As a young Massachusetts state senator, I was active in the welfare reform debates in the mid-1990s. Our hope was to make sure that public benefits got to the people who needed help the most, which meant we spent a lot of time talking about preventing waste, fraud and abuse.
Many of the ideas we introduced back then, like work requirements, have become mainstays of public policy, including in the fierce negotiations that led to last month’s federal debt-limit deal.
While some may feel validated to see that so many policies and processes in place across the country today stem from that time, I can’t help but reflect on how dramatically our world has changed in the past 30 years. And the reality is those policies and processes that suited 1990s technology and circumstances aren’t keeping up.
In the 1990s we designed systems that focused on verification to prevent fraud — which often resulted in those systems being focused more on keeping ineligible people out than helping eligible people get in. And even in 2023, the way many states approach critical public benefits is still designed for that pre-Internet age. Yet the economy as well as the availability of technology look nothing like what was available in 1996.
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