TANF was never intended to be a permanent thing you could live on, or a thing that’s going to continue to cost more and more for the government. It’s right there in the name, TEMPORARY
I would be a lot more for social programs if they were made a whole lot harder to exploit. I dunno if you’ve ever had to apply for any, but it’s a nightmare process based on client feedback. Part of the reason they are so slow is because they are underfunded and part of the reason is they have to cut through so much bullshit
I know it’s not TANF, but the amount of people in my job who legit ask me if they can go on disability because of their drug addiction, or because sometimes they get (non-debilitating) anxiety is ridiculous. I want to say “No! You have no chance of being accepted, so please don’t apply! Because you are just bogging down an already slow system with this bullshit”. But I can’t say that, I have to give them the information about where they can apply if they ask out of a client-centered model
But yknow that’s actually not true. You actually can get on disability for your substance abuse. Here’s a way. Try drinking yourself to death, and quite likely one of 2 things will happen. If you don’t die of cirrhosis of the liver, you might live long enough to give yourself “wet brain” which is alcohol-induced dementia. Then you can qualify for your state’s long term care insurance, because you are mentally disabled beyond being able to care for yourself. Then the state will pay to put you in a memory care group home. But they can’t go hands on, so if you want to keep waking out the door to the gas station and buy beer and get shithoused, you can do it. All on the state government’s dollar. I’ve seen it happen
Ridiculous cases like these are the small minority, but the amount of overall bullshit the system sees is not so small
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