January 12, 2026
The “Upward Mobility Act” Seeks to Overcome Benefit Cliffs
Recent scandals in Minnesota have spotlighted billions of dollars lost to welfare fraud across multiple food, health, and childcare programs. Yet even when not being actively ripped off, those programs can still unintentionally yield negative outcomes, such as when they discourage work and keep families trapped in government programs for too long. That’s the message of a…
December 1, 2025
Apocalypse Not
Now we’re getting somewhere! Thanks to the person who posts on X.com using @MTSInsights, I know where Michael Green got his inflated cost estimates, which I critiqued in my last post. (Green, you may recall, claimed that $140,000 is the new poverty line and the “cost of existing.”) His figures come from the Living Wage Calculator (LWC), a project of…
November 27, 2025
The Real Math of Survival?
Earlier today (much earlier…) I posted a critique of the new viral post by Michael W. Green claiming that families with less than $140,000 in income should be considered to be in poverty. That critique focused on a truly absurd revision of how we measure poverty that has the effect of making us look dramatically poorer when in fact…
October 29, 2025
Who Is at Risk of Losing Snap Benefits Due to the Shutdown?
Unless the Senate passes legislation that reopens the federal government within the next few days (or the courts intervene), 22 million households containing 42 million individuals (approximately 12 percent of the US population) will not receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, commonly called food stamps) starting November 1st. For background, SNAP provides nearly $8 billion per month in…
October 28, 2025
Suspending SNAP Benefits in November Could Push 2.9 Million People Into Poverty
The ongoing federal government shutdown has put into question whether the federal government will continue to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in November. SNAP is one of the most important safety net programs in the United States, providing food assistance to 42.7 million people in an average month in 2024, at an annual cost of…
September 9, 2025
SNAP Prioritizes Nutrition in New Administration
As of last month, twelve states had received federal waivers allowing them to restrict the purchase of certain foods under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) based on limited nutritional value. These restrictions, set to take effect in 2026, will prohibit participants from using SNAP benefits to buy items such as soda, candy, and other sugary…
September 3, 2025
About Those “Devastating” Welfare Caseload Reductions
Newly-elected President Barack Obama famously lectured opposition leaders that “elections have consequences.” That’s never been more apparent than in recent Republican-crafted changes projected to shrink welfare caseloads in the coming years. Democrats vilify the changes as “devastating,” never mentioning they will mostly shrink still-bloated welfare caseloads closer to pre-pandemic levels. And by focusing some of…
September 2, 2025
Trump Can Do a Lot to Reduce Homelessness
President Trump has come out swinging on homelessness. After taking small steps to peel back the homelessness bureaucracy early in his term, he issued a far-reaching executive order in July intent on getting homeless people off the streets and into treatment. Over the past couple weeks the administration has taken direct action in Washington, DC to clear homeless encampments…
August 11, 2025
Beware Graduate Programs Masquerading as “Professional” to Increase Student Debt
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) included long-overdue limits on federal loans to graduate students. While graduate loans have been effectively unlimited, going forward, most students will be capped at borrowing up to $20,500 per year, or $100,000 in aggregate. This policy change should hold down student debt burdens—and make it harder for graduate…
July 30, 2025
It’s Not Surprising That No-Strings Attached Cash Didn’t Help Kids
A recent study put to the test an idea that has become increasingly influential over the past decade: To help kids thrive, one of the best things you can do is to give their parents cash with no strings attached. This idea was the impetus in 2021 for the one-year replacement of the existing Child Tax Credit—which…