Welfare: Twenty years after an epic welfare reform bill was signed, Congress is again looking at how it can reform the current system to move more people out of poverty. In this, as in so many other things, innovative states may have the answer.
The House Ways and Means Committee is deeply concerned about the 46 million Americans who are officially considered poor. While few of them work at full-time jobs, once they do, their chances of emerging from both welfare and the poverty cycle improve enormously.
“The best way to do this, and to solve many of the other challenges welfare programs currently face,” said Tarren Bragdon, CEO of the Foundation for Government Accountability, as quoted in a post by Leah Jessen on the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal blog site, “is through a simple but powerful tool that must be core to any welfare reform conversation: work.”
Bragdon cites two examples of this: Recent reforms in Kansas and Maine, which have bucked the trend and imposed work requirements on those who receive welfare benefits.
Take Maine, a reliably liberal state that nonetheless has pursued sweeping welfare reforms. “Thousands of able-bodied adults leaving food stamps found jobs and increased their hours, leading their incomes to rise by 114% on average,” Bragdon notes.Read the rest of this IBD editorial HERE.
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