Sunday, April 22, 2012

Welfare Spending Up 41 Percent Under Obama

VERBATIM POST

In 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson declared a “war on poverty” in America, the poverty rate stood at around 19 percent.

Since then, total federal, state, and local spending on anti-poverty programs has amounted to $15 trillion, yet the poverty rate now stands at 15.1 percent, the highest level in nearly a decade.
“Clearly we are doing something wrong,” according to the Cato Institute, which has released a new policy analysis on welfare spending that calls the war on poverty a “failure.”

The federal government will spend more than $668 billion on anti-poverty programs this year, an increase of 41 percent or more than $193 billion since President Barack Obama took office. State and local government expenditures will amount to another $284 billion, bringing the total to nearly $1 trillion — far more than the $685 billion spent on defense.

Federal, state and local governments now spend $20,610 a year for every poor person in the United States, or $61,830 for each poor family of three.

“Given that the poverty line for that family is just $18,530, we should have theoretically wiped out poverty in America many times over,” writes Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute and author of “The Poverty of Welfare: Helping Others in Civil Society.”
Most welfare programs are means-tested programs providing cash, food, housing, medical care, or other benefits to low-income persons and families, or programs targeted at communities or disadvantaged groups, such as the homeless.

The federal government alone now funds 126 separate and often overlapping programs designed to fight poverty, Tanner points out.

There are 33 housing programs run by four different cabinet departments, 21 programs providing food or food-purchasing assistance administered by three different federal departments and one independent agency, and eight healthcare programs administered by five separate agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services.

The largest welfare program is Medicaid, which provides benefits to 49 million Americans and cost more than $228 billion last year, followed by the food stamps program, with 41 million participants and a price tag of nearly $72 billion. Other programs range from Federal Pell Grants ($41 billion) down to lower-cost programs such as Weatherization Assistance for Low Income Persons ($250 million) and the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program ($20 million).

At least 106 million Americans receive benefits from one or more of these programs. Including entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare and salaries for government employees, more than half of Americans now receive a substantial portion of their income from the government.
“Clearly we are spending more than enough money to have significantly reduced poverty, yet we haven't,” Tanner concludes.

“The vast majority of current programs are focused on making poverty more comfortable rather than giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty.

“And we actually have a pretty solid idea of the keys to getting out of and staying out of poverty: finish school, do not get pregnant outside marriage, and get a job, any job, and stick with it.”

4 comments:

  1. The welfare tit is about to go dry,this could`nt go on forever. The real fruit`s of NAFTA are about to fall from the tree.

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  2. There will be no silver lining as we obstinately plod forward into the Vally of Death.

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  3. "...The vast majority of current programs are focused on making poverty more comfortable rather than giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty..."

    DINGDINGDINGDINGDING

    WINNAR!!

    The "progressives" don't *WANT* folks out of "poverty" - they *WANT* them dependent so they'll continue to vote for those passing out the free $#!+ !!

    When I was fighting for custody of my kids, the Ex was on welfare. We both had to file a financial statement with the court.

    She was in a "section 8" house - rent $10/month. My rent was ~$1,000 (I still had to have 2br so my girls could stay over on weekends).

    My utils avg ~$250 - hers were mostly paid by "Energy assistance" and her phone was free - she also had a free cell...

    My medical insurance cost me ~$300/month, her "medicaid" was free. I had a $20 copay for Doc and prescriptions + $300 for ER - no copays for ANYTHING on medicaid.

    Kids ate "free" breakfast and lunch at school, and I had them EVERY Fri-Sun evening, so she fed them 4 meals a week. She got over $600/month in "food stamps" most of which she sold for cash she spent on pills, booze & weed since she only had to feed them 4 meals a week. She also got "wic", went to the food-banks, etc...

    I OTOH fed them SEVEN meals - Dinner on Friday, and all 3 meals on Sat/Sun.

    Why was I paying "child support" when I spent more on them than she did??!!

    I could go on and on, but the bottom line was that she - on welfare - had more "disposable" income than I did with my $75k job... Of course ~1/3 of my GROSS was stolen by the state and kept as reimbursement for her welfare, but I didn't get *ANY* tax-deductions for the kids or anyone else...

    After a while they forced her to either go to work or school, but even then she just wasted time and money, even sending the kids to day-care (at our-taxpayer's-expense!) on days she was at home!

    Welfare has become a pretty good living for those who know how to "work the system" - and those numbers are growing all the time!

    What *REALLY* drives me nuts is that every time I go to our little small-town grocery-store, I have to wait while some spanish-speaking woman (who knows *ZERO* English) tries to figure out her WIC vouchers and food-stamp cards... It's bad enough we're forced to support our home-grown dependent-class, but WHY IN THE AYTCH-EEE-DOUBLE-HOCKEY-STICKS ARE WE FRIGGING **IMPORTING** MORE OF THEM ??!!

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  4. How far we have fallen. Hope your ex finally straighten up, but somehow I doubt it.

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