A real help to the poor....

....would be if the government got out of the business of discouraging the historic nuclear family of husband, wife, and children, and Michael Reagan provides some of the stats to prove it.  70% of young criminals and high school dropouts come from the < 40% of young people who grow up without their father in the home, which means that even with today's stats--higher unwed parenting rates than when these kids were born--the children of unwed parents are about 3.5 times more likely to end up in jail or leave high school without a diploma.  Translated, this means a lot of these young people are basically unemployable.

So if we want to empty jails, slash welfare rolls, crush poverty, and the like, all we need to do is to reduce the disincentives to marriage that exist in the tax code, CAFE requirements, college loan and grant programs, welfare programs, and even the Health Insurance Deform Act (a.k.a. Obamacare). 

Now granted, a marriage license does not transform a lout into a gentleman, but it does tell him that he has some responsibilities that he'd better tend to.  There's a lot to be gained by ending our subsidies for unwed parenting.