Posted on 01/13/2025 3:28:20 AM PST by RoosterRedux
Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie has an incredibly simple proposal for reducing both welfare spending and illegal immigration.
As the new Congress convened, the lawmaker took to social media and asked how anyone can argue against “work requirements for able-bodied individuals on welfare.”
He then noted how passing a simple work requirement could address two of the most severe drains on the nation while benefiting the economy as a whole.
“Implement this and not only does the deficit go down, demand for illegal immigrant labor is reduced, and national economic productivity increases,” Massie wrote of his proposal.
“Republicans should pass this immediately,” he added.
There could not be a more common-sense solution to several of our national problems than refusing to hand out free money to people who should otherwise be able to work.
Just consider the scope of this problem.
According to a report from the Foundation for Government Accountability published in May 2023, able-bodied adults were receiving $348 billion per year in Medicaid and $55 billion per year in food stamps.
All of those people sitting at home and letting their hardworking neighbors fund their lifestyles are also an implicit drain on the productivity of the nation.
“In addition to harming the truly needy and taxpayers, able-bodied adults on welfare affect the overall economy,” the report noted. “This can be seen in the slow growth the country is experiencing. Much of this can be attributed to a shortage of workers.”
(Excerpt) Read more at westernjournal.com ...
Could you please add the letter “T” to the front of this title. Thx and sorry for the trouble.
Blacks have successfully argued against welfare work requirements forever.
This will go nowhere. The rats and RINO’s don’t want people to work. Welfare buys votes. Illegals running over the boarder buys votes. Stopping this would be their ruin.
The real villains are the politicians. Term limits are the answer. Something else that will never happen, for they will never vote themselves out of office.
“able-bodied adults were receiving $348 billion per year in Medicaid and $55 billion per year in food stamps.”
As bad as that is it’s no match for GOPe/dem/uniparty overspending, $100,000,000,000 every 100 days.
Gov overspents 1 trillion per day??? Err... no.
How about 7 years of indentured servitude? Many of the population had ancestors that elected that path in order to get to America.
It’s been done before under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in the Newt Gingrich Contract with America. In 1996 President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. The legislation substantially reconstructed the nation’s welfare system by giving state governments more autonomy over welfare services while also reducing the federal government’s role.
Drafted by Rep. John Kasich (R-Ohio) in a GOP-controlled Congress, the act ended welfare as an entitlement program; required recipients to begin working after two years of receiving benefits; placed a lifetime limit of five years on benefits paid by federal funds; sought to encourage two-parent families and to discourage out-of-wedlock births; enhanced enforcement of child support, and required state professional and occupational licenses to be withheld from undocumented immigrants.
Obama overturned the work requirement.
Term limits are the answer.
********
May well be one of the possible answers but the politicians
will never pass it. And I don’t see how to get it in place
without the politicans support.
What gets me is when CHILDCARE is factored in as well when they are sitting at home watching Dr. Phil.
Food stamps should be changed - stores with BASICS should be the only place they are valid. No luxury or unhealthy items - this would also remove the underground black market sale of food stamps AS WELL AS removing immigrants using the food stamps to buy food for their stores to sell to other immigrants.
I have read of where the food stamps are used to purchase dozens of items, box them up and mail them to their family in other countries.
ABSOLUTELY!!!!!
Having lived in a welfare town and seeing the abuse by the lazy good for nothing grifters who were perfectly capable of working but chose to stay home and drink and do drugs, I could not agree more.
Also, the food stamps should be like WIC, for certain food items only. Real food, not snacks and soda, and no lobster and gourmet steaks.
And cut the benefits for someone here illegally. When the gravy train stops, they’ll figure out what to do.
Re-read that. They spend one hundred billion every 100 days.
The time has never been more ripe in my 7-decade lifetime for passing Constitutional Amendments. Term limits would pass in a heartbeat.
So is this law still on the books (I assume so)? How did Obummer overturn the work requirement ... EO? If so, Trump can rip it up & replace it with one that requires this component of the law to be enforced immediately, bypassing Congressional foot dragging or obstinance on this issue.
This reminds me of the immigration laws - what we need is on the books, just not enforced. The call for Congressional action by FJB & the Dems is/was for something that included amnesty.
The portion of existing law Homan plans to enforce could put a lot of folks in jail for aiding, abetting, sheltering, harboring & transporting illegals & impeding immigration enforcement by ICE & the Border Patrol.
Googled 4/9/24
$1.19 trillion on Welfare, 20% of fed spending
$1.4 trillion on Social Security, 21% of fed spending
https://cis.org/Welfare-Use-Immigrant-and-Native-Households
Welfare Use by Immigrant and Native Households
An Analysis of Medicaid, Cash, Food, and Housing Programs
September 2015
immigrants from Central America and Mexico (73 percent), the Caribbean (51 percent), and Africa (48 percent)
https://cis.org/Welfare-Use-Immigrant-and-Native-Households
Those from East Asia (32 percent), Europe (26 percent), and South Asia (17 percent) have the lowest.
Many immigrants struggle to support their children, and a large share of welfare is received on behalf of U.S.-born children. However, even immigrant households without children have significantly higher welfare use than native households without children
https://cis.org/Welfare-Use-Immigrant-and-Native-Households
JD Vance said this in an interview during the campaign, that it would be part of the overall strategy. I’m not sure how enforcement was during Trump’s first administration, but there were fewer coming in then.
This law was never rescinded by Congress - it was improperly circumvented by Barak Obama .
President Trump should have reinstated the program back in his first term but he choose to spend his political capitol own more pressing issues like trying to fix and repeal ObamaCare and fighting by Russia Gate and the rest of the bi partisan sabotage of his agenda by Democrats and Republicans in Congress and those in his own executive branch administration.
He can and should fix this on day one
“May well be one of the possible answers but the politicians
will never pass it.”
Can’t citizens get it on the ballot as a referendum? Politicians work for us. It’s our voice that is being muted by the political class.
In somewhat early morning fog, I was referring to I9’s, proof of citizenship being required for work, which was Vance’s reference. However, whatever can be done to put the work requirement back into welfare would also be a tremendous help.
I am not surprised that he does not understand the real reason we have out of control border and why politicians have not tried very hard to end the invasion.
The reason - Social Security (and abortion).
Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. The reason Ponzi schemes are illegal is because mathematically there are not enough people in the world to make it work. Eventually you run out of new members of the scheme and it falls apart.
Politicians have known from the beginning that SS would run out of new members eventually when there are more people receiving benefits then are paying in.
When abortions was made legal the future pool of American workers was cut.
Illegals are the politician’s (temporary) answer to the failing SS problem. But even this is a limited solution, the problem has not been solved, just kicked down the road.
The solution to SS is to get rid of it!
Pick an age and everyone above that age remains in SS until their death.
Anyone younger would have a 401k plan set up and the government would transfer in what they had paid into social security to this 401K.
Have this 401K be completely tax free, fixed so no money can be taken out for any reason until they reach 65, and if they die before then, the funds are treated like any asset in an estate.
Not a complete solution but the goal is to get the government out of the retirement business and turned it back to the individual.
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