Something Astonishing Happened to Americans on Welfare in Trump's First Year in Office

Something Astonishing Happened to Americans on Welfare in Trump’s First Year in Office https://t.co/UjbtzZa1xE

— Matthew Vadum (@vadum) March 18, 2018

Bruce Bialosky - Trump the Turnaround Manager https://t.co/k60tg1pDSl

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) March 18, 2018

Of Welfare Reform And Eating The Rich

Read to the end about what happened in Maine & Kansas when slight welfare reform was required. Its mind blowing. https://t.co/mJFlMkI5PD

— Kathleen McKinley (@KatMcKinley) January 6, 2018

Feds give California $3.9 million to encourage low-income people to shop at local farmers markets

Feds give California $3.9 million to encourage low-income people to shop at local farmers markets.https://t.co/QYlXQU5r7q

— Jim Boren (@jboren4507) August 9, 2017

'Clinton Only Offers Welfare Checks, I'll Produce Paychecks'..

'Clinton Only Offers Welfare Checks, I'll Produce Paychecks'... https://t.co/XFBK8JFxCk

— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) September 15, 2016

It's as if the #WarOnPoverty tries to treat the symptoms of poverty to make it more tolerable but more persistent.

It's as if the #WarOnPoverty tries to treat the symptoms of poverty to make it more tolerable but more persistent.https://t.co/vEUsTUtOtS

— Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) August 24, 2016

Budget offers hundreds of millions in spending increases on welfare but nothing for infrastructure.

#CABudget offers hundreds of millions in new welfare spending but nothing for infrastructure https://t.co/YaGKoeQ73L

— HJTA.org (@HJTA) June 16, 2016

Contrary to stereotypes, US welfare benefits are more generous than those in most European countries

Contrary to stereotypes, US welfare benefits are more generous than those in most European countries: http://t.co/RCIlsXqtEC #WorkvsWelfare

— Cato Institute (@CatoInstitute) September 8, 2015

Virtually all immigrant families with four or more children in the house are on some type of welfare program, according to U.S. Census Bureau data in a new report raising questions about those Washington is letting into the country.

Census: 93.7% of immigrant families with 4 kids on welfare http://t.co/MjBD3GkbSg pic.twitter.com/TLqbc5dJoU

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) September 4, 2015

That report has raised questions about the types of immigrants, apparently mostly poor, being attracted to the United States and the degree to which taxpayers have to take care of them.

The new Census data analyzed by CIS also showed that Hispanic immigrants are far more likely to use welfare than those from other areas like Africa, Europe or Asia.

For example, 65 percent of all Latin American immigrant families are on welfare. For those from Africa, it is 48.3 percent, Europe 25.9 percent and South Asia 17 percent.

Even among Latin Americans the numbers were different. Those from Central America and Mexico tapped welfare the most, at 72.7 percent. Those from the Caribbean were next at 51.3 percent and last were South Americans at 41 percent.

Greenspan says social welfare 'extremely dangerous.' Agreed. Let's begin by slashing corporate welfare first.

Alan Greenspan said one issue is more important to the U.S. economy now than monetary policy: http://t.co/I4m5hIPUvZ pic.twitter.com/8b2t4GFXaI

— CNBC (@CNBC) July 29, 2015

Greenspan says social welfare 'extremely dangerous.' Agreed. Let's begin by slashing corporate welfare first. http://t.co/bheLSTz9fD

— Jerry Robinson (@FTMDaily) July 30, 2015

GREENSPAN SOUNDS ALARM ON GOV'T SPENDING... http://t.co/L0fsdHxd3z

— SavageNation (@SavageNation) July 30, 2015

Maine Just Changed Their Food-Stamp Policy… Every State Should Do This

◼ Basically work to earn a living, and if you want Food Stamps then you must volunteer at least 20 hours a week of community service, Or Lose your benefits! - Conservative Tribune

The work requirement is simple common sense. If taxpayers are to subsidize people’s income — a bad idea to begin with — taxpayers should get something in return. Knowing that the folks they are helping are using the handout to improve their own lives, and thus society, is one such benefit; the improvement to their communities brought about by a potential 240,000 new volunteer hours worked across the state is another.

Krauthammer: Obama is Robbing the Military to Inflate the Entitlement State

◼ “There’s nobody to back us up if we strip our military and neuter it as we do now.”

◼ Jonathan Hendershott of the New York Post recently reported that members of our armed services, some of whom are currently serving overseas, are about to receive pink slips...

In a stunning display of callousness, the Defense Department has announced that thousands of soldiers — many serving as commanding officers in Afghanistan — will be notified in the coming weeks that their service to the country is no longer needed.

Shocker: 86M Full-Time Private-Sector Workers Sustain 148M Benefit Takers

◼ Buried deep on the website of the U.S. Census Bureau is a number every American citizen, and especially those entrusted with public office, should know. It is 86,429,000. - CNS News

That is the number of Americans who in 2012 got up every morning and went to work — in the private sector — and did it week after week after week.

These are the people who built America, and these are the people who can sustain it as a free country. The liberal media have not made them famous like the polar bear, but they are truly a threatened species.

It is not a rancher with a few hundred head of cattle that is attacking their habitat, nor an energy company developing a fossil fuel. It is big government and its primary weapon — an ever-expanding welfare state....

Eventually, there will be too few carrying too many, and America will break.

“It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.”

◼ Surprise Surprise: Healthcare Premiums Go Up Massively - IJ Review

Insurance premiums under the Affordable Healthcare Act are up 39% to 56% according to a new report. Across the country, families are paying an average of $663 per month and individuals are paying $274. On the extreme end, some families in California are paying more than $2,600 and more than $1,800 in New York.

