This is the introduction to Holes in the Safety Net: Federalism and Poverty (Ezra Rosser ed., Cambridge University … Press, 2019). The introduction covers the major themes of federalism and anti-poverty work in the United States and includes …

For decades the rhetoric of federalism has been an important part of the debate over welfare reform. The alignments … alignments and the stereotyped quality of most federalism rhetoric, skeptics might argue that this is an arena in which “the …, the abstractions comprising the rhetoric of federalism serve to mask conflicts and lead us to apply our normative concerns …