Free Republic

Free tuition, minimum wage hikes and "Medicare for all" are so 2016. As Democrats look ahead to the midterms and the 2020 presidential race, lawmakers and candidates are pushing the agenda even further to the left -- with bigger promises of sweeping government welfare programs ranging from guaranteed jobs to universal income. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the standard-bearer for the party's left flank in 2016, once again is helping to lead the charge. He reportedly is set to announce a plan that will guarantee a $15-an-hour job and health-care benefits to every American “who wants or need one.” The plan,...

Social Security is, barring an immediate and massive overhaul in how benefits are paid to the back-end of the Baby Boomer generation and beyond, on its deathbed. There can be no mistaking that fact. Veronique de Rugy explains at Reason: Since 2010, [Social Security] has been running at a cash-flow deficit – meaning that the Social Security payroll taxes the government collects aren't enough to cover the benefits it's obliged to pay out. That should have been a signal that the time had come to look at reform. Instead, we've spent the last seven years ignoring the problem. To get...

President of the Government Accountability Institute, Peter Schweizer, spoke with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXX host Raheem Kassam on Monday regarding Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to end Department of Justice handouts for leftist groups, which has come to be known as something of a “slush fund.” As Breitbart News reported: For decades, through a variety of initiatives, the DOJ has insisted on donations to third parties as part of the settlements it reaches with defendants, especially corporations. In the Obama administration, this practice took on the character of a “slush fund,” which funneled hundreds of millions of dollars from these...

Maybe the most laughable reaction to Donald Trump's pulling out of the Paris climate accord came from European and Chinese leaders who blasted Trump and America for "surrendering its world leadership" role. The sanctimonious leaders of Asian and European nations pledged to move full speed ahead on clean energy without the United States. Be my guest. But we've been to this movie before. The Europeans were all in on the Kyoto Protocol deal back in 2005 -- an international treaty the U.S. rightly rejected. Euroland promised a massive shift to green energy and to abandon fossil fuels to dramatically reduce...

Barcelona’s poorest district is to pilot a “basic income” scheme that will see residents given grants to lift them above the breadline in a ground-breaking social experiment. The Barcelona district of Besós has been picked to test a €13 million European Union funded pilot scheme investigating “innovative and creative solutions” to urban poverty. The Catalan capital has been chosen alongside Utrecht in the Netherlands and the Finnish city of Helsinki to test the scheme, which will see the poorest residents in each chosen district given grants for two years to lift them above the breadline. In the B-Mincome experiment, 1,000...

A government cannot show compassion by giving of its own to help another For over twenty years my wife and I were the pastors of churches and leaders of ministries. Everywhere we ministered we founded programs to feed and clothe those who needed assistance. These ministries through the work of volunteers and the donations of private citizens fed and clothed thousands all without ever taking a dime of government money. Back in the dream time when I was young in the ministry, I helped start a feeding ministry. We fed so many needy people with groceries and had so many...

When President Obama came into the White House eight years ago, he promised a "New Era of Responsibility." It didn't work out that way, particularly for student loans, leaving President Trump with a huge mess to clean up. In fact, when it comes to borrowing for college, students are being utterly irresponsible. A recent survey by LendEDU of 500 current college students found that 49.8% of them think that the federal government will forgive their loans after they graduate.

Tyler DurdenJanuary 29, 2016 With Citi's chief economist proclaiming "only helicopter money can save the world now," and the Bank of England pre-empting paradropping money concerns, it appears that Australia's largest investment bank's forecast that money-drops were 12-18 months away was too conservative. While The Finns consider a "basic monthly income" for the entire population, Swiss residents are to vote on a countrywide referendum about a radical plan to pay every single adult a guaranteed income of around $2500 per month, with authorities insisting that people will still want to find a job. The plan, as The Daily Mail reports,...

Conventional wisdom says that you cannot win Iowa without kissing the pinky ring of the Iowa corn lobby and pledging your fealty to the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the anti-science policy which is bad for the environment, fuel mileage, and America at large. Iowa’s traditional role as the first Presidential contest for both parties basically ensures that anyone with even a whiff of Presidential ambition has largely taken a pass at criticizing a policy which is a bad idea for everyone except an extremely well-connected group of corn farmer lobbyists.Ted Cruz has been challenging all that with his current Presidential...

