Speak Up for TANF

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

Ask the Governor to Restore the TANF payments
plus Annual Cost-of-Living Adjustments

  
Update 9/15/25: SD’s Dept of Social Services has cut 10% off the monthly TANF payments!   

   This unprecedented, cruel, short-sighted cut should never have happened, but it started on Sept.1.  It targeted the children. Of the various ways the state uses TANF funds, only the children's monthly payments received the 10% cut, none of the other uses. 

   The monthly payments had averaged only $515 for these 4301 children [July 2025].

   No one and no state should treat children this way. Other states are not cutting TANF. South Dakota never has, not even back during Gov.Daugaard's across-the-board cut.

   What kind of life and what kind of future do we want for these children?

Please ask Gov.Rhoden Restore the TANF payments plus Annual Cost-of-Living Adjustments.

Update Aug.2025: SD’s Dept of Social Services is cutting the monthly payments for our poorest children!   This has never happened before!

   It’s not a directive from Congress or the state legislature. Rather, the legislature passed a budget that allowed for a 2.4% inflation increase! But in a rogue proposal this summer, DSS is cutting 10% off the already meager TANF payments. On July 15, DSS Secretary Althoff got the Rules Review Committee to agree to this (a 4-2 vote). 

    But still, TANF is the cash assistance for rent, electric bill, phone, diapers, shoes & clothing, internet, car gas & repairs, laundry, toilet paper, etc… and even some food when SNAP runs out.

The governor is starting to prepare his next budget proposal.
  Now we are asking the Governor to re-instate the payments with COLA’s(cost-of-living adjustments).
Before their session, we will be asking Appropriations Committee also.

Background:
    TANF, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, is the cash assistance program for children whose parents don't have even a third of poverty level income to support them. They are in an extremely destitute situation.

    Only 4309 children are on TANF in SD. (in 2430 households) [June 2025]

    Most of these children don’t have any parents caring for them. They have relatives caring for them and are doing the children and all of us a great service. TANF support for these relatives is preferable for the children and the state than more expensive foster care or institutionalization.

    The parents in the program are doing work, mostly unpaid, 20 or 30 hours a week, for these meager benefits.

    The average TANF payment is only $513.31/month[June 2025] to pay rent, electric bill, phone, diapers, shoes & clothing, internet, car gas & repairs, laundry, toilet paper, etc… and even some food when SNAP runs out. Imagine taking away $51 a month from these households!

    Cutting TANF payments to 28.4% of poverty level is unacceptable and short-sighted. These children need an increase, not a cut.

    There is no need to cut the payments. The FY2026 TANF budget was not cut. Some state funds were replaced with available federal funds. This shift did not require cutting the children’s payments. The TANF budget still has about double the amount of the payments. Pay the payments first.

A childhood is something you can’t do over!      

Summer 2024, The governor is preparing her next budget proposal.

Ask for a Cost-of-Living Adjustment  
for the South Dakota's Poorest Children

 TANF, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, is the cash assistance program for children whose parents don't have more than a third of poverty level income to support them. They are in an extremely destitute situation.

The 2024 SD Legislature did not grant a cost-of-living adjustment for these payments, except for about 200 cases out of over 2400 cases. 

 It helped that they did the year before, averaging a much-needed $11 a month (a 2.4% adjustment). But what a set-back this year! Inflation eats away at these meager payments.
- - - - - - - - - - -

These poorest children in the state are often forgotten. They do not get automatic cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs). The legislature must remember them in the state budget. It really helps when the governor includes a COLA for TANF in her budget proposal. This year please ask and pray the governor and legislature (especially SD's Appropriations Committee) will allow a cost-of-living adjustment for all these children.

The families that pay their full housing costs from their TANF are the most destitute. Those with housing assistance or who share housing get smaller payments but cannot cover their expenses either. The average monthly TANF payment is $519.42.[May2024] 

    Without COLAs, the buying power of TANF just keeps going down. SD’s maximum payment is now only 32.6% of the poverty line. Failing to adjust these payments sinks children deeper in poverty. Even with food stamps (SNAP), families are far below poverty line.

Others in the state budget get inflation adjustments. If the TANF kids could have COLAs, those few dollars seem like not much to most of us, but make a big help to households this deep in poverty. This should not be too much to ask of our state for the most destitute children. 

Or, It could cost the state nothing, because a TANF reserve, unspent from previous TANF block grants is held by the feds for these SD children. It has over $22 million! It's the children's money. SD could tap that fund for adjustments for them for years and years.

Please help the state’s poorest children by asking for a cost-of-living increase for TANF in the state budget. No one needs it more. That would not make up for years of no cost-of-living adjustments, but it sure would be helpful. 

  Contact the governor through her website:
https://governor.sd.gov
To find your state legislators and how to contact them: https://sdlegislature.gov/legislators

Thanks for being a voice for people who need voices, especially children.

CC Brechtelsbauer for the Bread for the World-SD, 7/15/24