However, the plan does far less than it should do to help poor children and their families. Take child support, for example. This money improves the family's standard of living so that the child is less likely to suffer from hunger and homelessness. Maryland, however, passes through none of the child support collected for children on welfare.
Every penny instead goes into the state treasury.
Maryland, however, has not set up IDAs, and families leave welfare without the benefits IDAs can provide. Maryland is not a poor state. The state treasury holds a large surplus. The state says that declining welfare rolls make it impossible for it to spend all that federal and state money on poor families, but it is making a choice to be cheap. It is time instead that Maryland spend the money to improve the lives of poor children and their families.