American Health Care Reform

[Tigerman]

Sure you can adjust the system to discourage the practice of raising kids on welfare. That's reasonable. But saying, tough luck..well you are going to have even more malnourished damaged children who will grow up to be very expensive wards of the state in some form or other. There's are always going to be better ways to deal with things instead of PUNISHING children.

So, its reasonable to adjust the system to discourage the practice of raising kids on welfare... OK. What do you suggest?

[headhonchoII]

A phasing out of support as you add kids. More emphasis on education and job opportunities. Having the first one or two kids could be accidental or due to immaturity or family break-ups.. But you couldn't phase support out completely as again it is just damaging both to the individual and economically and socially in the long-run.

[Tigerman]

A phasing out of support as you add kids. More emphasis on education and job opportunities. Having the first one or two kids could be accidental or due to immaturity or family break-ups.. But you couldn't phase support out completely as again it is just damaging both to the individual and economically and socially in the long-run.

Why should we allow payments for the second child? I never made a mistake with birth control, but, I'm willing to allow for one mistake. But, why in the world should we allow a second mistake? Why should a second mistake be deemed an accident? After the first, don't you think the mother knows how to get pregnant?

What good is more emphasis on education and jobs when the family is shattered and the mother cannot take care of or control her multiple kids?

How is the current encouragement for single mother-multiple children families not damaging to the individuals and society in the long run?

[Dr. McCoy]

The 1996 reform cut out payments for additional children. TANF.

It's funny how Reagan can tell one big lie about the welfare queen and it never goes away.

[Chris]

Yeah, the "welfare queen" myth has certainly endured, sadly.

[Gao Bohan]

Poor people have really done well under the welfare state.

Ah yes, the "welfare state". Conjures up an image of hordes of lazy peasants mooching off good, honest, hard-working Americans, doesn't it? Of course, federal welfare entitlements were abolished in 1996, and were replaced with limited block grants to the states in a program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

One might wonder how many zillions of gajillions of dollars are being stolen from the pockets of good, honest, hard-working Americans who can only afford one child while approximately 100 gazillionfrillion welfare moochers suck them dry. But wonder no more!

Here is the latest report provided by the federal government to Congress on all of the welfare dollars it's pouring into the hands of moochers. And the grand total of all federal and state welfore expenditures for FY2009 is....wait for it.....

30.6 billion dollars! To 1.8 million families!

The current federal budget is 3.796 trillion dollars. The "welfare" state costs less than 1% per year and affects a limited number of families. The report also states that 45% of families receiving TANF assistance have at least one working member. So much for the Republican notion of a vast welfare state sustained by liberal politicians trying to keep their jobs.

[headhonchoII]

What's interesting is that assistance is time limited to a maximum of 5 years. Only 6.6% of families remain on it for 5 years. Also the amount of people requesting assistance only increased by 12% during Americas worst recession since the great depression.

But there are still a lot more people on food stamps there, I believe they must be the working poor.

[johnny138]

Poor people have really done well under the welfare state.

Ah yes, the "welfare state". Conjures up an image of hordes of lazy peasants mooching off good, honest, hard-working Americans, doesn't it? Of course, federal welfare entitlements were abolished in 1996, and were replaced with limited block grants to the states in a program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

One might wonder how many zillions of gajillions of dollars are being stolen from the pockets of good, honest, hard-working Americans who can only afford one child while approximately 100 gazillionfrillion welfare moochers suck them dry. But wonder no more!

Here is the latest report provided by the federal government to Congress on all of the welfare dollars it's pouring into the hands of moochers. And the grand total of all federal and state welfore expenditures for FY2009 is....wait for it.....

30.6 billion dollars! To 1.8 million families!

The current federal budget is 3.796 trillion dollars. The "welfare" state costs less than 1% per year and affects a limited number of families. The report also states that 45% of families receiving TANF assistance have at least one working member. So much for the Republican notion of a vast welfare state sustained by liberal politicians trying to keep their jobs.

Ah yes, the typical liberal nonsense about how little the US spends on welfare. Conservatives should obviously go back to what they do best, like making moonshine and waxing the General Lee, and let you geniuses run everything.

So let's look at the money spent on TANF alone. Using your numbers, that's per family.....wait for it......wait for it: US$17,000 per family per year!!

So that's not a lot of money, right? PER FAMILY. I think US$17,000 is quite a lot to come from ONE, SINGLE program per family.

How nice of you to quote the amount spent on ONE, SINGLE government entitlement program and pretend that's all the government spends when you oh so conveniently left out the other 80+ federal welfare programs!
Source: http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statemen ... lfare-pro/

In fact, the Government Accounting Office apparently doesn't even know how many there are. And that's not surprising? That's not a huge problem?

