Poverty and Social Services

There are currently more than 37 million Americans living in poverty. Although the percentage of poor Americans is, relative to the country's population, low historically, the actual number of impoverished U.S. residents has increased since 2000, when the figure was 31 million.

Approximately 5 million Americans are homeless, while about 43 million, including roughly 7 million children, are without health insurance. Additionally, due to the current economic downturn, hundreds of thousands of Americans are losing their jobs each month and, thus, their main source of income.

How much of a role should the federal government play in preventing or alleviating poverty? Should the government be responsible for helping the poor?

For much of its early history, the U.S. was without a so-called "social safety net"; there was minimal assistance from the government for impoverished Americans. That changed in the 20th century, however, as progressive politicians began to call for various programs to help low-income citizens.

Many of the social programs in the U.S. today--including Social Security and unemployment benefits--were initiated in the 1930s, during a decade-long economic crisis known as the Great Depression. During that period, jobs were very difficult to obtain, and about a quarter of Americans were unemployed. To combat the Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (D, 1933-45) instituted a variety of social programs, collectively known as the New Deal, designed to put Americans back to work and to ease the suffering caused by the Depression.

Roosevelt's successors Harry Truman (D, 1945-53) and Dwight Eisenhower (R, 1953-61) continued funding many of the New Deal programs, solidifying the role of the government in providing assistance to the poor. A slew of new social programs were created in the 1960s, when President Lyndon Johnson (D, 1963-69) waged his "War on Poverty," initiating a group of programs collectively known as the Great Society.

By the end of the 20th century, however, concerns that the government had become too intrusive in the lives of Americans led to a scaling back of federal programs, especially those intended to assist the poor. Indeed, the so-called Reagan revolution, promoted in the 1980s by the administration of President Ronald Reagan (R, 1981-89), emphasized scaling back the pervasiveness of "big government." In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton (D, 1993-2001) further altered the way the government dealt with the poor by signing a law that reshaped the federal welfare program, replacing financial assistance for low- or no-income families with incentives for welfare recipients to return to the workforce.

In December 2007, the U.S. entered a deep recession. The following year, the stock market lost nearly half its value, signaling to many that the U.S. economy could experience a prolonged downturn. With unemployment rising each month, the number of impoverished Americans is liable to increase substantially.

President Obama (D) has promoted a large role for the government in battling the recession and providing a social safety net for the poor; indeed, he signed legislation during his first 100 days in office that significantly expands unemployment benefits for laid-off workers and funds a series of construction projects to create jobs aimed at strengthening the U.S. infrastructure.

How should the government handle the problems of poverty and unemployment? Should it increase its funding of existing programs? Does it currently spend too much money on social programs, or not enough?

Proponents of increased spending on antipoverty programs argue that the U.S. government has an obligation to care for the country's least fortunate citizens. By ensuring that Americans at the bottom rung of the social ladder have adequate food, shelter and health care, the U.S. as a whole would be made stronger, advocates assert. A sturdy, well-funded social safety net is crucial to help low-income Americans deal with a fluctuating U.S. economy, proponents say.

Critics, meanwhile, contend that antipoverty programs do little more than breed laziness among low-income Americans. They argue that, if poor people knew that they could depend on the government to meet their basic needs, they would have little incentive to work hard, become self-sufficient and contribute to the U.S. economy. Additionally, opponents argue that federal antipoverty programs are too expensive as it is. It makes little sense to increase their funding, especially when there are countless private charities willing to help low-income Americans, opponents maintain.

In the 1920s the U.S. underwent a period of sustained economic growth. That era was also characterized, however, by vast economic inequality. Indeed, the economic benefits of the boom period, often referred to as the "roaring twenties," were limited to a relatively small number of citizens, and a large income gap existed between the rich and the poor.

In 1929, the U.S. stock market crashed. Before long, the Great Depression began, marked by extraordinarily high rates of unemployment and a severe economic contraction. People were unable to find jobs, and companies, making less money due to lowered demand, hired fewer and fewer workers.

