Kaus is officially a cheerleader and not a journalist
Kaus offers up comments on welfare again and loses any sort of balanced approach. First, welfare caseloads are down. This may or may not be a good sign. One of the features of welfare reform is that states have every incentive to cut-off recipients and so we see an increase in administrative cut-offs. From his link, we don’t have an analysis of what kind of cut-offs are they so whether this is good or not is hard to tell.
Admin cut-offs are for violating rules. Adding to this, caseloads should be dropping since many states are hitting the 5 year time limit–though many are evading this as well.
The second piece of news is also mixed. It is great that black children are moving out of poverty, but what does that mean about other race poverty since overall child poverty is constant? Probably that rural poverty isn’t being improved and that is going to be a serious test of welfare reform. Rural poverty is much harder to target as are rural schools.
Welfare reform did some good things, some bad things (permanent residents) and some things we just don’t understand yet. Kaus seems intent on using every piece of evidence to prove his point. The problem is he is supposed to be a journalist who has some objectivity.