What LePage really plans to do with $100M meant for Maine families in poverty

[jpak]

http://bangordailynews.com/2017/06/16/mainefocus/what-lepage-really-plans-to-do-with-100m-meant-for-maine-families-in-poverty/

More than 8,600 low-income Maine families lost cash assistance and help finding and keeping work over the past five years due to a policy change under the LePage administration. Those families included almost 15,000 children.

But just because the state cut families from federally funded Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, doesn’t mean it’s had less money for the program. The federal government gives Maine the same amount of funding each year — $78.1 million — regardless of whether it uses it. And last summer, the unspent balance in Maine’s TANF account reached $155.5 million.

When lawmakers asked questions this legislative session about what the LePage administration intended to do with the money, Maine Department of Health and Human Services officials said they were using it to expand programs that already exist to help low-income families with children or beef up new programs that hadn’t received state money before.

For the most part, however, that’s not the case.

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What an evil prick