From the nicely done New York Times obituary of Charles Krauthammer, by Sam Roberts:
On domestic policy, he concluded that the welfare state had failed.
"As a doctor, I'd been trained in empirical evidence," he said. "If the treatment is killing your patients, you stop the treatment."
From a front-page news article in the same paper, the same day, about President Trump's plan to reorganize the government by merging the education and labor departments and by transferring the food stamp program out of the agriculture department:
The core of Mr. Trump's safety net policy is an expansion of work requirements to foster self-sufficiency among recipients of food assistance, Medicaid and housing subsidies to reduce dependence on the government. "Our goal is to get people on the path to self-sufficiency," Mr. Bremberg said.
Its real purpose, advocates for poor people claim, is to kick hundreds of thousands of the needy off the federal rolls, to cut taxes for the rich....
"It's a war on the poor, pure and simple," said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which has challenged several Trump administration policies in federal court.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is an institution with a heroic record, but I think Krauthammer has the better side of this one. Perhaps if more Times news reporters and editors displayed more of Krauthammer's independence of mind and critical thinking skills, they'd ask why self-appointed, self-described "advocates for poor people" are so eager to interpret welfare reform aimed at uplift and self-sufficiency and against dependence as a "war on the poor." You don't have have Krauthammer's politics all through to recognize this; this column by Nicholas Kristof is a fine place to start. If the welfare rolls shrink because people get skills and find jobs in a growing economy, that may not signify a "war on the poor" aimed at funding tax cuts for the rich. It may be a good thing.