JUST A REMINDER THAT PHIL BRYANT DOESN'T THINK ALL MOTHERS SHOULD STAY OUT OF THE WORKFORCE

It appears that Phil Bryant, Mississippi's Republican governor, has (in the words of Ed Kilgore) "crossed the Todd Akin Line":

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) said Tuesday that America's educational troubles began when women began working outside the home in large numbers.

Bryant was participating in a Washington Post Live event focused on the importance of ensuring that children read well by the end of third grade. In response to a question about how America became "so mediocre" in regard to educational outcomes, he said:

I think both parents started working. The mom got in the work place.

Yeah, those dames -- they started to work outside the home and the whole country went to hell in a handbasket. Won't somebody think of the children?

Well, not all the children, of course. As it turns out, Governor Bryant thinks it's appalling that some mothers don't work outside the home.

You know -- those mothers.

You'll recall that last year the Romney campaign tried to make a big issue out of the notion that the Obama administration had "gutted" the welfare-to-work requirements of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program (TANF) -- a line of attack based on a greatly distorted reading of what the administration was trying to do. Now, keep in mind that the vast majority of TANF adult recipients are female (only 14.8% are male).

Well, Governor Bryant's contribution to that discussion was an open letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (PDF; also here) in which he expressed horror at the thought that fewer of the (mostly female) TANF recipients might work outside the home, and boasted about how many recipients were working in his state:

... By eliminating the work requirements, you are creating a dangerous policy precedent and deterring Americans from becoming more self-sufficient. The existing work requirement should remain intact and any reauthorization proposal of TANF should incentivize personal accountability to move from welfare to work.

... Mississippi has been recognized as having the highest TANF Work Program Participation Rate in the nation. In 2011, our state's TANF Work Program Participation Rate was 70.06%....

In this case, women in the workforce are good!

And there isn't a word in the entire letter about the risk to education, curiously enough.