In 1932, Roosevelt, the Democratic candidate for president, promised a "new deal for the American people." Indeed, Roosevelt's New Deal--a series of government-funded programs--was intended to create jobs and alleviate suffering among the unemployed. In his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination, he declared that he "favored the use of certain types of public works as a further emergency means of stimulating employment." Roosevelt promised that, in addition to providing jobs for the unemployed, his New Deal programs would make lasting contributions to American life. In his nomination speech he said that "no economic end is served if we merely build without building for a necessary purpose."

When Roosevelt became president in March 1933, almost 25% of Americans were unemployed. Roosevelt's first 100 days in office were characterized by almost unprecedented cooperation between the president and Congress, in which a flurry of new laws were enacted and a number of programs were instituted to help the poor. That time period was so productive that it became a model for the first 100 days in office of all future presidents. CBS reporter Chip Reid has noted that Roosevelt believed that "the federal government had a direct responsibility to create jobs, and to pay for them with tax dollars." Reid described that philosophy as "a complete break from [Roosevelt's predecessor] Herbert Hoover [R, 1929-33] and past presidents who believed that only corporations create jobs, and only private charities should take care of the poor."

The largest New Deal program, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), was established in 1935 to create jobs for the unemployed. (The program was renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939.) Projects funded by the WPA ranged from large industrial enterprises to commissions for works of art. The WPA, often considered "the signature program of the New Deal," was also one of Roosevelt's most controversial programs; the New York Times notes that it was the New Deal program "most attacked and reviled by conservatives," who felt that the U.S. should depend on private industry, not the government, to foster an economic recovery.

The WPA spent more than $10 billion between 1935 and 1943. According to the Times, Roosevelt and WPA head Harry Hopkins "saw an infrastructure mired in the 19th century: unpaved roads, rickety bridges, inadequate water and sewage treatment systems or none at all, national parks and forests damaged by deforestation and erosion." The WPA thus focused on modernizing the U.S. infrastructure; the program funded, for example, the construction of about 650,000 miles of new roads. Other notable infrastructure projects overseen by the WPA included the presidential retreat, Camp David, in Maryland, which was built for federal employees in 1936; the Outer Bridge Drive, in Chicago; LaGuardia Airport, in New York City; and Doubleday Field, in Cooperstown, N.Y., home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Additionally, the WPA provided clean-up jobs after natural disasters, such as fires, hurricanes and floods. The program also created positions for teachers, who were employed to help expand literacy among adults. Other WPA projects provided jobs for creative artists, such as abstract painter Jackson Pollock and folk singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie. Nick Taylor, author of American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA, explained, "The great thing that Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins recognized was that it made no sense whatsoever to take an excellent violin player and put him to work building a road.... He could provide, or she could provide, entertainment to people."

Another major New Deal program was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), designed to benefit the environment. The program sent about 3 million men between the ages of 17 and 23--all volunteers--to forests in every state to work on a variety of conservation projects, including planting trees and building reservoirs.

Despite the amount of money spent creating jobs, most experts agree that the New Deal did not end the Great Depression. It was the onset of World War II (1939-45), which necessitated increased military production and provided jobs to many Americans, that decisively improved economic conditions in the U.S. Still, many economists credit the New Deal with alleviating the symptoms of the Depression, easing the suffering of many Americans while making a lasting contribution to the U.S. infrastructure.

The most enduring New Deal programs were those created by the 1935 Social Security Act. Perhaps the most significant of those programs was Social Security itself.

Prior to the industrial revolution, when most people lived on small farms, families largely depended on those farms to provide for their elderly members. During the industrial revolution, however, the U.S. transitioned from an agricultural society to an industrial one; families moved from farms to the cities. Rather than working on family farms, individuals began working for others. Around that time, calls began to emerge for a government-sponsored retirement program to provide income for the elderly. Such calls intensified with the onset of the Depression.

In 1934, Roosevelt created a committee to investigate the possibility of a social security program. The resulting Social Security Act, signed by Roosevelt in 1935, provided income for retired workers over the age of 65.

