Obama encouraging Americans to get on welfare
By MICHAEL TANNER | 7/18/12 9:47 PM EDT
By MICHAEL TANNER | 7/18/12 9:47 PM EDT
The Obama administration clearly doesn’t believe that enough Americans are receiving welfare.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius last week issued an order giving the Obama administration greater authority to waive work requirements included in the 1998 welfare reform law. This comes on top of a new ad campaign, using Spanish-language soap operas, to encourage more Latinos to sign up for food stamps.
The administration even gave a special award to an Agriculture Department worker who found ways to combat the “mountain pride” discouraging Appalachian residents from taking full advantage of food stamps and other welfare programs.
One message was loud and clear: More Americans should be getting welfare.
One wonders how that is possible. The federal government runs 126 separate anti-poverty programs. That may surprise most Americans, who think of welfare as the cash benefits provided under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program — formerly Aid to Families with Dependent Children. But the U.S. welfare system is far larger than that.
There are 33 housing programs, for example, run by four different Cabinet departments, including, bizarrely, the Department of Energy. There are 21 programs providing food or food-purchasing assistance. They’re administered by three different federal departments and one independent agency. There are eight different health care programs administered by five separate agencies in HHS. Six Cabinet departments and five independent agencies oversee 27 cash or general assistance programs. Altogether, seven different Cabinet departments and six independent agencies each administer at least one anti-poverty program. Talk about a massive government clusterfuck.
All those programs cost taxpayers more than $944 billion last year. That’s an increase of more than $193 billion since Barack Obama became president. It’s roughly 2½ times greater than any previous increase over a similar time frame in U.S. history and will increase means-tested welfare spending by about 2.4 percent of gross domestic product.
Moreover, if one includes state and local welfare spending, government at all levels will spend more than $952 billion this year to fight poverty.
2 comments:
Let's get everybody on welfare as soon as possible and get it over with. Then the country can go broke and we can start all over with just the people who want to work and let the rest starve.
Jobs bring dignity, not handouts. I don't believe Barak Obama has ever had a real job (At least one in the private sector). Therefore, he dosen't understand working people. Too bad the whole country dosen't have "mountain pride".
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