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You Won Today! Major Victory in Mississippi Legislature

By Mississippi Center for Public Policy
March 30, 2017

You won today! And Mississippi won today too!

Thanks to you, we were able to help pass what one Mississippi senator referred to today as "the most ambitious welfare reform" in the country. In supporting our work, you are helping thousands of Mississippians move from dependency to dignity, from poverty to prosperity, and from welfare to work.

 
We have been working toward passage of this bill for three years, and today, the House and Senate gave final approval to it before they adjourned the 2017 Regular Session.
 
Thank you for your support that helped us see this through!
 
HB 1090 restores the 1990s reforms that "ended welfare as we know it" by requiring able-bodied welfare recipients to work, or be looking for work, in order to receive benefits. These policies have been gutted over the past several years by the Obama Administration.
 
But today we stopped that, making Mississippi a model for the rest of the nation, and according to an independent review of the bill, "moving Mississippi into the forefront nationally."
 
 These are just five of the major reforms HB 1090 accomplishes:
  • Requires able-bodied adults to get off SNAP (food stamps) and get back to work.
  • Removes millionaires and mansion owners from food stamps by restoring federal income and asset tests.
  • Tracks out-of-state spending to stop welfare fraud and abuse (think: ATMs at Walt Disney World).
  • Protects Medicaid and other welfare programs for those who are truly eligible by giving state employees new tools to eliminate fraud.
  • Saves Mississippi - and federal - taxpayers millions a year by removing fraudsters and identity thieves from our welfare rolls.
Only 54% of adult Mississippians are in the labor force. This bill will eliminate loopholes in current welfare policy that serve as a disincentive to work. That is not to say that the majority of welfare recipients are lazy, as some have characterized it. It is simply to require those who are able to work to either get a job or be actively looking for one in order to receive benefits.
 
Special thanks to Medicaid Committee chairmen, Rep. Chris Brown (Aberdeen), and Sen. Brice Wiggins (Pascagoula), as well as Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Governor Tate Reeves. They and others put in many hours of work to see this bill pass.
 
Join us today in celebrating this "HUGE" victory and thank your lawmaker for voting for welfare reform. Working together, thanks to your support, We Won Today!
 

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