Former NFL quarterback Brett Favre may have improperly siphoned millions of dollars in welfare funds for his own pet project, according to the state of Mississippi and court documents.
Favre is the highest-profile figure caught in the Mississippi welfare scandal, in which the state funneled $77 million of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds to people with political connections.
But there’s an even bigger scandal here: Nationwide, most TANF money doesn’t go to poor people in the first place.
Just 22% of program funds went to cash assistance in 2020, according to an analysis of state and federal data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank. The bulk of the rest of the money paid for child care, training programs, tax credits and administration of the program itself.
The Favre case “is absolutely an egregious example of the pitfalls that are inherent in TANF today,” Aditi Shrivastava, a senior policy analyst with the CBPP, said in an interview.
Why does the program most closely associated with the word “welfare” spend so little money on actual cash welfare? Because that’s how Congress wanted it.
