We replaced families with Uncle Sam. DOGE must make the right choices when cutting

Strong families have been replaced by a stronger government. That's why DOGE is needed. New report says lower marriage rates are driving poverty, academic failure and violence.

For DOGE, and any leader interested in scaling back the size of government at the federal or state level, child poverty is their scourge. Children in poverty are far more likely to rely on government services not just today, but long into the future.   Brad Wilcox (@BradWilcoxIFS), a sociology professor and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save."

Soon, the path to restoring fiscal health in America is going to lead the administration down much more politically treacherous paths – ones that may include trimming government programs that millions of Americans use.  

If this causes us to panic, we ought to ask the obvious question: why are so many millions of Americans reliant on programs like housing assistance, food stamps and government-funded healthcare? In fact, a big part of the answer is that the decline of marriage and the collapse of families has fueled much of our nation’s large-scale dependence on government to meet too many of our basic needs.