Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell told the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee that the federal government does not have the power to stop states from allowing people to use welfare benefits to buy marijuana.
In a letter addressed to Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who asked Health and Human Services about the policy earlier this year, Burwell said the law simply excludes any mention of marijuana dispensaries in the list of places where people are prohibited from using welfare, formally known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.
The law was updated in 2012, prior to Colorado’s decision in May 2013 to legalize the production and sale of marijuana. The law gives HHS the power to withhold funds to states that allow people to use welfare money at liquor stores, casinos, and “establishments in which performers disrobe or perform in an unclothed state for entertainment.”
Burwell added in the letter that “nothing in the the TANF statute or regulations precludes states from taking measures to prevent recipients from using their benefit cards at marijuana shops.”
States, Burwell added, can add language to prohibit certain expenditures and in Colorado, she added, lawmakers are examining whether to ban pot from the list of things that people can buy with welfare.
Sessions said he would introduce legislation to close the loophole. House Republicans have already authored legislation to prohibit welfare benefits from being used to buy pot.
“The federal government current spends roughly $750 billion each year on means-tested welfare programs across 80 different accounts,” Sessions said. “This money is administered by a vast, sprawling bureaucracy with little oversight and no moral vision. Surely we can all agree that the guiding principle ought to be that benefits are reserved for those in real need.”
