willing to restrict TANF benefits for able-bodied working-aged adults who failed to get paid employment and also weren’t engaged in any sort of parenting or caregiving or volunteering or self-improvement through skills-development or education.  Until then, the moral problem of allowing a few cheaters and frauds to take advantage of the system seems insignificant to me, whereas we face a monstrous moral problem of depriving many children of material abundance sufficient to secure stable housing, electricity, water, abundant nutritious food, clothing, and internet access. Surely we lose more in white collar crime and tax evasion and corruption among the wealthiest and most powerful than we ever lose to all the low-income shiftless and idle folks who scam and cheat the welfare system.  Surely more moral evil is present in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians blown to bits by our military drones or the bombs dropped by our proxies in Gaza or Yemen than in all the evil of all the poor people cheating our welfare system.   How prevalent is the problem of welfare fraud anyway?  Is it widespread and common and costing a significant percentage of the TANF dollars?