This article was written by FRAC’s President Jim Weill for the May-June issue of the Clearinghouse Review – the publication of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law. That issue was a special one devoted to articles on “What the Federal Government Must Do to End Poverty.”

Weill’s framework article – “The Federal Government – the Indispensable Player in Redressing Poverty” – describes why, despite past shortcomings of federal efforts to build economic security for all Americans and recent setbacks in improving those efforts, a robust federal role in fighting poverty and building economic security is absolutely essential.

The article briefly reviews the extent of poverty and economic insecurity, and the political context set by the Depression, the New Deal, the War on Poverty, and subsequent attacks on federal programs. It then explores the political, philosophical, economic, fiscal and other underpinnings of the federal role:

• problems that the nation considers of sufficient economic or moral importance receive a federal response;

• federal management of the economy, even aside from spending programs, is essential in the fight for opportunity and against poverty;

• the federal government can deploy fiscal resources that states, localities and charities can not;

• state-to-state resource disparities that make it difficult for one state to fight poverty are even greater during times of greater need;

• the federal fiscal advantage is further pronounced during nationwide economic problems;

• states and localities often limit help to the poor in their jurisdictions out of fear of attracting low-income migrants;

• the returns on investment in low-income people accrue to the national economy in ways that they may not accrue to local or state investments; and

• when the federal government has robustly attacked poverty, it often has been very effective.

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