Welfare has sapped the Midwestern work ethic

OPINION:

Whatever happened to the Midwest’s hard work ethic? Six months after Minnesota’s welfare fraud scandal made national headlines, this critical question remains unanswered.

The Trump administration has rightly tried to hold that state accountable for tolerating the massive and sustained abuse of taxpayers, but welfare poses a more fundamental problem across the region.

The easy accessibility of generous government handouts, especially for able-bodied adults, has sapped the industrious spirit that long defined the Midwest.

As a lifelong resident of Illinois, I cherish our region’s cultural identity as a place of hardworking people. It is not just the Land of Lincoln. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana all tout that same can-do spirit.

Historically, we have earned this distinction. It took uniquely hardy people to cultivate our fields, build our factories and forge the country’s heartland.

Then came welfare, with all its hostility to gainful employment.

Although the initial growth of these government programs rightly targeted the truly needy, most welfare programs now primarily serve able-bodied adults. Programs such as food stamps have work requirements for this population, but they are hardly enforced, thanks to gaping loopholes that politicians and bureaucrats have exploited.

The consequences are clear in the shrinking workforce, from Minneapolis to Cleveland to virtually everywhere in between. From 2000 to 2023, the labor force participation rate in Illinois fell by 7%.

Minnesota’s rate, previously the nation’s highest, fell by 9%. Michigan is in the same boat, and Ohio is barely doing better. Wisconsin has had a double-digit decline. Although the region is largely doing better than the national average, the declines stand out given our claim to a sturdy work ethic.

Obviously, plenty of Midwesterners still work hard. Yet people also respond to incentives, and when welfare programs alone can fund a modest lifestyle without a minute of work, the obvious incentive is to cling to them for as long as possible.

Look at Ohio, where the last reliable audit in 2019 found that 43.5% of Medicaid spending went to recipients who were wrongly enrolled in the program. That is the worst error rate in America. Ditto, more than one-third of Medicaid spending in Illinois and nearly one-fifth in Indiana.

Given its recent scandal, Minnesota clearly does a terrible job of policing its overly generous — and almost entirely federally funded — welfare state. Minnesota also shows that taxpayers’ largesse does not just discourage hard work. It also encourages a fundamentally different kind of hard work: bilking the system.

The size and scale of the Minnesota welfare scandal is mind-boggling, with the local U.S. attorney estimating that Medicaid fraud alone likely exceeds $9 billion.

Individual stories of fraud also abound across the region. In March, a Chicago man was sentenced to prison for stealing $1.5 million from food stamps. You have to hustle to make that kind of payday.

A not-insignificant number of hucksters are picking taxpayers’ pockets instead of pursuing the time-honored tradition of earning an honest wage that improves your community.

The Midwest does not lead the nation in every metric of welfare dependence and abuse, but our region does have the dubious honor of having the biggest chasm between our self-professed hardworking identity and the ugly reality of welfare-driven decline.

Nowhere else in America do people so routinely tell themselves that their communities reward work while ignoring how welfare undermines the very idea of work.

Is there hope for my fellow Midwesterners? The unlikely figure of a Manhattan real estate mogul has given us a glimmer.

President Trump’s strengthening of work requirements for Medicaid and food stamps in last year’s tax law will force states to get their welfare house in order or pay punishing federal penalties. The administration is also pursuing a slew of regulations that crack down on fraud and close loopholes that states deliberately use to let welfare rolls explode.

These reforms will help, though stronger work requirements are always needed, especially for able-bodied adults who should not be on welfare at all.

Ultimately, Midwesterners must acknowledge and then tackle this problem ourselves. Our political class — mostly on the left, but also some on the right — has let welfare bloat to sickening levels by claiming it reflects our communal commitments and innate generosity.

We cannot let them abuse our trust any longer. If we really are defined by a uniquely powerful work ethic, then we need to prove it by completing the monumental task of fundamentally transforming the welfare system that is sapping our spirit.

• Jonathan Ingram is the vice president of policy and research at the Foundation for Government Accountability.