Under Social Security, a payroll tax was imposed on workers' paychecks, with the money going into a trust fund. When workers retired, they would receive payments from that fund. Under the initial plan, workers received a lump-sum payment upon retiring. The first worker to qualify for Social Security was Ernest Ackerman, who retired the day after the program was initiated, in 1937. Five cents had been withheld from his pay during the one day he paid into the program, and he received a 17-cent lump-sum payment upon retiring. In 1940, the program was amended to break Social Security payments into monthly installments.

The Social Security Act also introduced unemployment benefits for the jobless. The program diverted part of the money from the payroll tax to an unemployment trust fund to compensate laid-off workers.

Another long-lasting initiative established by the Social Security Act was the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, which is now more commonly known as welfare. The program was designed to provide financial assistance to meet the needs of children whose parents were, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, "absent from the home, incapacitated, deceased, or unemployed."

In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a federal minimum wage. The law also mandated that employers pay workers time-and-a-half wages for working overtime, and instituted child labor protections.

While many New Deal programs, such as the CCC and the WPA, ended after the Depression, the social services created under the Social Security Act endured, becoming cornerstones of the government's efforts to protect Americans from the effects of poverty. Indeed, although those programs were controversial at the time they were enacted, they became so popular that they were renewed and strengthened by the presidential administrations of Roosevelt's successors, beginning with Truman and Eisenhower.

Despite the fact that the 1950s was one of the more equitable periods in U.S. history in terms of income distribution, the notion of a social safety net--a series of programs that would provide economic and financial protection for the poor--continued to be widely accepted. Even while a strong middle class was rising and the income gap between rich and poor was narrowing significantly, Eisenhower wrote to his brother Edgar, "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things.... Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Lyndon Johnson's 'Great Society'

In 1963, Vice President Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency after President John F. Kennedy (D, 1961-63) was assassinated. One of Johnson's first acts was to push civil rights legislation, which had been championed by Kennedy, through Congress.

Johnson also pledged to have legislation passed to help the poor, which Kennedy had also promoted. In a speech at the University of Michigan on May 22, 1964, Johnson spoke of the opportunity "to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society." He noted that such a society "rests on abundance and liberty for all," and "demands an end to poverty and racial injustice.... But that is just the beginning."

Indeed, ending the racist legacy of segregation had been a central goal of Johnson's. He also declared a "War on Poverty," pledging to provide equal opportunity for low-income Americans of every background. Although the U.S. economy was thriving in the early 1960s, many rural areas, such as Appalachia, had not been affected by the expansion of the middle class that took place during the 1950s. Indeed, in 1960, several years before Johnson became president, about one quarter of American families were living below the poverty line. Johnson said in his speech,

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents.... It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.

A central goal of Johnson's Great Society was to provide improved education and job training for all Americans. In 1964, Congress passed the Economic Opportunity Act (EOA), which established a variety of new social services to be administered under the auspices of the newly created Office of Economic Opportunity.

One such program was the Job Corps, a free career training program intended to provide work for underprivileged young Americans. The Web site of the program says that its goal is to teach the "fundamental skills students need to secure and maintain employment."

The EOA also established the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program, chartered to be a "domestic Peace Corps." VISTA volunteers were assigned to poor communities, where they would work to help improve living standards in various ways.

In 1964, Congress also passed the Food Stamp Act, which instituted a program designed to help poor families receive "a greater share of the Nation's food abundance." The program issued "coupons" to low-income families intended solely for the purchase of food.

Other Great Society initiatives included the Wilderness Protection Act, which protected more than 9 million acres of forest land from industrial development; the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed discriminatory practices that were intended to keep African Americans from voting; and the Air and Water Quality Acts, which attempted to reduce environmental pollution.

While many of the programs initiated as part of the Great Society still exist, perhaps its most enduring legacy was the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, two government-sponsored health insurance programs that cover the elderly and the poor, respectively.

The programs were authorized in 1965, when Congress passed an updated version of the Social Security Act. The Medicare program, which was the larger of the two, was funded by the same payroll tax as Social Security. Workers would contribute to the program from each paycheck, with their contributions being matched by their employers; upon retiring, in addition to receiving Social Security payments, workers would be entitled to health insurance.

