Overview
“Block grants” in the United States refers to a form of federal funding for programs that delivers money to state governments rather than directly to individual citizens. In theory, this means each state can use the funds to design a program for their unique needs instead of hoping a federal program can manage to fit everyone’s needs. In practice, this can lead to an extremely uneven distribution of services as each block grant then has to go through each state’s own political bureaucracies before reaching the taxpayer at the end.