Federal Aid Programs

From a recent article in USA Today by Dennis Cauchon titled "Federal aid programs expand at record rate":

A sweeping expansion of social programs since 2000 has sparked a record increase in the number of Americans receiving federal government benefits such as college aid, food stamps and health care. A USA TODAY analysis of 25 major government programs found that enrollment increased an average of 17% in the programs from 2000 to 2005. The nation's population grew 5% during that time. It was the largest five-year expansion of the federal safety net since the Great Society created programs such as Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s. The biggest expansion: Medicaid, the health care program for the poor. It added 15 million beneficiaries over five years to become the nation's largest entitlement program. Robert Greenstein, head of the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, says the growth in the number of people in many programs is due to a rise in the poverty rate from 11.3% in 2000 to 12.7% in 2004, the most recent year available. "It's certainly better that people falling into poverty can get Medicaid, but I'd prefer fewer poor people and employers not dropping medical coverage," he says. Rep. Gil Gutknecht, a conservative Republican from Minnesota, says the number of people in entitlement programs should not be growing when unemployment is near a record low. "It's probably time to revisit food stamps and its goals and costs," says Gutknecht, chairman of the subcommittee that oversees food stamps. Food stamp enrollment climbed from 17.2 million in 2000 to 25.7 million in 2005. USA TODAY found three major causes for soaring enrollment in government programs: •Expanded eligibility
•Increased participation
•Welfare reform

The USA Today article drew criticism for being "wildly misleading." For example, from a post by Greg Anrig, Jr. on TPM Cafe titled "USA Today Buries the Lead, Botches the Rest":

Medicaid enrollments have mainly gone up because more people have fallen below the eligibility thresholds while losing health insurance at work--most states have cut back their eligibility requirements rather than make them more generous. Food stamp enrollments have mainly gone up because, again, more people have fallen below the eligibility thresholds --though some administrative changes have helped modestly. The whole story is basically a mess. For example, the front page graph shows enrollment in 25 "federal aid" programs is up 17 percent, increasing from 263 million to 307 million. That's quite something, considering that there are only 300 million U.S. citizens. Oh, right, there is a note in agate type to the effect that some people participate in multiple programs. But what then is the logic behind combining numbers for age-dependent universal programs like Social Security and Medicare, to which recipients have paid dedicated taxes, with means-tested safety net programs? And if one person falling into poverty can add three, four, or five to the enrollment count of safety net programs, disproportionate ly elevating percentage increases, how are readers supposed to begin to make sense of what that number means?