In the mid-1960s, about 44% of senior citizens had no health insurance and could ill-afford to pay their medical bills. As a result, around one third of seniors were living below the poverty line. Upon signing the legislation, Johnson said,

No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine. No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later years. No longer will young families see their own incomes...eaten away simply because they are carrying out their deep moral obligations to their parents.

Johnson was initially popular with Americans; he was elected to a full term as president in 1964 by a wide margin over Republican challenger Barry Goldwater. By the end of Johnson's tenure, however, the U.S. had become mired in the increasingly unpopular conflict in Vietnam (1959-75), which began as a civil war between the northern and southern parts of the country. The U.S. backed South Vietnam against the communist North, which was supported by the Soviet Union. Tens of thousands of young Americans were killed in the conflict, and, by the end of Johnson's presidency, nationwide protests against the war had gripped the U.S. The war shifted the public's attention from Johnson's social programs; by 1968, he had become so unpopular that he decided not to run for reelection.
1996 Welfare Reform

While the Great Society programs corresponded with a reduction in the number of Americans living in poverty, some experts say the increased government spending took its toll on the U.S. economy. Critics of government spending say that large budget deficits created by Johnson's programs led to an economic slowdown in the 1970s, marked by soaring inflation--a rise in prices beyond what people could afford.

Social programs became less prevalent during the 1980s. In his first inaugural address, President Reagan declared, "Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem." Indeed, during the so-called Reagan revolution of the 1980s, conservatives assailed excessive government spending and sought to curtail many social programs.

That trend continued into the 1990s, when President Clinton signed a sweeping welfare reform bill that, in many ways, dismantled the program. Welfare had long been controversial, criticized by conservatives for doling out cash to unemployed Americans who, they argued, did not contribute to society and therefore did not deserve government assistance. Reagan had spoken many times of a "welfare queen" who defrauded the government out of thousands of dollars and flagrantly drove around Chicago in a Cadillac. Clinton himself had, during his 1992 presidential campaign, promised to "end welfare as we know it."

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, supported and signed by Clinton in 1996, removed many of the welfare benefits for the poor established in the 1930s. The new legislation replaced the AFDC program with the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program. TANF was designed to encourage unemployed or low-income parents to find jobs instead of staying home with their children. The new rules placed strict time limits on how long people could receive welfare benefits, and ended federal housing subsidies, which helped poor Americans pay their rent.

The new program provided incentives, such as assistance in paying for child care for low-income parents who sought employment. Additionally, while the AFDC had been administered directly by the federal government, TANF granted states a large amount of leniency in drafting their own welfare rules. Indeed, TANF funds are distributed by the federal government to states, each of which administers its own financial assistance program.

The welfare reform act had a large impact on the way the U.S. provided assistance for its poor. Former head of the Department of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt described the legislation as "a profoundly important philosophic shift.... This was...one of the few things in a decade you can look at and say the world really changed." Journalist Richard Wolf noted in USA Today that the act "ended a 60-year-old federal guarantee of cash aid for the poor," and stated that, as the legislation passed, "conservatives celebrated and liberals screamed."

The 'Great Recession'

The U.S. economy was generally strong throughout the 1990s, and the number of poor Americans decreased. The economy began to struggle, however, around 2000, and fell into a recession in 2001. Although the country ostensibly recovered within a couple of years, the number of Americans living under the poverty line continued to increase. Wealthy Americans, however, earned more money than they had in decades. In fact, in 2005, the income gap between rich and poor reached its highest level since 1928.

By the end of 2007, the economy had entered a recession. The following year, the situation worsened; many experts described the economic crisis as the most severe faced by the U.S. since the Great Depression. Indeed, unemployment rose considerably, with hundreds of thousands of workers losing their jobs each month. Many experts have dubbed the downturn the "Great Recession."

President Obama took office in January 2009, promising to concentrate all the government's resources on battling the recession. In February, Congress passed a stimulus package that Obama had heavily promoted. The package greatly expanded unemployment benefits, extending and increasing payments to unemployed workers currently eligible for assistance and increasing the number of workers who qualified for help.

