The GOP Tax Bill Ignores Decades of Economic Research
Assistance to the poor should be seen less as spending on people and more as investment in people.
Probably not up on the latest economic research.
Photographer: Ting Shen/Bloomberg
The budget bill that Republicans are currently trying to push through the House includes steep cuts to the two largest programs that help low-income Americans: Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Part of the rationale for these reductions, aside from making space for tax cuts, seems to be that using public money to help low-income people is wasteful and inefficient.
Not so long ago, some economists might have agreed. But times change, and so does the economic evidence. After decades of research, economists now view spending on low-income Americans not as charity but as an investment. In that sense, the tax bill is not only wrong for this fraught economic moment, but it is also a relic of a bygone economic era.