What’s the matter with Kansas?

Kansas finally went ahead with a new law (which will go into effect on 1 July) limiting what welfare recipients can do with the money they receive.*

Here’s the relevant paragraph in the new law [pdf], which among things restricts participants from withdrawing more than $25 a day and from using the cash to go to the pool or see a movie:

No TANF cash assistance shall be used to purchase alcohol, cigarettes, tobacco products, lottery tickets, concert tickets, professional or collegiate sporting event tickets or tickets for other entertainment events intended for the general public or sexually oriented adult materials. No TANF cash assistance shall be used in any retail liquor store, casino, gaming establishment, jewelry store, tattoo parlor, massage parlor, body piercing parlor, spa, nail salon, lingerie shop, tobacco paraphernalia store, vapor cigarette store, psychic or fortune telling business, bail bond company, video arcade, movie theater, swimming pool, cruise ship, theme park, dog or horse racing facility, parimutuel facility, or sexually oriented business or any retail establishment which provides adult-oriented entertainment in which performers disrobe or perform in an unclothed state for entertainment, or in any business or retail establishment where minors under age 18 are not permitted. TANF cash assistance transactions for cash withdrawals from automated teller machines shall be limited to $25, per transaction and to one transaction per day. No TANF cash assistance shall be used for purchases at points of sale outside the state of Kansas.

The overlooked part of the craziness we’re currently seeing in Sam Brownback’s Kansas, as Philip Bump explains, is the fact that the state’s TANF participation rates have already dropped steeply in recent years.

In Kansas, as in many other states, the recession caused the number of people receiving TANF to go up. States saw an average increase of 32.5 percent in TANF usage between 2005 and 2014, thanks to some big gains. The median change, though, was a 6.7 percent drop, and Kansas’s participation rate ended the decade 47.7 percent lower. It’s one of only 13 states to have seen a reduction of more than a third.

Just like two other states—Arizona and Indiana—that are currently being run into the ground by similarly crazy administrations.

*The welfare program is officially known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which provides cash assistance to poor American families with dependent children through the United States Department of Health and Human Services. TANF was created by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act instituted under Bill Clinton in 1996 with the goal of driving recipients off government assistance and into the labor market.