Browsing: Safety Net

Gov. Tony Evers is pressing the Legislature for $70 million to process FoodShare applications to stave off federal penalties that could cost state taxpayers as much as $225 million.

Plans for a municipally-owned grocery store in Madison is the perfect illustration of why government should stay out of an intensely competitive business it knows nothing about.

“Democrats put themselves in the situation we’re in, and it’s non-winnable,” says Rachidi, a researcher who has written extensively about FoodShare and SNAP.

Overwhelmingly popular new mandate spurs action from nonprofits Editor’s note: Fourteen years ago, the Badger Institute (then known as WPRI)…

Wisconsin’s 2025-2027 biennial budget includes several provisions aimed at improving the affordability of childcare in the Badger state.

There are 541 days until the next Legislature’s sworn in, and there’s plenty of unfinished business

A federal judge’s injunction is blocking the closing down Job Corps centers — including two in Wisconsin — that have an expensive and dismal record ostensibly training the young and disadvantaged for work.

Rent control policies result in a lower stock of available housing, a lower quality of available housing, increased rents for properties that are not controlled, and spillover effects that harm those in the surrounding community.

Lawmakers are seeking support for legislation that would prohibit Wisconsin’s 700,000 FoodShare recipients from buying candy and soda with program benefits.

Providing free breakfast and lunch for all Wisconsin schoolchildren will burden taxpayers with the cost of assisting households that likely do not need the benefits.

Wisconsinites are increasingly interracial, challenging a deeply embedded and divisive system that relies on racial categories to apportion billions of dollars in government programs and subsidies in the name of equity.

Results from the nation’s most comprehensive experiment in offering people a guaranteed basic income offer a warning: Unconditional cash payments did nothing to permanently lift participants out of poverty and dependency.

It’s time for Wisconsin to listen to voters and re-establish a work requirement for able-bodied FoodShare recipients.

Waiving the work requirement led to an increase of 780 adults receiving FoodShare on average per county per month from 2012-2023 in Wisconsin.

If you’re not married to whomever you hooked up with nine months before your baby was born, you’re very unlikely to be together 15 years later. That makes it a lot harder to pay the bills.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — colloquially known as “food stamps” and, in Wisconsin, also called FoodShare — has grown over time both in the number of people receiving benefits and in the percentage of households doing so.

Many SNAP recipients avoid healthy foods and spend a large percentage of their benefits on sugary beverages and prepared desserts, according to Angela Rachidi, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and visiting fellow at the Badger Institute.

Wisconsin’s FoodShare is supposed to be a short-term safety net program. But redistributionists have used the pandemic as an excuse to grow government involvement in one of the most basic aspects of human life — how individuals feed themselves — in an upward trajectory detached from meaningful metrics on need or economics.

For decades, the federal government has assumed a larger role in funding and running safety net programs, leaving states with little ability to address flaws such as employment and marriage disincentives and little power to make changes. State leaders must work to change this.

The good things in life in this democracy — opportunity, fulfillment, upward mobility, prosperity, the redounding energy and succor that comes from free association, love of relatives and friends