The 2019 government shutdown is just the latest reason why poor people can’t bank on the safety net
“I conduct a lot of in-depth interviews with people like a woman I’ll call Angie as part of my work as a political scientist who studies poverty and public policy. When I asked the low-income mother of two, who works multiple jobs but still struggles to care for her family, about her experience with government assistance programs, she expressed dismay over benefit cuts. ‘The people who make these rules … they don’t have any poor people in their family,’ she told me. ‘That is why they are willing to chop so many services for the poor.’”