The aim of this piece is to consider how the Christian ought to think about welfare. Not to paint in too broad of stroke, but there are a few general complaints about welfare from both sides of the (American) political spectrum that I think can be engaged more fruitfully through the lens of the Gospel. I’ll be pulling excerpts from the most recent party platforms from the latest Republican and Democratic national conventions (2016 and 2020, respectively) when discussing policy.
What is welfare?
We will steal the most basic dictionary definition to create some common ground: welfare is defined as “social effort designed to promote the basic physical and material well-being of people in need”. Pretty simple: the government gives people assisstance when they are in need.
In the United States, there are seven main welfare programs: Medicaid/Medicare, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Child's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), housing assistance, and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).
The Christian can broadly agree that care of children and the elderly are universal human rights1, and thus I will not write about Social Security, Medicare or CHIP.
Some broad strokes on the others:
SNAP2: formerly known as food stamps, a means tested program that provides assistance for families making less than $1,245 a month in pre-tax income for an individual and $2,552 for couples. Comes with a 30 hour a week work requirement and only applies for those with less than $2,250 in the bank or other liquid sources. Limits what food can be purchased with SNAP benefits: broadly speaking, vitamins/medicine, hygiene products, or hot prepared food cannot be purchased with SNAP benefits. There is no maximum amount of time these benefits can be received for.
TANF: as the name states, is temporary assistance for impoverished families. Maintains the 30 hour work requirement from SNAP (35 for two parent households). States have broad discretion as to how to administer these funds, with the main guidance being to serve families with children—as such, each state’s requirements for application and method and amount of disbursement vary wildly. For example, individuals receiving TANF benefits in Pennsylvania cannot also receive Social Security benefits.
Housing assistance: the largest of these programs is known as Section 8, which provides for some amount of low-income rental assistance, usually ensuring rent maxes out at 30% of a tenant’s adjusted income. Every state’s laws for application and receipt of a Section 8 voucher are different, but most report that it may take three to six years to receive assistance.
EITC: briefly expanded in conjunction with the Child Tax Credit (and then retracted), the EITC is a tax credit that phases in at $0 of post-tax income, plateaus around $10,000-$15,000, and phases out anywhere from $40,000 to $58,000, depending on your number of children and marital status. Maxes out at three children, and comes as a one-time yearly tax benefit to those who file. The IRS estimates that about 20 percent of eligible taxpayers do not claim $7.3 billion of EITC money each tax year3.
Now we’ll consider some common arguments, given the official platforms put out by the Republican and Democratic parties as a jumping off point.
Welfare as Permanent Solution
To their credit, the Republican policy begins with a particularly salient point:
We have been fighting the War on Poverty for 50 years and poverty is winning. Our social safety net — about 80 separate means-tested programs costing over $1 trillion every year4 — is designed to help people born into or falling into poverty. It
rarely lifts them out. […] Republicans propose to evaluate a poverty program by whether it actually reduces poverty and increases the personal independence of its participants.
I think most reasonable people would agree that the goal of having a welfare system or a social safety net is to catch people when they fall, and perhaps also to help solve cycles of systemic inter-generational poverty. At least, that is how you can read the Republican statement above, which (one presumes) would be more restrictive and narrow by nature than the Democratic one on the subject.
It is also reasonable to say that one should not “hang out” on welfare for their entire lives, if they can help it. This is a popular conservative talking point: Reagan popularized the phrase “welfare queen” to lump in those who defraud the welfare system along with many of those receiving legitimate benefits for an extended period of time due to their circumstances. This is pretty factually incorrect for basically all benefits, because receiving at least one of them pretty quickly invalidates you for another.
Let’s play a game. You are under the federal poverty line, and apply for the EITC tax credit. You make a small amount and have multiple children, so you get, say, $3,0005. You’re immediately taken off SNAP and cannot receive those benefits for food stamps. Lose your job? Unemployment assistance will cover 30-50% of your pay for a while6, likely putting you under the threshold (monetarily speaking) to quality for TANF and SNAP, but you no longer fulfill the working hours requirement, so you lose your benefits. One can easily understand how a single event or odd circumstance can disqualify you from the aid you should nominally receive as an impoverished person in the United States. Therefore, the "welfare queen" argument doesn't make sense--these benefits are rarely given in conjunction, and even so, they do not add up to enough money for someone to live "comfortably" in any way on that amount of help.
