The focus is on this shining example of long-term Democratic management. From Newsweek:
BALTIMORE BURNING: IT'S NOT A MATTER OF MONEY. WE TRIED THAT
With the surety of night following day, the Baltimore riots have been followed by calls for more government spending to fight poverty in our distressed inner cities.
President Barack Obama says "massive investments in urban communities" could "make a difference right now." Representative Elijah Cummings, who represents Maryland in Congress, says, "We have to invest in our cities and our children." And House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, who also represents the state, says, "But we're going to have to as a country invest if we're going to have the kinds of communities we want."
But the idea that we haven't been "investing" in Baltimore is nonsense.
Federal and state money has been pouring into the city for decades. From fiscal years 2003 to 2013 (the last year for which these reports are available), Baltimore received at least $2.4 billion in federal assistance and another $1.8 billion in state aid. The city also received roughly $1.8 billion in federal stimulus money, of which more than $1.4 billion has been spent so far. And this doesn't count the billions of dollars received directly by the people who live in Baltimore through various social welfare programs.
Yet nearly a quarter of the people in the city still live in poverty, 65 percent above the national level. We've clearly been throwing a lot of money at poverty in Baltimore without much result.
Part of the problem, unsurprisingly, is that the city does not make very good use of the money it receives.
The Democrats own this.
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