OMAHA - In 2010, Melinda Jacobs was a 20-year-old single mom struggling to make ends meet as a certified nursing assistant. Working night shifts to boost her wages wasn’t enough to support her family, said Jacobs, so she applied for Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), a public benefit program providing cash assistance to low-income families with kids.

Jacobs was denied because her income, $741 per month, or $8,892 per year, was above the state cutoff level for a family of two.

Despite inflation, that amount has increased by a total of $74 over the past six years. More than a decade later, Jacobs learned she had been permanently disqualified from ADC because she'd been to prison on drug offenses.

According to state Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh, it is not uncommon for public benefit denials to perpetuate poverty and crime as people turn to crime to support their, and their children's, basic needs.

Stories of this nature are common in Nebraska, where being denied ADC is the norm for families that apply. Around 90% of families that applied for ADC in 2020 were denied. This denial rate surpasses that of all but three states in the nation.

The high denial rate is not due, however, to Nebraska's lack of ADC cash to distribute. ADC money comes from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), an annual federal block grant given to each state to support low-income families. The state can use the cash for direct cash assistance via ADC — or the state can decide to allocate the money to a rainy day fund.

Nebraska's rainy day fund was more than $108 million as of September 2021. As of 2020, Nebraska is one of just 11 states with a TANF rainy day fund that contains more money than its annual TANF grant amount, which is roughly $57 million.

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