Where are these people wearing rags in the freezing cold, selling matches to the warmed?
My personal strategy for ending the welfare state is to cut everybody off from all of it and then wait to see who shows up starving or freezing or hobbling and take it from there on a case by case basis.
You want disability?
Lemme see you crawling along the sidewalk looking for bread crumbs and I’ll think about it.
Not very Christian an approach?
(Well, I’d say that’s arguable but...)
Further, let them come to the city council to beg, and then let them live at the "town farm".
Welfare is best distributed at the local level, as the locals know the truly-needy from the bums.
Make vagrancy illegal.
Guilty!
Now, I sentence you to a year at the town farm, or until you get a job, or just get the hell out of my town.