One of the greatest paradoxes about Mississippi is how this poor state frowns on the poor.
As a rule, Mississippians are generous people. Statistics show regularly that on a per capita basis, the people of this state are more charitable with their money than those who live in much wealthier states.
I see an hourlong testament of this every year when I ring the bell at a Salvation Army kettle. People who seem, at least outwardly, to be not much better off than those the kettle hopes to help will dig into their pockets and purses to throw in what they can spare. They embrace the proverb, “There but for the grace of God go I.”
When it comes to public policy, though, Mississippi tends to be more churlish than charitable.
Case in point is the Republican opposition to Medicaid expansion, a decadelong obstinate attitude that has cost Mississippi about billion dollars a year, left a couple hundred thousand low-income workers uninsured and contributed to the dire financial condition of the state’s rural hospitals.
Besides the GOP’s partisan antipathy to anything connected to former Democratic President Barack Obama, there is an ideological underpinning to this self-destructive opposition. It is a belief that government-based charity toward individuals, no matter in what form it is delivered, is generally a bad thing, creating a dependency that keeps the poor in poverty.
It is this same belief that has led Mississippi to be one of the most miserly in the nation when it comes to food stamp allocations, unemployment assistance and other welfare payments.
Whether this is churlishness or “tough love” is subject to interpretation, and admittedly it does have a biblical foundation for those looking for one. “He who does not work shall not eat,” says the Apostle Paul.
As with many teachings in the Bible, though, there are contradictory words of guidance. John the Baptist told the multitudes that to be right with God, “He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise.” There is no mention that this sharing of the wealth should be withheld if the recipient is shiftless or irresponsible.
Regardless of which of these Christian teachings one embraces, there is no arguing that the ideal would be to help the poor help themselves by developing the skills and attributes that would lead toward self-sufficiency.
It was that premise on which welfare reform during the mid-1990s was based. A key element in the overhaul was the federal government giving the states the leeway to experiment with the best ways to use welfare dollars. They could continue to give direct cash assistance to the poor, which had been the previous model, or they could shift the focus toward job training and placement and other means of support, such as child-care vouchers, to make work more advantageous than staying at home.
Mississippi took the latter approach, but it did it in such a way that it opened the floodgates for welfare money to be redirected to the pockets or pet causes of those closely connected to the state’s Republican leadership.
Mississippi’s implementation of welfare reform eventually devolved into Robin Hood in reverse, stealing from the poor to give to the rich.
Starting about a decade ago, the state dramatically reduced the number of poor families receiving cash payments through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. It routinely denied applications and slashed the welfare rolls by almost 90%. Even those who survived the cut got a comparative pittance. As of 2020, The Associated Press reported, Mississippi’s monthly allocation for a single parent and minor child was $146 a month, the lowest in the country and one-sixth as much as a family of that size would have received in New Hampshire, the nation’s most generous. Mississippi has added another $90 per month in the interim.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Human Services, which determined how federal welfare dollars were allocated, poured money into Nancy New’s nonprofit and gushed how it was transforming the lives of the poor. Eventually three times as much TANF money was going annually to New’s organization as to all welfare families combined.
The setup was largely a ruse, as audits and investigations have shown. Tens of millions of dollars of TANF funding went to purposes — some illegal, others wasteful — that had nothing to do with helping needy families.
The Republican majorities in the Legislature have been somewhat indifferent to the scandal. That’s because shafting the poor is not considered a political liability.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
