Human Services gets Fleece Award

U.S. Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., has awarded his Golden Fleece Award to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after questioning the agency’s oversight of welfare funds.

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families — or TANF — block grant program, which dates to 1996, is supposed to encourage recipients to “achieve self-sufficiency,” the agency’s website states.

But different states have different approaches when it comes to seeking and doling out the money.

Some locations receive — and distribute — more money than they should, the lawmaker from Little Rock said.

“[T]oo often individual states have been able to game the system and receive more TANF funds than mandated by law,” Hill said in a news release Tuesday. “This failure by HHS to provide proper oversight of state TANF requirements prevents these resources from going to families in other states who desperately need them,” Hill said in the release.

In his letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Hill outlined his concerns.

“According to data from HHS and analysis by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), only a small number of non-employed TANF recipients are engaged in work-related or training activities within a given month. This is despite clearly outlined work requirements in the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act,” Hill wrote.

Hill complained about specific reporting strategies that he says inflate the amount of money some states receive.

The late U.S. Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis., created the Golden Fleece Award, using it to highlight government spending that he considered wasteful.

After Hill’s election to Congress in 2014, he resurrected the award.