Urgent Action!!

Call House Leadership Today!
Tell them to STOP raiding TANF Funds!

Keep TANF Funds in TANF to UNDO ALL WELFARE CUTS!!
Say NO to TANF Refinancing!

Call Rep. Margaret Kelliher Anderson(Speaker) 651-296-0171
Call Rep. Tony Sertich (Majority Leader) 651-296-0172
Call Rep Tom Huntley
651-296-2228
(Chair, Health and Human Services Finance Division)

TANF funds are for welfare families. Over the past number of years
over $300 million has been taken out of TANF to fund other programs that
used to be paid for by the State out of General Fund dollars. They
call it refinancing, we call it outright stealing! Supplanting state
spending with TANF dollars lets the state off the hook to fund necessary
things like child care and housing, and instead steals from one program
for the poor to put into another program for the poor. Although many
of these programs may be worthy, this has left TANF without enough money
to undo brutal cuts to welfare and to improve the situation for the
children and families who are living over 60% BELOW the federal poverty
level while on welfare.

In 2003, legislators passed the biggest cuts to welfare in the history
of Minnesota. Families already living 62% below the poverty line saw
cuts of 15-50% out of their monthly welfare grants. Since 2003, we
have been fighting to get the cuts undone and money restored to families
in poverty.

This year, there is enough money in TANF to UNDO each of these most
devastating cuts! There is enough money to make it easier to get
education while on welfare and to give more families extensions to the
five year lifetime limit. BUT ONLY if the TANF FUNDS ARE LEFT IN TANF.
Raiding TANF funds for other programs is stealing from the families who
have suffered the most under the Pawlenty cuts!!

Call the leadership of the House TODAY and tell them to STOP RAIDING
TANF funds! Give the money back!

FFI: Call WRC 612-822-8020