Welfare as Improper Solution
Back to the Republican platform:
We propose instead the dynamic compassion of work requirements in a growing economy, where opportunity takes the place of a hand-out, where true self-esteem can grow from the satisfaction of a job well done.
We call for removal of structural impediments which progressives throw in the path of poor people: Over-regulation of start-up enterprises, excessive licensing requirements, needless restrictions on formation of schools and day-care centers serving neighborhood families, and restrictions on providing public services in fields like transport and sanitation that close the opportunity door to all but a favored few.
The Republican proposals follow a common theme in right-wing anti-poverty solutions: some combination of “just get a job”7 and funneling money into programs and other related policies that they believe will decrease poverty.
To their credit, SNAP and other programs providing non-cash assistance have their place. Millions of Americans are able to provide food for themselves and their families that they otherwise would not be able to because of this program. But when there are non-food needs that families have to be able to provide for, it would make sense to let those families take care of them on an individual basis.
Getting a job is a great solution: in fact, it is already necessary to apply for almost any of the welfare benefits in this country. The issue is that when a job’s pay does not place a person above the federal poverty line, there are minimal ways for them to get there, or even to provide for themselves. They are stuck in a sustenance-only financial situation, with no means to invest in, say, a vehicle or professional training that would allow them to make more money. This study utilizing US Census data shows the financial bind and lack of flexibility that individuals and families earning up to even 200% of the poverty line are in—there is no room for investment, no room to become upwardly mobile.
To pontificate for a second: there is a strong visceral reaction on the right against “hand-outs”, which translates to giving people cash. I can understand this at a human level—it is odd to see other people being handed money for nothing, while you have to work a job (in most cases) to be handed money. What I would respond is that the government is already paying out a plurality of its annual budget to different social safety nets (if you include Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security, etc). Would we not all like to see this money utilized in a way that translates to direct reduction of poverty, in the most efficient way possible?
If this is the case, the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) in 2021 was a great case study—facilitating the payments through the already existing Social Security structure allowed them to be made automatically, which lifted 3.7 million children out of poverty8. There were 10 million children in poverty before Covid hit, in 20199. This program, overnight, pulled 1/3 of the children in this country out of poverty, using funds that were already earmarked for social services.
At the end of 2021, Congress failed to renew the credit, and 1/3 of the children that were released from poverty were given back to it. If there is a more effective and straightforward way to provide for the basic needs and welfare of impoverished children in this country, I am not aware of it.
Welfare as Means-Testing
Switching to the Democratic platform:
We will support the 10-20-30 funding approach, to direct at least 10 percent of federal funding to communities where 20 percent or more of the population has been living below the poverty line for 30 years or longer.
Welfare is less of a non-starter for Democrats than it is Republicans, but the general impediment to welfare for the left is means-testing, or putting lots of conditions on who can receive benefits and under what conditions those benefits can be received. Think of the SNAP benefits: we’ll give you stamps to buy groceries, but only certain kinds. We’ll give you assistance—under the right conditions.
The logical argument against this is a cost-benefit analysis. Somewhere between 30-60% of welfare benefits go unclaimed every year10. This is not for lack of trying--some states are hoarding welfare funds while they deny applicants for the funds on technical reasoning11. A large swath of people in poverty either do not know how to apply for the benefits or do not have a computer or internet access to make that happen. Benefits are often received either through a bank account or a prepaid debit card mailed to an address--both of these qualifications are hard for the homeless or those without the ability to open a bank account. In our current world, a host of benefits are stuck with administrators (for mostly bureaucratic reasons), leaving those who most need them unable to receive them.
Were these benefits streamlined and not means-tested against a plethora of qualifications, they could be loaded directly into bank accounts or picked up at a local Social Security branch or post office—in much the same way the expanded Child Tax Credit was. The benefits would be easily accessible and it would be ensured that they would reach their intended target without being garnished.
The downside is that some would receive some small benefits that they likely do not need. I would respond by asking if this is worth the benefit of alleviating poverty in our country. If we were to, say, raise the taxes on investment income by 1%, would it be worth paying back those receiving the income a bit to end mass suffering and child starvation in our country? Let the reader sit, and perhaps pray with, the question.
Welfare as a Christian
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, beginning with paragraph 1903, reads:
Authority is exercised legitimately only when it seeks the common good of the group concerned and if it employs morally licit means to attain it. If rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral order, such arrangements would not be binding in conscience. In such a case, ‘authority breaks down completely and results in shameful abuse.’ […]
By common good is to be understood ‘the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.’ The common good concerns the life of all. It calls for prudence from each, and even more from those who exercise the office of authority.
