Is Welfare Reform Next?

If done right, it could be a huge win for President Trump and the nation. If done wrong, well . . .

With tax reform finally behind us, President Trump has been dropping hints that welfare reform might be the administration’s next big undertaking.

Few areas of government are as ripe for reform as our bloated, inefficient, and ineffective welfare system. The United States has spent more than $23 trillion fighting poverty, roughly $1 trillion last year alone. Yet all this spending has bought us surprisingly little. Although far from conclusive, the evidence suggests that our welfare system has marginally reduced the number of people living in poverty, while helping to reduce its deprivations for millions of others. This shouldn’t be a big surprise. No matter how dim a view one takes of governmental competence in general, it would be virtually impossible for the government to spend $23 trillion on welfare without helping at least some poor people.

But by the broader and more important benchmark — enabling people to rise above poverty, to become self-sufficient and able to care for their families, to achieve all that they can achieve — welfare has clearly failed.

The War on Poverty was launched, in the words of President Johnson, not only to “relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.” Yes, Johnson sought to meet the “basic needs” of those in poverty, but also to “replace despair with opportunity.” But walk through poor communities today, from Baltimore’s “Sandtown” to Owsley, Ky., and it becomes increasingly difficult to pretend that people are flourishing in any meaningful sense.

Read the rest from Michael Tanner HERE.