Defending the Colorado Way of Life
Federal programs designed to help individuals and families make ends meet have roots dating back to the Great Depression, when record unemployment left millions of Americans struggling to afford basic needs. Nearly 100 years later, programs including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF, formerly AFDC), the Low-income Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), and Medicaid and Medicare continue to provide basic assistance to individuals and families earning low incomes so they can buy food, care for their young children, heat their homes, and visit a doctor. In particular, these programs were created with the intention of making it easier for people to cover the basics during recessions (when unemployment levels tend to rise, sometimes dramatically), providing a stabilizing economic effect. Decades of research shows these programs have lifted many people out of poverty and promoted economic growth and mobility. However, throughout the many power shifts in Washington, D.C. over the years, the effectiveness of these tools has been eroded, and new threats are frequent.
To help shed light on this issue, the Colorado Fiscal Institute released a series of briefs highlighting the history, eligibility criteria, and economic impact of these programs and how they work to support Coloradans today. Though these programs serve as important tools, they alone do not remove the systemic obstacles created by longstanding policies keeping people of color and others working low-income jobs and from moving out of poverty and into prosperity. Public investments and the role of government, including Colorado’s unfair and outdated tax code, must be taken into strong consideration when working to ensure all Coloradans benefit from widespread economic prosperity.
This series, which you can read in full by clicking the links below, highlights the social and economic impacts of the following programs and analyzes how well or to what degree they support Coloradans:
- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
- Medicaid and Medicare
- Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF)
- Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP, or LEAP in Colorado)
CFI analysis concluded these programs are indispensable, though they could be improved. The numbers are undeniable:
- In 2017, SNAP helped 459,000 Coloradans pay for groceries and helped pull 55,000 children out of poverty.
- Due in large part to the expansion of Medicaid, Colorado’s uninsured rate has decreased by more than 50 percent since 2011. Many Coloradans including young adults, people who earn low incomes, and residents of rural Colorado have benefitted the most. Additionally, Medicare serves over 700,000 older adults across the state.
- In 2018, Colorado’s LEAP program (the state’s LIHEAP program) maintained the heat in 70,000 homes across the state. That’s about 175,000 Coloradans who would otherwise have trouble paying their energy bills.
- For Colorado parents with young children, TANF has provided benefits for over 36,000 families as of June 2018; though data show while the program still helps many, it is no longer connected directly to economic indicators like unemployment, suggesting changes made to TANF in the mid-1990s have adversely affected the program’s efficacy.
These tools also do more than directly benefit families struggling to make ends meet. As each of the briefs noted, there is a direct and indirect investment back into Colorado communities. For instance, in addition to providing tens of thousands of families with help heating their homes and putting food on the table, LEAP added $27 million in direct economic activity to Colorado’s economy in 2016, and the following year SNAP generated $707 million in economic activity. Medicaid alone injects about $5.8 billion into Colorado’s economy each year.
As much as these tools help, it’s even more important to recognize the fight to end poverty cannot rely solely on federal programs that largely treat symptoms of bigger, more systemic problems. The conversation must also focus on the role of public investments (and a fairer, more equitable tax code to help pay for them). Supports such as paid sick days and family and medical leave, well-funded K-12 schools, better investments in higher education, and new affordable housing would all do more to pull individuals and families out of poverty. This is especially true for people earning low incomes and people of color – the Coloradans who face the greatest barriers to economic success.
Programs designed to help people afford the basics are important, but Coloradans shouldn’t be just barely making ends meet, we should be thriving. The people of Colorado won’t be able to prosper economically until the jobs we work pay a living wage; until we all have access to paid sick days and family and medical leave; until every child receives a world-class education so they can focus on learning; and until those students, whether they are white, brown, black, or any other color, can afford to go to college or attend technical school.
Ultimately, we urge Colorado’s policymakers to strive for a future where a fairer, more equitable tax code can pay for the public investments that give everyone – regardless of race or economic background – a chance to live the Colorado way of life. A future where opportunity isn’t determined by skin color or geography, where moving out of poverty is more achievable, and Colorado’s economic equity is the envy of the country. These are achievable goals, but the first step is to protect the critical poverty-reduction tools Coloradans rely on from changes that threaten those who need them most.