That same month, Obama introduced his federal budget for 2010, which presented a drastic change in priorities from the budgets drawn up by his predecessor, George W. Bush (R, 2001-09). Whereas Bush's budgets had focused on lowering taxes, Obama's budget called for a tax increase on the wealthiest Americans. Obama also sought to initiate a national health care plan, and a series of alternative energy initiatives that would create "green" jobs for unemployed workers.

A doctor treats a patient in a Mission of Mercy mobile health clinic in Frederick, Maryland. Mission of Mercy is a nonprofit organization that provides free health care in communities with high poverty rates.

Some observers likened Obama's budget priorities to Roosevelt's New Deal; others compared his attempts to alleviate poverty to Johnson's Great Society. New York Times journalist David Sanger, however, noted that Obama's initiatives appeared to be "aimed more at a middle class that missed out on the [economic boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s] than at the nation's poorest, who would benefit to a significantly lesser extent."

Still, many observers have compared Obama's desire to undo the Bush administration's economic policies to Johnson's crusade to eradicate poverty. Obama has claimed that Bush's policies allowed "the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few." Indeed, Sanger noted that Obama has adopted a far more progressive agenda than Bill Clinton, the previous Democrat in the White House, claiming that Obama "appears to have shed President Clinton's fear of being labeled an old-fashioned liberal."

Antipoverty Programs in the U.S.

The federal government currently offers many programs to help the poor. Those programs include assistance in paying for education, purchasing food, finding work and more. Supporters Say U.S. Government Is Obliged to Help the Poor

Proponents of increased federal funding for social-service programs maintain that the U.S. government has a moral obligation to assist low-income Americans. The Declaration of Independence states that "the pursuit of happiness" is a human being's "inalienable right," supporters note. Those proponents argue that happiness cannot be achieved unless one is freed from the shackles of poverty. The federal government, therefore, is duty-bound to provide the basic necessities of life--such as shelter, food and health care--without which no American can hope to achieve happiness, supporters contend. Federal programs such as housing vouchers, food stamps and Medicaid help provide those basic necessities, proponents say, and should be maximally funded.

Despite the recent economic downturn, supporters note, the U.S. is still by far the world's richest country in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), the total value of all the goods and services produced by a country in a given year. It is inexcusable, they maintain, that a country with so much wealth could let so many millions of its people descend into poverty.

That is especially true in light of a February 2009 study which found that growing up in poverty has an adverse effect on the development of children's brains, advocates argue. The study, presented by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, stated that "many young children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development." Children of poverty risk long-lasting damage to their brains, which ultimately limits their ability to transcend their impoverished backgrounds, thereby creating a permanent underclass in the U.S., supporters say. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman called the study "another, even more compelling reason to be ashamed about America's record of failing to fight poverty."

In fact, supporters of antipoverty programs contend that, without any help from the government, poor people are likely to stay mired in poverty. The reason, they argue, is because being poor is a greater drain on one's relative resources than being comparatively well-off. "The poorer you are, the more things cost," writes Washington Post journalist DeNeen Brown. "More in money, time, hassle, exhaustion, menace. This is a fact of life that reality television and magazines don't often explain."

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D, Ore.), one of the House's strongest proponents of federal antipoverty programs, elaborates:

The poor pay more for a gallon of milk; they pay more on a capital basis for inferior housing. The poor and 100 million who are struggling for the middle class actually end up paying more for transportation, for housing, for health care, for mortgages.... The poor pay more for things middle-class America takes for granted.

Many proponents further note that living in poverty has almost become the norm for many minorities in the U.S. They point out that in 2007--the last year for which data are available--24.5% of African Americans and 21.5% of Hispanics lived in poverty, compared with 8.2% of white Americans and 10.2% of Asians. Increasing funding for antipoverty programs would help to eliminate that unfortunate racial disparity, supporters maintain.

