Americans Want REAL Welfare Reform. So Why Aren’t They Getting It?

Americans say they want less government. So why does the welfare state keep growing?
In this episode of The Brief, host Shabbos Kestenbaum sits down with Jesse Arm — Vice President of External Affairs at the Manhattan Institute — to break down the Manhattan Institute’s new poll on American attitudes toward welfare, the rise of the DSA inside the Democratic Party, and what voters across the political spectrum actually want from government in 2026.
Thirty years after Bill Clinton signed landmark welfare reform, Jesse walks through what the data actually shows: Americans broadly support a social safety net, but they want it targeted, tied to work requirements, and focused on eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse — not on reducing income inequality. The problem? The welfare state has grown dramatically since 1996, and a new generation of voters is being told that everything from the post office to the fire department is “socialism.”
They also cover:
DOGE: Was it effective? Jesse’s honest assessment — resonant politically, clunky in execution, but a step in the right direction
The Manhattan Institute’s finding that America’s welfare state may be more redistributive than its European counterparts — and why that doesn’t mean it’s working
Two-thirds of Democrats now hold a positive view of socialism. What does that actually mean — and who’s doing the communicating?
The DSA’s real platform: abolish the police, abolish prisons, abolish the border, defund the Department of Defense, abolish the Senate — and why their spokespeople say yes to all of it
Why the DSA isn’t starting its own party — and why cannibalizing the Democrats from within is working
How the nonprofit sector has created a professional class of hard-left organizers funded by donors who thought they were giving to climate or abortion access
Why the median Democratic voter doesn’t share the policy preferences of the median Democratic nonprofit staffer in Washington, D.C. — and why that gap is growing.

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