TANF

For decades, America’s various welfare programs have discouraged low-income adults from working and trapped millions in poverty.

ortunately for state policymakers, there is now an option available to them to help create greater access to high-quality, more-affordable health care without increasing state budgets or the national debt: Section 1115 waivers.

Aug. 22 marks the 20th anniversary of President Bill Clinton and congressional Republicans’ bipartisan Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). This landmark welfare reform law substantially changed the U.S. welfare system for the first time in more than six decades. PRWORA instituted work requirements, imposed time limits, and allowed states to craft their own welfare programs through the newly formed Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

Six days ago, in Poland, the President reacted to two fatal shootings of young black men by police, one in Louisiana and another in Minnesota, by saying, “these fatal shootings are not isolated incidents.” The message was clear enough. Two days later, an African American took revenge on a police force in Texas that, the way he saw things, was part of a system of law enforcement that was murdering young black men.

Mississippi took a step in the right direction when, at the beginning of the month, the Mississippi Department of Human Services announced it would implement work requirements for single people between the ages of 18 and 49 who receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly called food stamps. Although this is a positive development, there is still much that could be done to better help the State of Mississippi move people in poverty from government dependency to self-sufficiency.