, Columnist
Why Shouldn't Medicaid Money Treat Poverty Too?
The largest program for the poor could do so much more -- if states were free to try.
He needs more than a doctor.
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Poverty in the U.S. seems intractable, even as safety net spending rises each year. Most policy makers, meanwhile, remain locked in trench warfare over whether to increase spending further or cut it, launch new programs or restrict current ones. But what if states had more flexibility to move federal dollars between antipoverty programs -- not to increase spending or cut it, but to find its most effective use?
The social safety net provides more than $1 trillion a year for low-income households. Yet no coherent antipoverty strategy allocates the spending. As the various programs have been created, their individual funding streams have pooled resources haphazardly and inefficiently.