By aiding the least fortunate Americans, federal antipoverty programs actually benefit the entire country, advocates assert. Federally funded food stamps and housing vouchers are used to purchase goods and shelter, thereby boosting local economies, proponents note. Increasing funding for the federal school lunch program would lead to healthier lunches that use fresh fruits and vegetables, thereby lowering the rate of obesity in the U.S., supporters say. In addition, if the federal government gave more money to SCHIP, all Americans would "save money and strengthen our economy as kids get more preventative care, instead of waiting for grievous illness to take them to the [emergency room]," writes Bill Scher of the Campaign for America's Future, a politically progressive think tank.

Perhaps the most compelling reason to substantially increase funding for federal social programs is that those programs have been proven to work, proponents say. Krugman notes that, during the years when Johnson's Great Society program was being adequately funded, poverty plummeted; 14% of Americans were living below the poverty line in 1969, compared with 23% in 1963. However, Krugman writes, in the subsequent decades, "American politics shifted to the right, attention shifted from the suffering of the poor to the alleged abuses of welfare [by recipients], and the fight against poverty was largely abandoned." More federal funding of antipoverty programs is necessary to bring the poverty rate back down to a manageable level, proponents assert.

Boosting funding for such programs would also enable many more Americans eligible for benefits to actually receive them, supporters further argue. Only two-thirds of Americans who are eligible to receive food stamps through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) actually do so, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the government organization that administers the program. Part of the problem, officials say, is that SNAP offices are often situated in far-flung locations accessible only by car, and many low-income Americans do not own a car. Also, USDA officials continue, many potential applicants are foreign-born citizens hindered by a lack of fluency in English. If more money were given to federal antipoverty programs such as SNAP, then offices could be established in more convenient locations, proponents argue, and be staffed with bilingual workers.

Increased funding would also allow antipoverty programs to drastically expand their rolls, supporters argue. Currently, they maintain, many social programs adhere to excessively strict eligibility requirements. For example, to qualify for SNAP, Americans must have incomes lower than the federal poverty level, which is roughly $22,000 for a family of four. Americans who earn $25,000 per year, therefore, are not eligible for federal assistance to help feed a family of four, proponents of increased spending say. Additionally, participants in SNAP receive an average of just $95 a month in food stamps, well below the median monthly expenditure on food by U.S. households (roughly $184). Boosting spending on federal programs would allow the government to increase its benefits, supporters assert.

Advocates have argued that the federal government is partially responsible for the plight of many low-income Americans. The reason, they argue, is that the federal minimum wage is far too low, despite three recent increases. In July 2007, the federal minimum wage was raised to $5.85 per hour, from $5.15. The following July, it went up to $6.55, and it is scheduled to go up again, to $7.25, in July 2009.

Supporters maintain that it is essentially impossible to live in the U.S. on just $7.25 an hour. They advocate for a "living wage," which would give people enough money to adequately cover the costs of food, child care, education, health care, housing and transportation--and still have some money left over at the end of the month to spend (or save) as they chose. A mandated living wage--which some activists estimate could be as high as $13 an hour--would pull millions out of poverty, proponents claim. However, until a national living wage is established, the federal government has an obligation to provide as much money as it can to antipoverty programs, supporters assert.

Proponents of increased spending on antipoverty programs often have to fend off the argument that programs such as welfare, food stamps and Medicaid make people too willing to accept government handouts without contributing to the national economy in return. Those criticisms are misguided, supporters maintain. They argue that people who rely on welfare and other social programs can hardly be said to live comfortably, and that claims of welfare queens driving Cadillacs are largely mythical. In fact, most people who currently benefit from federal social programs are children, proponents note. Approximately three-quarters of welfare recipients in the U.S. are under the age of 18, supporters point out. Critics' attempts to demonize welfare recipients are therefore not based in reality, advocates of increased funding assert.

Critics of increased spending also argue that the government need not concern itself with reducing poverty because there are plenty of nonprofit organizations dedicated to doing just that. Supporters, however, maintain that there are problems with placing social services exclusively in the hands of private charities. A 2008 study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago, for example, determined that nonprofit antipoverty organizations are less efficient than government programs when it comes to helping poor Americans find employment, education and health care.

Another reason why nonprofit organizations perform poorly is that they receive the bulk of their funding through private donations, proponents note. The money they have at their disposal--and their ability to help low-income people--is therefore subject to the vagaries of the economy, advocates assert. "Private philanthropy dedicated to social services...declines during economic downturns," writes the University of Chicago's William Harms. "Ironically, funding to [private] service programs is cut when the need for help arises."

