Free Republic

While markets hone in on the Federal Reserve's monetary policy hints, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan sees a bigger economic irritant—government spending. On Wednesday, Greenspan decried a rise in entitlement costs, which he contended have pressured the U.S. economy. "To me the discussion today shouldn't even be on monetary policy it should be on how do we constrain this extraordinary rise in entitlements," he said in a CNBC "Closing Bell" interview, calling the trend "extremely dangerous." Social expenditures in the U.S. were 19.2 percent of gross domestic product last year, up from 15.5 percent in 2005, according to data from...

Real estate baron and reality TV star Donald Trump threw his hat into the ring in the race for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination this week. In his announcement in front of a crowd—many of whom were paid $50 apiece to cheer him on—Trump pledged to secure government entitlements. “With the other Republicans in the race, you never know whether they might end up cutting or privatizing Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid,” Trump alleged. “Right here and right now I’m promising that these programs will be fully funded for as long as there is money to pay for them.” Trump...

Despite his socially-conservative bona fides, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has officially lost the support of Iowa’s influential talk radio host Steve Deace — a dramatic shift from their supportive relationship in the 2008 Republican Party primaries. Deace has been described as a “hitmaker” and “one of the most powerful Republicans you’ve never heard of” because his stumping for Huckabee was seen as a substantial contributor to the former governor’s 2008 Iowa caucus victory. But, in 2016, Deace is not thrilled with Huckabee’s support for entitlement programs. As MMfA first reported, during the May 6 edition of the Steve Deace...

New York real estate mogul Donald Trump said Thursday that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) could not prevent funding cuts to entitlement programs if elected president in 2016. “Huckabee is a nice guy but will never be able to bring in the funds so as not to cut Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid,” Trump tweeted. “I will.” Trump, a possible 2016 GOP presidential candidate, also argued Huckabee was stealing his potential campaign ideas. “Huckabee copied me,” Trump wrote. “I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare &...

<p>AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — More than 9,000 Maine residents have been removed from the state's food stamp program since Republican Gov. Paul LePage's administration began enforcing work and volunteer requirements late last year, officials said.</p> <p>The number of people that have been dropped from the program has exceeded even the administration's expectations.</p>

Both Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are speaking bluntly about entitlement reform, advocating means-testing for Social Security retirement benefits as a way to save the system for those who need it. “These are real ideas,“ Christie said in New Hampshire on Friday. “And, you know, I’ve had a lot of people say, ‘Well, why would you possibly want to suggest those things?’ Because we have to. We have to. And if you want to start a national conversation, let’s start one that matters.” “We’re $18 trillion in debt,” Graham told Fox News Sunday. “Eighty million...

The lifetime costs of Social Security and Medicare benefits of illegal immigrant beneficiaries of President Obama’s executive amnesty would be well over a trillion dollars, according to Heritage Foundation expert Robert Rector’s prepared testimony for a House panel obtained in advance by Breitbart News. Rector, a senior research fellow at Heritage, is slated to speak on the costs of Obama’s executive amnesty Tuesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He will testify to the high entitlement costs of granting legal status to millions of illegal immigrants. Based on Rector’s calculations, which assume that at least 3.97 illegal immigrants...

Due to an increase in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program’s budget, formerly known as food stamps, President Obama is requiring all SNAP agencies to add a sales team. The sales team will be responsible for telemarketing, cold-calling eligible Americans and persuading them to join the entitlement program that already services 50 million citizens and visa-holders.

John Boehner and the rest of the GOP RINO establishment didn’t have enough Conservative votes to pass their $1.1 TRILLION budget. That’s because while these so-called “Republicans” criticized Obama’s amnesty in public, their budget completely funded it. More than 60 Republicans voted against the spending bill, forcing Boehner to get approximately 50 Democrats to vote for it. GOP leaders blocked any anti-amnesty amendments and allowed the bill to proceed without any mention of Obama’s amnesty. That means that newly “legalized” illegal aliens will begin receiving working papers and become eligible for Social Security and Medicare as soon as they come...

Under President Obama’s new program to protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation, many of those affected will be eligible to receive Social Security, Medicare and a wide array of other federal benefits, a White House official said Tuesday. In his speech Thursday night, the president touted his plan as a means of bringing accountability to a broken immigration system, under which 11 million or more people are estimated to be living in this country illegally. “We’re going to offer the following deal: If you’ve with been in America more than five years. If you have children who are American citizens...