[T]he common good requires the social well-being and development of the group itself. Development is the epitome of all social duties. Certainly, it is the proper function of authority to arbitrate, in the name of the common good, between various particular interests; but it should make accessible to each what is needed to lead a truly human life: food, clothing, health, work, education and culture, suitable information, the right to establish a family, and so on.
The Christian, then, believes that the state must support the common good, a good that creates social conditions in which people can flourish in their fulfillment. This fulfillment not only contains the ability to maintain one’s well-being through the necessities listed above, but the ability to pursue one’s vocation, especially that in marriage. To be able to provide for a family is no easy task, but it is plainly obvious that families are good, and contributing to their stability and flourishing is good. Allowing families to have as many children as they are called to is good, and providing a safety net for their flourishing even in the event of unforeseen circumstance or tragedy is good.
The Christian may find it difficult at times to empathize with those who have struggled financially, or to offer assistance when they themselves have gotten out of hard times on their own. But the Christian would do well to recall the virtue of forgiveness, as Our Lord commands: forgive, as you shall be forgiven. To accept someone’s circumstances for what they are, without judgement on past or present, is to embrace one another as one is embraced by the Lord. Indeed, when welfare is distributed, assistance is offered from one Christian (through collection of taxes) to another. Indirectly, yes—but charity nonetheless, and certainly a building up of the kingdom.
The Christian may choose to gatekeep benefits from the needy, or wonder why their money is being used for such a task. But the Christian ought remember that all things are given to us by God to build up the kingdom on Earth, and that contributing to the common good in this way is paving the way to heaven for many. The Christian may recall the man who stores up his wealth in bigger and bigger barns, and the warning he ought to heed: “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded of you.”12
The Christian may consider that those receiving benefits must first make themselves ready to receive them and use them in perfect accord with what the Christian wishes. The Christian ought to consider the example of Jesus, who dispenses healing without condition. In the story of the woman caught in adultery13, Christ does not put qualifications or preconditions on His saving her from the Pharisees. He simply asks her, after saving her, to go and sin no more. Not once in the Gospel is she checked up upon to ensure that she has sinned no more: in fact our Lord knows that she will, as she is human, sin again. This does not stop Him from saving her from her current (one could argue self-inflicted) misery.
Finally, the Christian, seeing suffering, must either respond with mercy or justice. The implement they choose will be the one by which they are weighed at their particular judgement.
Paragraph 2288 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church reads: “Life and physical health are precious gifts entrusted to us by God. We must take reasonable care of them, taking into account the needs of others and the common good.
Concern for the health of its citizens requires that society help in the attainment of living-conditions that allow them to grow and reach maturity: food and clothing, housing, health care, basic education, employment, and social assistance.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Nutrition_Assistance_Program#Eligibility. If you don’t like Wikipedia as a source, consider that all political factions have to come together to agree what the facts are about these policies to see what is presented to you on this page.
https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/iereports/2018reports/2018IER004fr.pdf
Couldn’t actually source this out—this figure likely undersells the amount if you consider Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc. For FY 2016, the government spent just under $4 trillion, with $521 billion going to defense, per https://www.thebalancemoney.com/fy-2016-federal-budget-3882293.
I’m ignoring what a tax credit *technically* is here, since a tax credit for those not paying taxes is functionally cash.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/07/20/how-does-unemployment-insurance-work-and-how-is-it-changing-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic/
To be clear—I am choosing to interpret the Republican policy line as charitably as I can. It is good to work, and it is good for people to have jobs. These incentives and qualifiers exist to promote good things. But benefits shouldn’t be admonished when circumstances (child care, lack of ability or training, minimum wage cancelling out their benefits, disability, etc) lead to employment not being an option for some.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-impacts-of-the-2021-expanded-child-tax-credit-on-family-employment-nutrition-and-financial-well-being/
https://econofact.org/child-poverty-in-the-u-s
https://assets.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/AECF-ImprovingAccessToPublicBenefits-2010.pdf
This is a really heartbreaking piece, but I think it’s worth reading: https://www.propublica.org/article/states-are-hoarding-52-billion-in-welfare-funds-even-as-the-need-for-aid-grows
Luke 12:20
John 8:1-11