West Maui Taxpayers Association
  • HOME
  • Olowalu Fire Station
  • WMTAPAC22
  • Affordable Housing
  • West Maui Lifesavers
  • Wall of Honor
  • Support WMTA
    • Membership - One Time Payment
    • Membership - Recurring Payment
    • Donations
    • Wills & Trusts
    • Charity Walk
  • Newsletter
  • Emergency Planning
  • News Blog
  • About Us
    • Goals & Objectives
    • Accomplishments
    • Board of Directors
    • WMTA vs WMIF
  • Contact
  • Subscribe

TANF: $281M Federal Money We Haven’t Spent

12/2/2019

0 Comments

 
WMTA Shares these commentaries, without taking a position unless otherwise noted, to bring information to our readers
​To view the archives of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii's commentary click here.
 ​​​​​​​
Picture
This week we focus on our safety net systems for people or families in need.  In the early 1990s, a major part of this net came from the federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, which matched state dollars of financial assistance for a needy family.  That program was replaced with what we have now, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which is a federal block grant program that, at least in theory, gives states a substantial amount of federal money for purposes like cash assistance, work activities, work supportive services, and child care.

Hawaii gets about $99 million a year under this program.  In 2017, it spent $52 million in federal funds while it spent about three times that amount from its own funds.


That means there was $47 million in federal money left over just from that year.  A state can (at least for now) carry the money over to future years, but…as of last year, Hawaii had $281 million in unspent TANF money.  That means our state was underutilizing this money on a consistent, year-to-year basis.


A post on the website efficient.gov quotes an assistant division administrator for the Department of Human Services as saying, “I’m concerned the reserve is larger than it needs to be.  I do worry that if we don’t spend it, then our clients aren’t benefiting from it.  We definitely need to make changes to get that money out the door.”


The federal program also has what is known as a maintenance of effort (MOE) requirement.  It says that states must maintain a certain level of state TANF spending which is based on a state’s spending for AFDC and similar programs before TANF was enacted.  In other words, we needed to and did spend our taxpayer dollars on this program while we left the federal money on the table.
​

Worse, a good chunk of the federal dollars we did spend were spent in a questionable place—at least in relation to the purpose of the TANF program.  The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities stated that nearly $32 million of TANF money was spent on the University of Hawaii.  Perhaps the justification was that the dollars went to financial aid for needy students.  But CBPP pointed out that this “funding served families with incomes up to 300 percent of the federal poverty line and was not focused on helping TANF cash assistance recipients prepare for work.  In comparison, the TANF benefit level for a single-parent family of three in Hawaii represents 31 percent of the federal poverty line.”


Not only that.  Another central principle behind the TANF program was that states could spend more of the funds on child care subsidies — which are essential to enabling low-income parents to work — rather than on direct financial assistance.  Nationally, states spent about 16% of TANF money on child care.  Hawaii spent just 5%.


So here we have a double-edged problem.  We aren’t spending the federal money we can get, thereby increasing the burden on local taxpayers.  We are spending the money on programs targeted not just to the poor, and we are as a result shortchanging the effort to get people off the dole and into the workforce.  To put it another way, the money intended to help the poor is being skimmed off to do something else.


Lawmakers, wake up and smell the plumerias!   Let’s get some of this federal money pulled down.  Let’s get our state money directed to where it is supposed to do the most good.  Maybe we can even use it to combat our homeless crisis!
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    RSS Feed


    If you wish to further discuss blog posts, please contat our office directly or contact us via Contact page.

    Categories

    All
    Affordable Housing & Homelessness
    Board
    Capital Improvements
    Charity Walk
    Commentaries
    Community Events
    Community Resources
    CON
    COVID 19
    Educational
    Emergency Planning
    Health & Safety
    HHARP
    Housing
    Infrastructure In West Maui
    In The News
    Kapalua Airport Runway Lights
    Kapalua Coastal Trail
    Lahaina Bypass
    Legislature Newsletters
    LLC
    Long Range Transportation Plan 2040
    Long-Range Transportation Plan 2040
    Makila
    MAUI CANCER CENTER
    Maui Cancer Center Llc
    Maui County
    Maui County Budget
    Maui County CERT
    Maui County Dept Of Environmental Management
    Maui County - Dept Of Water
    Maui Destination Management Plan
    Press
    Public Safety In West Maui
    Real Property Tax
    Recycling Info
    TAT
    Tax
    Tourism
    Traffic & Roadways
    Transportation
    Video
    Vote
    Voting
    West Maui Community Plan
    West Maui Hospital
    West Maui Skate Park
    WMTA Annual Meeting
    WMTA Breakfast Events
    WMTA Candidates Night
    WMTA Disaster Preparedness
    WMTA Fundraisers
    WMTA Hot Topics
    Wmta Hot Topics Replay
    WMTA Membership
    WMTA PAC
    WMTA Sunset Sail
    WMTA Whale Watch

Quick Links: 

Home

News

About Us

Wall of Honor

Newsletter

Support WMTA
Emergency Planning

Contact

Copyright © 2021
Photo used under Creative Commons from wolfsavard
  • HOME
  • Olowalu Fire Station
  • WMTAPAC22
  • Affordable Housing
  • West Maui Lifesavers
  • Wall of Honor
  • Support WMTA
    • Membership - One Time Payment
    • Membership - Recurring Payment
    • Donations
    • Wills & Trusts
    • Charity Walk
  • Newsletter
  • Emergency Planning
  • News Blog
  • About Us
    • Goals & Objectives
    • Accomplishments
    • Board of Directors
    • WMTA vs WMIF
  • Contact
  • Subscribe