The Obama Budget: Expanding the Welfare state and Undermining Marriage

Rachel Sheffield / March 16, 2010

President Obama’s budget outlines a plan to pay states to grow their welfare roles and eliminate efforts to fight family breakdown in low-income communities. Despite the fact that low work hours and fatherlessness are two of the greatest contributors to poverty in the United States, the newly released budget provides incentives for states to increase the size of their caseloads and also wipes out funding for healthy marriage programs that aim to decrease the number of children growing up in single-parent homes.

Prior to 1996, the federal government increased a state’s welfare money as that state increased its caseload. Not surprisingly, this provided little motivation to help welfare recipients move into the workforce. The 1996 welfare reforms did away with this negative incentive and created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, leading to dramatic caseload declines and a decrease in the child poverty rate. (more…)