President Obama has constantly complained about the rich not paying their "fair share." But a new Congressional Budget Office report shows that the rich were paying more than their fair share of taxes before the numerous hikes he imposed. The CBO looks at the distribution of household income and federal taxes up through 2011, the last year for which it has data. It found, for example, that:

Earlier this week I had lunch with a CPA client of mine to talk with him about increasing the number of his small business clients who provide medical insurance plans to their employees. Everything I recount herein is from him; I am not making this up. His answer and the reasoning behind his answer were stunning to me. In my naivety, I hadn’t even dreamed that I would hear anything like what he was about to tell me.

Breakdown by Category 82,679,000 Medicaid51,471,000 Food Stamps22,526,000 Women, Infants and Children Program20,355,000 Supplemental Security Income13,267,000 Public Housing or Housing Subsidies 5,442,000 Temporary Assistance to Needy Families 4,517,000 Other Forms of Federal Cash Assistance Population Estimates (2013 estimates) California 38,332,521Texas 26,448,193New York 19,651,127Florida 19,552,860 Those four states have a population of 103,984,701. Those on welfare nearly totals that amount. Full Time Employment BLS figures show 115.735 million "usually" working full time at the end of 2012. There are currently 118.489 million "usually" working full time. Obamacare Welfare Expansion Inquiring minds may be asking "How did Obamacare effect welfare numbers?" Let's take...

Bear with me as I relate an incident I witnessed a couple of years ago; an important point lies at the end of this true story. I was standing in the checkout line at a Barnes & Noble bookstore when I noticed a mother pushing her two toddlers through the store in one of those tandem strollers. One child began moaning, not loudly, but persistently. I’ve raised two children, and I’m familiar with the sounds they can make to express their feelings. This wasn’t an expression of pain, hunger, tiredness, or any kind of stress that I could sense. The...

President Eisenhower on Stupid Republicans Laurence M. Vance April 27, 2014 Regardless of what Republicans say about cutting entitlements, welfare, spending, etc., they will never do it. And they will certainly never end them completely. Indeed, they have not only accepted their existence; they are now big supporters of the welfare state just like the Democrats. I have often mentioned in my articles on Republicans how that the Republican majority in Congress for two years under President Eisenhower could have repealed the New Deal. Because they failed to do so, it was no surprise that the next Republican majority in...

A mother-of-nine who claims £38,000 a year in handouts and demanded a bigger council house for her huge family is pregnant again - this time with twins. Cheryl Prudham, 32, and her husband Robert, 29, are set to receive at least a further £1,400 in handouts when the baby girls arrive. Mrs Prudham said she will 'not be made to feel guilty' for having children' as she and her husband both work part-time. Last year the couple, from Sittingbourne, Kent - who were living in a three-bedroom council house at the time - said they were entitled to a bigger...

My all-time most-viewed blog post wasn’t the parable about beer and the tax system. Nor was it the joke about California, Texas, and the Coyote. Those won the silver and bronze trophies. The gold medal belongs to the two pictures that explain how the welfare state begins and how it ends. Those images make a very serious point that the social capital of a nation gets eroded and the economy gets overburdened when there are too many people riding in the wagon and not enough people pulling the wagon. And I’ve been especially fond of the wagon cartoons because they...

Buried deep in a section of President Obama's budget, released this week, is an eye-opening fact: This year, 70% of all the money the federal government spends will be in the form of direct payments to individuals, an all-time high. In effect, the government has become primarily a massive money-transfer machine, taking $2.6 trillion from some and handing it back out to others. These government transfers now account for 15% of GDP, another all-time high. In 1991, direct payments accounted for less than half the budget and 10% of GDP. What's more, the cost of these direct payments is exploding....

Buried deep in a section of President Obama's budget, released this week, is an eye-opening fact: This year, 70% of all the money the federal government spends will be in the form of direct payments to individuals, an all-time high. In effect, the government has become primarily a massive money-transfer machine, taking $2.6 trillion from some and handing it back out to others. These government transfers now account for 15% of GDP, another all-time high. In 1991, direct payments accounted for less than half the budget and 10% of GDP. What's more, the cost of these direct payments is...

Viktor Frankl, holocaust survivor and author of Man's Search for Meaning, once observed: “Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.” Liberty and responsibility are both critical in preserving our republic, but the chances of America, much less California, allowing such a tribute to personal responsibility to be erected seems little to none. Nowhere is the absurdity of our entitlement age more evident than the...