Germany’s open-door policy to refugees appears to be unravelling tonight after the country reinstated border controls to curb the overwhelming influx of migrants. Europe’s top economy halted all trains from Austria and, in an historic move, temporarily suspended the open borders Schengen Agreement in response to the arrival of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in recent days. The decision marks a dramatic shift away from the current abolishment of passport checks throughout Europe's Schengen zone. The Interior Minister did not specify how long the border controls would remain in place or give details of exactly how incoming migrants would...

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) stirred up an intra-Party squabble by asserting that 2010’s passage of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was a mistake. “At best, the number of prospective beneficiaries was small,” Schumer pointed out. “And, as it turned out, was vastly outnumbered by those hurt by the legislation. The deceptions required to ensure the bill’s passage were easily pierced as Americans found out they could not keep their doctors or health plans they liked and that the cost of their insurance was going to be higher. There was no way the Democratic Party could escape blame.”...

We often hear about the glory days of immigration when America threw open her arms to the huddled masses, but one thing you don’t hear about is how those people had to make it on their own without a government safety net. There was plenty of private charity, which was highly encouraged, but health care, a minimum-wage job, college entrance, housing, legal representation, and education certainly weren’t promised—not like today.

One in seven Americans – more than 46 million people, including 12 million children and 7 million seniors – rely on food pantries and meal service programs to feed themselves and their families, according to a new study from Feeding America, a provider of charitable food assistance to low-income Americans. In what Feeding America says is “the largest and most comprehensive study of people seeking food assistance in the United States ever conducted,” more than 60,000 people confidentially answered questions about their personal circumstances. The study represents findings from 200 Feeding America food banks, which annually provide more than 3...

Obamacare has pushed us over the entitlements tipping point. In 2011 some 49.2 percent of U.S. households received benefits from one or more government programs—about 151 million out of an estimated 306.8 million Americans—according to U.S. Census Bureau data released last October. Currently, around 6 million to 7 million Americans who have signed up for Obamacare are receiving taxpayer-provided subsidies (though the administration’s numbers cannot be trusted, it’s all we have to work with). There are another 3 million who have signed up for Medicaid. That means some 10 million Americans—or a total of about 161 million—are now getting government...

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday morning that Etsy is getting $5 million from New York state to stay in Brooklyn, a pretty nice sum for a company whose CEO publicly acknowledged just weeks ago that it “could only exist in Brooklyn.” “A company like Etsy could only exist in Brooklyn,” Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson said during an April 23 appearance at a Brooklyn Tech Triangle symposium. “Almost all of our employees live in Brooklyn and our Manhattan employees are treated with scorn.” Etsy, which was founded in Brooklyn in 2005, plans to add more than 340 jobs by 2019 (a...

The unmasking of Michelle Obama the ‘returned activist’ went down in history at a Virginia high school on Wednesday, February 5, 2014. Five years into the Obama regime, Michelle came out of the White House as the activist she’s always been to instruct high school students that they are entitled to “free” government handouts. “Don’t leave money on the table,” she said. In a personal trajectory that went from telling kids what to eat to teaching them how to game the system, it’s no longer encouraging students to be the best they can be but how to get the most...

Michelle Obama had the gall to tell supporters in New York City this week,“We don’t believe in handouts. We don’t think anyone should get a free ride,”What? That’s ALL they believe in is handouts and redistribution: ** Barack Obama has created two new food stamp recipients for every job created.** number of Americans on disability now exceeds the number of people in New York City.** Under Obamacare the Congressional Budget Office projects that nine million Americans would be added to Medicaid’s rolls in 2014.** 43% of Americans don’t pay income tax.** Under Obama the US government now redistributes two trillion...

Complete Headline: President pitches in for Thanksgiving: Obamas continue family tradition by handing out food to the poor... and boxes of White House M&Ms President Barack Obama has continued an annual family tradition by helping to pack bags of food and distribute them to the needy on Thanksgiving eve. Obama, his wife Michelle, daughters Malia and Sasha, and his mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, last night dropped in on the Capital Area Food Bank (CAFB), one of the largest serving the Washington area. They dropped bundles of sweet potatoes, onions, carrots and apples into reusable bags people held open as they...

Looks like you've hit the jackpot, leeches! gub'ment cheese Now that those who receive food stamps in the US outnumber the sum of those actually employed in the private sector (due in no small part to federal government radio advertising aimed at potential freeloaders both in the US and in Mexico), one could say that the Obama Administration's single greatest triumph (politically/from their warped viewpoint) could be the systematic, intentional addiction of more people to government entitlements in general... a hideous crime against a society once founded upon rugged individualism. But they're not done yet- just look at the ways 'progressive' scum...