Welfare

Housing for Hurricane Victims

Many people displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are faced with the challenge of finding new housing with few resources and a lack of steady income, at least for now. The federal government spends…
Aid to Katrina Victims: A Right/Left Consensus

People on both the left and right are using the tragedy of Katrina as a handy excuse to push agendas they favored long before the hurricane disaster. Here's a better idea: Put the normal political wra…
Subsidizing Disaster

Hurricane Katrina has focused attention on the increasing cost of natural disasters. Some federal programs unintentionally contribute to those losses. Federal flood insurance and U.S. Army Corps of En…
Unemployment Insurance in a Free Society

Unemployment insurance was intended to provide a financial safety net for laid-off workers. But the way the system is structured encourages employers to lay off employees and discourages workers from…
Public Housing Reform

In 1996, for the first time in modern history, Congress ended a welfare entitlement. It replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the federal-state program that provided cash assistance…
European Unemployment: Lessons for the United States

Europe is a great place to visit - but don't try to find a job there. Unemployment averaged 8.8 percent in Europe last year, compared to 6.1 percent in the United States. [See Figure I.] Americans hav…
Welfare Reform: Finishing the Job

Recently, for the fifth time, Congress temporarily extended the 1996 welfare reform law that established Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), the federal program that provides cash assistanc…
Ending Welfare as We Know It: Lessons From Canada

Welfare rolls in both Canada and the United States reached all-time highs in the 1990s. One province and a few states introduced reforms to slow the rate of increase or reduce the escalating cost. How…