Mississippi TANF Vendors FY 2015-2024

Expenditures out of Mississippi's "TANF Work Program" -- as they are coded in the state's public-facing checkbook -- have changed drastically in recent years since the fraud scandal of 2016-2020. The Mississippi Department of Human Services has reduced the number of vendors it pays annually out of the "TANF Work Program" by more than half since the height of the scheme. MDHS has long transferred a large chunk of its federal TANF grant to supplement the state's Child Protection Services budget, but in 2024, it started recording these multi-million transfers in the state's expenditure database for the first time, explaining that new expenditure. The table below contains the roughly 300 vendors who have been paid under the "TANF Work Program" for various programs, services and commodities in the last decade and is organized by the highest paid vendors in 2024. Scroll over to see which vendors are no longer receiving TANF funds. The state's annual TANF block grant is $86.5 million, but it has been spending only a fraction of that lately. In 2024, expenditures available in the checkbook totaled $45.4 million. This does not include monthly welfare payments made directly to poor families, which totaled about $4 million in 2022, the last year for which federal data is available. By the end of that year, the state had amassed an unspent TANF balance of $146 million.