Weekly Audit: One Nation with No Jobs

Remember how it became a running joke that the surest way to see if George W. Bush was going to cut a group’s funding was if he’d done a recent photo-op with it? I mean, it happened again and again.

Well now, today we see Tom Emmer, a tax cut fanatic in the mold of George W. Bush and outgoing governor Tim Pawlenty, had a photo-op at a company that, if Emmer had had his way, would likely have gone under.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has released new data showing that a majority of states have yet to tap into the Emergency Fund set up through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Emergency Fund is intended provide additional support to states so that they can meet the costs of increasing TANF rolls as well as use TANF to help provide services to others who are struggling to make ends meet. The Emergency Fund provides states with $5 billion in federal TANF block grant funding during FY 2009 and FY 2010, but so far less than $1 billion has been awarded to 21 states.

The TANF Emergency Fund (TEF) is potentially an important resource for states, which get four federal dollars from the fund for each dollar they put up. To get those funds, however, states need to have increased the amount they are spending through TANF for basic assistance (cash aid), subsidized employment, and short-term emergencies, such as non-recurrent, short-term benefits. In the current economic climate, however, many states are hard pressed to find that dollar.