Shaun Donovan, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, announced Wednesday that the Obama administration hopes to launch a $2 billion program to test new anti-poverty methods.
The program called the Emergency Aid and Service Connection is to be aimed at helping people who are on the verge on financial crisis, and is to be implemented through nonprofits, state, and local governments that are attempting new methods of giving aid. “We want to work with state and local communities … that could then customize exactly that kind of response,” said Donovan speaking at Johns Hopkins University.
While it is unlikely that the Republican controlled House and Senate would support an increase in entitlement spending President Obama did praise Speaker Ryan for his efforts to address poverty last night in his State of the Union address, “Also know Speaker Ryan has talked about his interest in tackling poverty. America is about giving everybody willing to work a chance, a hand up. And I’d welcome a serious discussion about strategies we can all support.”
In 2015 an estimated $2.6 trillion was spent on various entitlement programs.
The Huffington Post was told by a senior White House official that the work of Johns Hopkins sociology professor Kathryn Edin and University of Michigan’s H. Luke Shaefer inspired this proposal. The two worked together to publish “$2.00 A Day” which detailed extreme poverty in the United States. Edin moderated the event the Donovan spoke at.