Project 2025’s TANF & TPP Overhaul: Punishing Poverty, Not Ending It
Project 2025 proposes to impose work requirements on any TANF non-cash benefit worth $50/month for six months, slashing assistance to the poorest families, and to defund evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention in favor of Sexual Risk Avoidance programs. This would drive millions deeper into poverty and housing instability.
Project 2025 revives a Trump-era definition that would count non-cash benefits—like bus passes, job training pamphlets, or even a $50 piece of paper—as 'assistance' subject to TANF work requirements, via an HHS rulemaking under ACF authority. The result is cruel and counterproductive: states would be forced to either kick families off basic supports or spend millions tracking trivial items. The source text admits 21 states already have a zero percent work engagement target due to the Caseload Reduction Credit; this proposal punishes states that have reduced caseloads by making them chase phantom engagement. It’s a solution in search of a problem that costs more to implement than it saves.
On the teen pregnancy front, the document wants to abolish every evidence-based curriculum list maintained by HHS and funnel all funding to Sexual Risk Avoidance (abstinence-only) programs that have repeatedly proven ineffective. The current Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program and Personal Responsibility Education Program rely on rigorous evaluations; scrapping them would hand the reins to ideological curricula that do not reduce pregnancy or STIs. Meanwhile, the Adoption Reform section threatens faith-based agency licensing to refuse placements to LGBTQ+ couples—prioritizing religious exemption over children’s need for stable homes.
For housing, the connection is direct: every dollar cut from the social safety net is a dollar added to the homelessness crisis. The alternative is clear: expand the Housing Choice Voucher program, fully fund the National Housing Trust Fund, and invest in services that keep families housed and healthy—not punish them for being poor.
The humanitarian alternative
Congress should reject any expansion of TANF work requirements to non-cash benefits and instead increase TANF block grant funding to meet inflation-adjusted levels, while fully funding the National Housing Trust Fund at $5 billion annually to build deeply affordable housing. Teen pregnancy prevention should remain evidence-based, with continued federal investment in programs proven to reduce pregnancy and support youth development. Adoption policy must prioritize child welfare over religious exemption, ensuring every child can be placed in a loving home regardless of the parents’ sexual orientation or gender identity.
Original source — excerpted
project2025 Project 2025 ch. 15: Department of Housing and Urban Development (pp 509-510)"— 476 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Pay damages to all medical professionals who were dismissed directly because of the CMS vaccine mandate. ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES (ACF) TANF . The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program is a federal block grant that gives states significant flexibility to fund a broad array of programs aimed at helping low-income families break the cycle of poverty and achieve economic self-sufficiency. States use TANF to fund monthly cash assis - tance payments to low-income families with children as well as a wide range of services that include work activities, work supports and supportive services, child- care, administration and systems, tax credits, pre-K/Head Start, child welfare, and other services. The TANF program serves 1.8 million individuals. Since 1996, when the program was reformed, federal TANF outlays have been $16.5 billion. The state match is $14.9 billion, bringing the total state and federal TANF investment to $31.4 billion. The TANF statute requires that states engage 50 percent of single-parent fam- ilies in work for at least 30 hours a week (20 hours a week for single parents…"