Republicans Call Brett Favre As Expert Witness On Welfare Fraud

WASHINGTON — Former NFL quarterback Brett Favre became one of the unlikeliest expert witnesses of all time on Tuesday when he testified about welfare fraud in a House committee hearing.

The state of Mississippi accused Favre in 2022 of improperly receiving $1 million in funds from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, the federal program most closely associated with the word “welfare.”

Favre was not charged with a crime and has maintained he didn’t know he had improperly received the money, which came from grants through a nonprofit organization and which he said he repaid.

“When this started, I didn’t know what TANF was,” Favre said in an opening statement on Tuesday. (Favre also revealed for the first time that he’s been diagnosed with Parkinson’s.)

“I have learned that nobody was or is watching how TANF funds are spent,” he added. “States have too much flexibility in how they spend this money.”

Favre’s case was a sensational illustration of how the TANF program doesn’t directly help the low-income parents it’s supposed to serve, with funds flowing instead to nonprofits that are supposed to help the poor. With Favre, the expenditures covered the cost of speeches and radio commercials.

Only 22% of program funds were actually sent to families as cash payments in 2020, according to the Center on Budget for Policy Priorities , a liberal think tank, with the rest of the funds split across an array of services, such as child care and Head Start, and 10% of the total amount going to program administration. Mississippi only used 7% of TANF funds for benefits .

Jason Smith (R-Mo.), chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, introduced Favre as “someone whose experience I think can help shed additional light