Perpetuating Poverty

IBD Editorials ^ | September 17, 2009 | INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY Staff

[Kaslin]

Spending: President Clinton said reform legislation would "end welfare as we know it." That was in 1996. The current administration appears determined to take welfare to heights we've never known.

---

America's tried. The country has spent $15.9 trillion of other people's money on welfare since the mid-1960s. But it has failed. As noted in the Gospel of Matthew, we will always have the poor.

It would be vain to argue otherwise. The evidence is hard, the facts clear.

"Welfare spending was 13 times greater in fiscal 2008, after adjusting for inflation, than it was when the war on poverty started in 1964," says a new study from the Heritage Foundation.

"Means-tested welfare spending was 1.2% of the gross domestic product when President Johnson began the war on poverty. In 2008, it reached 5% of GDP."

Apparently, we just haven't spent enough. At least that seems to be the position of the White House. It has opened the spigot of the fastest-growing government expenditure. Over the first two years of this administration, annual federal welfare spending will jump by a third, from $522 billion to $697 billion, says the Heritage study titled "Obama To Spend $10.3 Trillion On Welfare."

The cost to the families funding the programs is enormous. Heritage says each household is paying $560 a month this year and will pay $638 a month in 2010.

[Kaslin]

[Wisconsinlady]

They will do anything to keep the Democratic idiots voting for them.

[Kaslin]

That goes without saying

[ntmxx]

“It would be vain to argue otherwise.”

Not in the Clown Universe; the political class has perpetuated itself into a state of absolute corruption as a Governmental Religion.

[Mr. K]

We have the richest poor people in the world.

If you would show a poor person in Africa what a poor person in USA has for food an living arrangements, they would think they were Kings (at least living like one)

[oyez]

Anybody that works and earns $638 is poor. Anybody that gets $638 for staying home is a parasite. We have a government that see nothing wrong with parasites. In fact the government gets more parasitic every day.

[TASMANIANRED]

If everyone were affluent, the bottom 10% would still envy the top 10%.

[fortunecookie]

The Gospel of Matthew has it right. We will always have the poor with us. An ever changing pool of the temporarily poor and those perpetually in need, unable to care for themselves. What the welfare system has proved, is that instead of helping the temporarily poor have a leg up to self reliance (while helping those unable to), they have created a group much larger group of perpetually poor, spanning generations, many of whom feel unable to leave the comfort of the system. Guaranteeing a group in need of this care, a group eager to be supportive and positive about the hand that feeds them (vote dem!).

[Kaslin]

Or a poor person in the slums of India. You haven an excellent point

[tbw2]

A quote paraphrased for Ayaan Hirsan Li, “The Caged Virgin” author, “My father wanted to live in a country where the poor were fat instead of starving.”