If you were returning to Earth after spending the last 20 years on Mars, you could be forgiven if you thought that using block grants for anti-poverty programs was a good idea. After all, who could object to providing flexibility for state governments to deal with unique conditions on the ground? It just makes sense.
Except, in the real world, many state governments are perpetually controlled by people who view the poor (in their eyes, undeserving panhandling minorities) as the enemy, and who are more than happy to make them miserable. My own state, which turned down federal money for infrastructure improvements and Medicaid expansion, is a good example of that. You can bet that some states will find a way to use block grants to move money around in order to finance tax cuts for wealthy people. So, when you add the absence of good faith implementation to the cuts that inevitably will follow block grants, you have the ingredients for a war on the poor.
It’s going to happen. I don’t see any way to stop it. The questions then become:
- How do Trump’s white working class and elderly supporters respond when the scapegoats are duly punished, but their lives don’t improve at all?
- How does Trump react to the likely avalanche of stories about how his war on the poor isn’t exactly making America great again?
Once again, be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it, and then, who knows?