Minnesota’s 30,000 families in need are decades overdue for a bump in monthly assistance through the state’s welfare to work program, and millions should be reallocated to pay for that boost, according to a report by a legislative task force released this week.

The State’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) task force revealed that the state’s fund for families in need, otherwise known as the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP), has not increased its monthly allocations to families--$532—since 1986. That’s despite a $260 million grant to fund the state’s workforce development program, which over the years has been diverted to other priorities.

“The stunning reality for the task force was that this grant has not increased since 1986,” said Jessica Webster, a staff attorney for Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid. “The grant in 1986 was $532 for a family of three. Today, it is also $532 for a family of three.”

Webster said that $70 million per biennium should be moved from the Minnesota Department of Health and Working Family Credit and restored to needy families, with money from the General fund replenishing what was lost from both departments.

“What’s striking is that there is so much energy and so many conversations happening around early childhood poverty right now, and the collateral consequences and expense of childhood poverty,” Webster said, adding that more than 70,000 Minnesota children belong to families that receive cash assistance. “…But the enormous elephant in the room is MFIP. This is a program that is a lifeline to our lowest-income children and their families in this state, yet it has eroded so deeply that it is not even meeting the basic needs of families.”

Webster lauded a bipartisan proposal by Rep. Mary Franson, R-Alexandria, and Sen. Jeff Hayden, DFL-Minneapolis, to increase the cash assistance level by $100 a month. Minnesota is currently $121 behind Wisconsin and $70 behind South Dakota in terms of monthly assistance.

“What legislators are recognizing in our conversations with them, is that this is the largest group of unskilled workers in the state of Minnesota, and there’s a lot of energy in Minnesota to skill up workers…If these families are left in deep, deep abject poverty, It’s very difficult to stabilize your housing, get to your education and training or work, to continue to move up the ladder and get off these programs and not look back, that really is where the energy for this program is at."

