At its core, the promise of America is about freedom and the opportunity to work and provide a better life for yourself and your family. But for many families who yearn to escape poverty, whether our nation lives up to that promise remains in question.
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Utah’s example as the best state in the nation for upward mobility offers important insights to leaders across the nation for what to emulate, and to leaders within Utah for what to build upon.
As I wrote in a , Utah’s success is the result of “wise decisions from Utah’s policymakers, artful management of large and complicated federally funded programs by state administrators committed to helping struggling Utahns, and the industrious nature and strong civic culture of Utah’s people.”
In Utah, temporary assistance programs are collocated with workforce development resources inside the Utah Department of Workforce Services — an approach national policy circles call the “one door to work” model. Unlike in other states, struggling Utah families receive material assistance and workforce support — education, training, job placement — through the same state agency.
The American Dream is predicated on the promise that hard work can build a better life for your family, and our social welfare system still needs improvement to fully realize that vision for families stuck in poverty.
Still, Utah for reforms to improve the social safety net to be a better springboard to work-based independence.
In 2025, Utah $6 million in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds to test new ways to help families transition off public benefits and into work-based independence.
In 2026, the Utah Legislature passed — and Gov. Spencer Cox signed — a resolution identifying federal constraints on Utah’s ability to innovate and calling for national policy reform that clears the path for state innovation.
The resolution emphasizes that “due to federal restrictions, states have limited authority to experiment with federally funded social safety net programs for the purpose of finding innovative reforms that can address benefits cliffs, benefits plateaus, perception gaps or other obstacles to upward mobility experienced by families receiving public assistance.”
In other words, Utah wants to do more to improve the social safety net and strengthen upward mobility, and is urging the federal government to clear its path.
What Congress is doing to help with upward mobility
A bill in Congress would help. The Upward Mobility Act, sponsored by Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, in the U.S. House of Representatives and Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, in the U.S. Senate, would create a national pilot program that allows a limited number of states to combine funding from various safety net programs, and test an integrated, streamlined approach to public assistance.
That means a state like Utah could, building on its already successful integrated model, test an even more streamlined way of providing temporary, targeted help to struggling families as it aids them on the path to work-based independence.
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In a press release announcing The Upward Mobility Act, Cox praised Utah’s status as a national leader, adding that “federal rules limit how we can further innovate to clear the path for families eager to escape poverty while reducing government dependence. The Upward Mobility Act allows states the ability to craft innovative programs that work best for families transitioning into work and greater self-sufficiency.”
In the words of Cox, “We need to usher in a new era of state-led innovation, and this bill helps do that.”
Utah is the best-positioned state to lead that new era of innovation.
What this new upward mobility reform could look like
As such, this new reform movement should include this question: If we were building a safety net today, with the explicit goal of helping families address immediate needs while building capacity for work-based self-reliance, what would it look like?
In a new Sutherland Institute report, I outline a concept Utah should test: empowerment accounts.
An empowerment account would consolidate multiple safety net benefits into a single, streamlined monthly benefit tied to work or training, designed to phase out transparently and predictably to avoid any cliff-like disincentive. It would pair financial planning resources with coaching and mentoring, leveraging Utah’s nonprofit community alongside the state’s existing case management resources.
An empowerment account is a conceptual framework, not a rigidly defined program — distinct from proposals like universal basic income, which aren’t targeted, temporary, and pro-work the way an empowerment account is. A pilot would let Utah test new solutions to both benefit cliffs and federal complexity in one structured experiment, addressing challenges the Utah Legislature has correctly recognized.
In a rarity for today’s partisan politics, bipartisan majorities actually align around potential solutions.
New Sutherland Institute/Y2 Analytics survey data shows that Utahns support greater state ability to improve the social safety net by integrating resources: 69% of both Democrats and Republicans, and 74% of independents, support national reform letting states combine federal funding across safety net programs to test new solutions to poverty.
This is exactly the kind of reform the Upward Mobility Act would foster, paving the way for states like Utah to test an empowerment account pilot — 80% of Democrats, 78% of independents, and 74% of Republicans in Utah, with similarly strong bipartisan majorities nationwide.
Americans across the political spectrum — and here in Utah — recognize something essential: the American Dream is predicated on the promise that hard work can build a better life for your family, and our social welfare system still needs improvement to fully realize that vision for families stuck in poverty.
Securing Utah, and America, as the land of opportunity for future generations requires thinking in aspirational terms. It’s more than simply “tinkering” with existing programs — it’s transforming a system that is well-intentioned, and has helped many families, but has yet to fully realize the aspirational intent of the war on poverty.
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