But this is quite typical of the discourse surrounding welfare policy—blame the poor for their conditions and not the lawmakers who craft really bad policy to begin with. In the explanation above, the state conveniently left out that there are some factors that have made getting approved even more difficult for applicants. For example, the passage of legislation in 2006 that requires residents to look for work or attend orientation programs before their applications can be approved, without the kind of subsidies that TANF provides such as childcare or transportation. In other words, in order to qualify for welfare in Mississippi, you already have to be looking for work or attending job training. But if you have kids or need a ride to work, good luck because the state won’t pay for that until after you’ve proven that you are actually looking for the job. Who exactly is running things there, anyway? You’d get more logic if you put Forrest Gump in charge.

And then there’s stuff like this which indicates a complete failure of the system.

The state has other punitive aspects of its program: time limits, a cap on benefits beyond a certain family size, and sanctions that mean if one person in a family loses benefits, everyone loses benefits. It’s hard to know for sure what has happened to all of the people Mississippi has rejected from TANF and how they’re surviving. “There’s always the chance that someone who is denied reapplies and gets approved at another point in time,” [Matt Williams, Director of Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative said.] But, he added, “A lot is required of people to become eligible, and once they go through all those administrative hurdles, to only have their application denied, I think most people will probably not try to apply again.”

So Mississippi will continue to make sure poor families stay poor. In the richest country in the world, this is really shameful.