Lets start with what this is not. This is not a rant against the Obama or any Presidential Administration. This is also not a rant against poverty. There are others who already do too much of that. This is an opinion after watching the current mayhem over the new health care law go into effect.
While I think that politics made the current health care law hopeless complicated, this is also not a whine about the new law. It is the current law. As an aside, for all the problems the health care website has had I do find it somewhere between hilarious and comforting to know that three guys created The Health Sherpa to do what a whole government bureaucracy could not do (interviewed on the news yesterday, they said it "was a little tough..."). I used The Health Sherpa to look up rates in my area and they were surprisingly low. I'm still not sure that makes me a believer, but if those numbers are correct then maybe there is hope!
The news media has surprisingly not shied away from reporting that many people who have perfectly acceptable plans will be losing them. The response has varied over time, but one of the responses was along the lines of, it is only 5% of the people. That statement is what will always be wrong with the Federal Government. The government plays in numbers, big numbers. The government will do what it thinks it can within those numbers to change, maybe to help. In effect, the government defines what the average person is (or more realistically, a few average people) and then targets towards that average. If anyone falls outside of that average, they must first conform. Ever tried to get help for a special situation in any bureaucracy?
This can be seen in the long-term federal response to poverty. Using realistic statistics and definitions, the federal government spends about $500 billion per year on poverty - this is a pretty easy number to come by using web searches and throwing away the skewed numbers used by the nutjobs on both the far left and right.
That is enough cash to lift every one of the 45 million Americans in poverty out of poverty. There are real and political reasons why that would never be sustainable, but the numbers in this case don't lie.
Part of the reason this money will never change the status quo is because the enormity of the federal government is so horribly inefficient. That much money can't be sent to Washington and doled out again without some loss at every transaction. Additionally, that money is spread throughout many departments all with their own fiefdoms and inefficiencies. It is good politics though.
The other reason this will never make real change is it is targeted at a predefined population. That money goes to help the "average" poor person. The people that don't fit that predefined mold are on their own. The farther a group or individual is away from the predefined target, the less likely help will be real. It is part of the reason that so many government programs target the cities, with more people, the average looks like it is there. Poverty in rural America is an afterthought.
The solution to this isn't the states, as too many of them work in the same way. The solution isn't large charitable organizations, they are targeting the same subgroups based on the same numbers (and read through the financials of the United Way). The solution is local. Unfortunately, local government is too strapped and at risk of political whim.
This leaves local charitable organizations to pick up all the pieces left over; all the "only 5%" out there.
There but for the grace of God go I - and those admirable organizations deserve as much help as they can get.
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