No crap the church has more to do. 50% of what the government does, the church is supposed to be doing!
Agreed. Now, how do we get the churches the resources they need to do what government is doing? The churches can't legally require that each family donate 15% or more of their income to finance the requisite programs...
And how do we get the government to stop?
The fact is, the government is in a better position to:
1) monitor use and abuse of a program through national databases (whether they do it or not is another matter)
2) come up with enough money for the needy to live on for protracted periods (how many churches that you know of have the extra funds necessary to provide for long term, high cost nursing homes, etc.)
3) provide assistance in finding jobs (again, through the use of regional and national databases)
and provide any other number of charitable services that would fall through the cracks if local churches had to deal with charity cases on an on-going basis.
Granted, the government is grossly inefficient. But it is effective in providing for people's needs. I am sorry to say that the churches, if they ever had the ability to deal with these problems, dropped the ball a long time ago.