March 25, 2026
The More Things Change, Medicaid Edition
“Clinics” with suspect professional credentials running up bills for publicly-insured low-income patients. Outlandish claim volumes…
March 25, 2026
Opportunity Book: A New Tool for Connecting Policymakers with Innovative Ideas
Today the Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is…
March 23, 2026
Assessing Duplicative Federal Benefit Programs and Preventing Abuse
This commentary reviews current means-tested federal benefit programs designed to assist low-income individuals and families….
March 5, 2026
Summary and Analysis of the “Stop Unemployment Fraud Act”
This week, senior House and Senate Members are introducing legislation designed to prevent a repeat of runaway fraud and abuse that afflicted…
December 23, 2025
The Policy Lessons from Minnesota’s Massive Welfare Fraud
Numerous reviewers have spotlighted shocking welfare fraud perpetrated by members of the Somali community in…
December 2, 2025
What To Do About Benefit Cliffs?
Everyone wants poor families to work their way off welfare and ascend the income ladder….
November 10, 2025
The Welfare Program You Never Heard About During the Shutdown
Americans have heard plenty about how, effective November 1, the federal government shutdown suspended regular…
September 23, 2025
Why the USDA Is Justified in Ending the Food Security Survey
The USDA announced plans to discontinue future Household Food Security reports, ending the annual supplemental…
August 7, 2025
Perspective on the OBBBA’s SNAP Cuts
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) will reduce federal spending for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $186.7 billion over the next 10 years. While these reductions are substantial, they require important context.
May 20, 2025
The Share of Medicaid Recipients in Compliance with the House Bill’s Community Engagement Requirement
The reconciliation proposal approved by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce in 2025 would impose community engagement requirements on nondisabled, working-age Medicaid recipients without dependent children, requiring at least 80 hours per month of work, training, education, or community service during a specified number of months to maintain eligibility. Analysis using Survey of Income and Program Participation data indicates that, as of December 2022, 44–60 percent of the 18.2 million recipients subject to the requirement would already be in compliance, depending on how many months of participation states require. As a result, 7.3 million–10.3 million recipients would need to increase their work or other qualifying activities to retain Medicaid coverage.
May 19, 2025
The Case for Shifting More Welfare Costs to States
As part of Congressional Republicans’ drive to craft “one big beautiful bill” reflecting Donald Trump’s…
May 2, 2025
SNAP is About Nutrition: My Response to Zycher
In a recent blog post, my AEI colleague Benjamin Zycher took issue with a letter…