Current US welfare expenditures are around $700 billion for federal but around $900 billion a year once state funding is added. Just a wee little bit more than you said. Source: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/yea ... 20#usgs302

It's funny how Reagan can tell one big lie about the welfare queen and it never goes away.

You seem like you might not be as far gone as the others, so I'll bite. Reagan might have been unable to point to one specific example but we can now.
1. There are people that should not in any way be eligible for welfare that are getting it anyway because the government makes it so easy to get in the first place. This is what it looks like:

Again, notice the luxury cars at the end of the clip as people who DO NOT deserve this go take it. That's abuse right there, just like Reagan said and it's caught on video.

This woman lives very, very well and does not seem to need welfare at all, yet she gets it. So how is this not a welfare queen as Reagan described?

2. Some people do legitimately qualify for welfare, but they use welfare assistance to buy all sorts of luxury goods that do not contribute to their family's survival.
Here's a great example: http://thecollegeconservative.com/2011/ ... re-reform/

During the 2010 and 2011 summers, I was a cashier at Wal-Mart #1788 in Scarborough, Maine. I spent hours upon hours toiling away at a register, scanning, bagging, and dealing with questionable clientele. These were all expected parts of the job, and I was okay with it. What I didn’t expect to be part of my job at Wal-Mart was to witness massive amounts of welfare fraud and abuse.

I understand that sometimes, people are destitute. They need help, and they accept help from the state in order to feed their families. This is fine. It happens. I’m not against temporary aid helping those who truly need it. What I saw at Wal-Mart, however, was not temporary aid. I witnessed generations of families all relying on the state to buy food and other items. I literally witnessed small children asking their mothers if they could borrow their EBT cards. I once had a man show me his welfare card for an ID to buy alcohol. The man was from Massachusetts. Governor Michael Dukakis’ signature was on his welfare card. Dukakis’ last gubernatorial term ended in January of 1991. I was born in June of 1991. The man had been on welfare my entire life. That’s not how welfare was intended, but sadly, it is what it has become.

Other things witnessed while working as a cashier included:

a) People ignoring me on their iPhones while the state paid for their food. (For those of you keeping score at home, an iPhone is at least $200, and requires a data package of at least $25 a month. If a person can spend $25+ a month so they can watch YouTube 24/7, I don’t see why they can’t spend that money on food.)

b) People using TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) money to buy such necessities such as earrings, kitkat bars, beer, WWE figurines, and, my personal favorite, a slip n’ slide. TANF money does not have restrictions like food stamps on what can be bought with it.

c) Extravagant purchases made with food stamps; including, but not limited to: steaks, lobsters, and giant birthday cakes.

d) A man who ran a hotdog stand on the pier in Portland, Maine used to come through my line. He would always discuss his hotdog stand and encourage me to “come visit him for lunch some day.” What would he buy? Hotdogs, buns, mustard, ketchup, etc. How would he pay for it? Food stamps. Either that man really likes hotdogs, or the state is paying for his business. Not okay.

That's abuse by any name and it goes on all the time. In fact, I know folks back home that will buy food stamps for cash so the welfare recipients can go buy their crack and their 40s. So it's even worse than the above.

[Dr. McCoy]

Some people would rather focus on the few cases of fraud than the good that the program does. The news show does a good job of exposing cheating and I hope they got things fixed. I looked around for some overall data and I see that most fraud comes from the vendors rather than the recipients. www.fns.usda.gov/wic/resources/efforts.pdf That's a 1999 report. I'll look around for something more recent. But that's another myth, poor people are lazy cheats.

[Gao Bohan]

Johnny,

80% of federal spending is taken up by popular programs like Social Security, Medicare, and defense. Of course you're right that Social Security and Medicare are entitlements, but that's not what Americans think of when they hear "welfare". They think of the people in your Youtube videos, living large on fat Government paychecks.

It would be extremely difficult for one person to live on $17,000 per year, much less a family. At a grand total of 8/10 of 1% of the federal budget, supporting a highly fluid set of families whose eligibility varies throughout the year, I hardly think the US is a "welfare state".

I agree with Tigerman and GuyInTaiwan that a rational discussion needs to take place on the scope and magnitude of federal entitlements, taking into account our longer life spans, etc., but I don't think the starting point of the conversation is that the US is a "welfare state" with an underclass of moochers dragging down the country. This conversation nearly took place last year, and the party leaders were converging on a deal with a 4-to-1 spending cut to tax increase ratio, when suddenly the Tea Party declared they won't accept any deal that includes any increase in taxes. And Speaker Boehner caved to what, 63 Republicans? That he didn't even need because the Democrats were on board?

If Republicans are serious about entitlement reform, then defense spending and tax increases have got to be on the table. It would also help if the discussion began with a recognition that the most expensive entitlements are the most popular, and not just with the working class.