Government assistance programs save lives. Period.
The swarm of perspectives on U.S. government assistance seems infinite. Everyone has an opinion on what welfare looks like in our country. Deeply embedded cultural opinions forge those opinions over lifetimes through media and our upbringings. Often, this messaging paints welfare as something corrupt. Government programs are reserved for those looking to scam something from our government. There’s a fear that those who use them burn through our hard-earned tax dollars while contributing nothing back. Those notions couldn’t be further from the truth.
Government benefits are some of the most crucial and life-saving functions of our government. These programs provide the most critical barrier between complete destitution and bare-bones survival for millions of Americans. For example, programs like WIC and SNAP are stopgaps between having very little food on the table and none at all. Folks using these programs struggle with the same issues we all feel: price fluctuations, housing shortages, rising costs with no real wage growth to match. All of those things mean that Americans with little to no income need government benefits to merely survive. Hardworking, working-class Americans need those benefits.
Imagine for a moment this scenario: you are a young mother, raised in a rural community. Your family has always been hardworking and instilled that work ethic in you. There wasn’t a lot of extra money to send you to school, so you tried to take some community college courses with the little scraps of money you could save up. You have two kids and you’re in your twenties. You’re married to your high school sweetheart, and you both work full-time jobs. Your husband is a prison guard, and you work at a dollar store. Your children are 1 and 4.
To many Americans, this would seem like the average American family. But unfortunately, despite working full-time jobs, that couple might not be able to afford essential basic needs. A mortgage, childcare, food, and utilities probably outstrip their earnings. Many other expenses associated with child-rearing are likely out of reach (think school supplies, trips to urgent care for ear infections). This is the modern American dilemma. This is also why benefits are so crucial – because they help average Americans and their families stay out of the most desperate types of poverty. With tools like the Child Tax Credit, there is an extra cushion to get some food on the table or baby formula. These programs are literally saving lives. In the grand scheme of all that our government does, shouldn’t people’s lives be our number one priority?
That being said, there is ample room for improvement in our welfare system. There are far too many needed changes to list out here, but we must keep building on the systems we already have rather than trying to reduce what little we’ve got.