“The president’s budget has this tension where they’re basically saying we want people to go to work, and they’re cutting the resources
that would allow people to get there,” said LaDonna Pavetti, vice president for family income support at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, citing cuts in Mr. Trump’s budget to work force training, cash assistance and food stamps.
We need everybody pulling in the same direction.”
Mr. Mulvaney did not specify how work requirements might be phased in for food stamps — or how much it would cost to police such requirements for any of these programs —
but he questioned whether everyone receiving help today truly needs it.
“There was a mantra associated with some aspects of welfare reform — ‘a job, a better job, then a career’ —
that led people to think getting off welfare into the work force would be the beginning of an upward progression until you enter the middle class,” said Jeffrey Grogger, a professor of urban policy at the University of Chicago who has studied welfare reform.
Her argument underscores the fundamental difference in how conservatives and liberals view the role of work in poverty programs: The liberal view assumes
that people want to work, but that they may need assistance to get there, and that government should take on that role.
Why Work Requirement Became a Theme of the Trump Budget -
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The new White House budget proposal is built on a deep-rooted conservative belief: The government
should help those who are willing to work, and cull from benefit rolls those who aren’t.
A work requirement separates people who truly need assistance, he says, from those who don’t but are happy to take free government help.