Indeed, the recent downturn in the global economy has only highlighted the need for a guaranteed, taxpayer-supported social safety net, supporters of increased funding say. Proponents note that many social programs, including SNAP and TANF, have seen the number of their recipients rise throughout the U.S.'s economic recession, which began in December 2007. If, as economists predict, the economy is still several years away from making a full recovery, the ranks of Americans on welfare and food stamps could swell even more, supporters say. That is why, they maintain, increased funding of antipoverty programs must be one of the federal government's highest budgetary priorities.

Antipoverty advocates say that it would be relatively simple for the federal government to find the money for programs such as SNAP and TANF. They argue that the government very well could have redirected a big portion of the $700 billion bailout bill--which was passed in early 2009 and was aimed at the U.S.'s failing financial sector--toward such programs. "Since the government is giving away all this other money, why can't they give us enough to eat for a month, especially the seniors and the poor people?" asks Adell Davis, a low-income senior citizen subsisting on food stamps on the South Side of Chicago.

The government can generate more money for antipoverty programs through a variety of moves, proponents contend. For example, it could raise taxes on the upper class. Currently, Americans in the top income tax bracket pay a 35% income tax, supporters point out; the federal government could generate more revenue by raising that rate to 50%, its level during Reagan's first term. Additionally, some pundits--including former senator and presidential candidate George McGovern (D, S.D.)--have suggested that the U.S.'s military budget could be cut in half without harming national security. That money could be redirected into antipoverty programs, proponents suggest.

Finally, a small percentage of antipoverty advocates characterize themselves as socialists, arguing that capitalism itself is to blame for poverty in the U.S. "The creation of poverty is...a necessary by-product of capitalism," writes Tony Wilsdon of the organization Socialist Alternative. "It flows from the internal workings of the system, which allows a few rich owners of vast capital to extract the labor of its workers for a pittance." Short of a complete overhaul of the U.S. economy, the best way to correct for the fundamental unfairness of capitalism is to fund antipoverty programs to their fullest extent, Wilsdon asserts.
Antipoverty Programs Are Wasteful and Expensive, Critics Respond

Critics of expanding federal funding for antipoverty programs argue that such programs encourage laziness and complacency among low-income Americans. If Americans know that they can fall back on a generously funded welfare program, opponents contend, they will have little incentive to work very hard. Critics argue that programs such as TANF actually hurt low-income Americans more than they help them, because they discourage them from becoming valuable members of society. People who rely on antipoverty programs have no incentive to increase their earning power, since all of their basic needs are met by the government, opponents maintain.

Antipoverty programs are already a tremendous strain on the federal budget, critics say; funding them further is simply a bad idea. Funding for programs such as Medicaid--which is budgeted for every year, no matter what the state of the economy--threatens to "drown future generations in taxes and debt," according to Brian Riedl and Alison Acosta Fraser of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Indeed, the money for such programs has to come from somewhere, critics argue; Riedl and Fraser claim that the lavish funding for antipoverty programs comes at the expense of future generations of Americans, who will be stuck with the bill. According to Riedl and Fraser, unless funding for such programs is reined in,

America faces a future of soaring taxes and government spending that will cause poor economic performance. Americans will pay onerous taxes, and future generations will have lower living standards than Americans enjoy today.

Critics argue that many of today's programs are being drastically overfunded, considering that large numbers of eligible Americans choose not to avail themselves of the benefits they are entitled to. According to the USDA, only two-thirds of eligible SNAP recipients participate in the program. Opponents of increased funding maintain that it would be silly to boost the funding for a program when so many eligible Americans are seemingly reluctant to participate.

If anything, the eligibility requirements for government-funded antipoverty programs should be tightened, critics say. Opponents argue that far too many people currently receive benefits, including recently arrived immigrants, both legal and illegal. "For new immigrants, access to social services could be limited to emergency health care," writes William Niskanen of the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute. Niskanen further suggests that "