These premium changes are for individual plans that do not qualify for the government subsidy. Funds from other Americans the government are available for individuals earning $45,960 per year and for families of four earning less than $94,200. A significant number of Americans, obviously, qualify for subsidies and it is expected that more than $1 trillion dollars will be provided to subsidize costs over the next ten years. To put this in perspective, median household income in America is about $51,000 per year....

Lower crime now may be a fruit of welfare reform 20 years ago

◼ link - Michael Barone/Washington Examiner @michaelbarone

...Research has shown that work requirements for welfare recipients have produced not just greater income but more satisfaction.

Entry-level jobs for welfare recipients have proven not to be dead ends but the avenue to greater job skills and promotions.

The welfare reform work requirements may also be contributing -- this is my hypothesis -- to the remarkable decline in violent crime in America over the last 20 years....

Today's 15-to-25s were more likely to have mothers who, if they collected welfare, had to hold a job. Mothers with jobs are away from home during work hours.

But they are also likely to have more moral authority. They bring home the bacon and are entitled to demand good behavior in return.

And, especially if they move ahead at work, they set a better example for their children, male and female. They show that there is a connection between honest effort and legitimate reward. A mother who earns success shows her children they can, too.....

History shows that societies have experienced sharp increases and reductions in crime rates within a generation. Public policies and demographic trends account for much of the change. But much change surely comes form attitudes inculcated in the home.

Another corollary, if my hypothesis is right, is that the decline in jobs and work-force participation may produce bad effects that are not just economic. All the more reason to think hard about how to turn it around.

Progressive activists still talk as if we can afford any level of social service expenditures if we raise taxes on the rich, but workers can’t be created by raising taxes. Everything that the left has done, from breaking up the family to driving out manufacturing industries to promoting Third World immigration has made its own social welfare spending completely unsustainable.

◼ The Coming Collapse of the Welfare State - Daniel Greenfield/Front Page

Liberals and libertarians both act as if the crisis facing us can be fixed if we take more from the “wealthy elderly” or give them less. The crisis is born of demographics. It can’t be fixed by targeting the elderly because they haven’t been the problem in some time....

The welfare state has been spending more money with an unsustainable demographic imbalance. There are fewer working families supporting more elderly, immigrants and broken families. The Russians invest money into increasing the native birth rate. Instead we fund Planned Parenthood because liberal economic eugenics dictates that we should extract “full value” from working women as a tax base to subsidize the welfare state while discarding the next generation.

The “modern” system that we have adopted with its low birth rates, high social spending and retirement benefits is at odds with itself. We can have low birth rates, deficit spending or Social Security; but there is no possible way that we can have all three.

And yet we have all three.

...After a century of misery, the left still hasn’t learned that there is no substitute for the middle class. It’s not just running out of money, it’s running out of people.

The welfare state has no future. It is only a question of what terms it will implode on and what will happen to the social welfare political infrastructure when it does. The violence in Venezuela and the slow death of Detroit give us insights into the coming collapse of the welfare state.

81% of people receiving public housing benefits vote Democratic –

◼ And that’s just the tip of the handout iceberg - Matt Palumbo/Rare

Perhaps I spend too much time lurking around left-leaning blogs, but there are many myths taken as fact without any additional analysis.

One of the most prominent? The notion that red states take the most aid from the government.

...liberal economist Paul Krugman blogged that “Aaron Carroll of Indiana University tells us that in 2010, residents of the 10 states Gallup ranks as ‘most conservative’ received 21.2 percent of their income in government transfers, while the number for the most liberal states was only 17.1 percent.”

...But as solid as the statistics Krugman provided might seem, we’re left with one glaring problem: States aren’t people. Could it be possible that liberals within conservative states are the ones taking the welfare dollars?

A ◼ survey by the ◼ Maxwell Poll on the political affiliation of those receiving government aid showed this to be the case.

Type of Benefit Received - % Voting Dem - - - % Voting Rep
Public Housing.......................81%.......................12%
Medicaid................................74%.......................16%
Food Stamps..........................67%.......................20%
Unemployment Compensation..66%.......................21%
Disability (from Govt.)..............64%.......................25%
Welfare/Public Assistance........63%.......................22%

Attributing the problem to red states is false; the problem lies in the blue parts of the red states.

◼ Next time the media says “red states” are the poorest, remember this - Matt Palumbo/Rare

Paul Krugman and the left would like us to believe that red states are the poorest states.

PolitiFact rated such a claim as “true” noting, “The Census data also show that 9 of the 10 states with the lowest median household income were Red: Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oklahoma.” Whether or not a state is red or blue is based off how they voted in the 2012 election.

In another case of how sloppy PolitiFact’s “fact checking” can be, they didn’t even take cost of living differences into account when determining which states were the poorest.

Or that half of those “red” states have Democratic Governors....MORE, AT THE LINK.

◼ Krugman reports no individual level data, so let me. - Tino Sanandaji/A Research Fellow at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics/Super Economy

The Maxwell Poll has detailed information about welfare use....Hardly surprising, we see that in a two-party split, 60-80% of welfare recipients are Democrats, while full time Workers are evenly divided between parties.

◼ (S)imilar results in this recent NPR-Poll.Among the Long Term Unemployed, 72% of the two-party support goes to Democrats.

Sunday Funnies:

The Microphone Is All Yours, Mr. President. #Explain

◼ Mitch McConnell Torches Obama In New Campaign Ad - Nice Deb

Senator McConnell really brought down the thunder in this campaign ad criticizing Obama – the Divider in Chief. The noted First Amendment hawk released the video ahead of the SOTU to slam the president for being a divider not a uniter. It was produced by filmmaker Lucas Baiano, and criticizes Obama on unemployment, health care, the IRS scandal and coal.

Federal Government Has Declared War On Work

◼ While 50 years ago the federal government declared war on poverty, I would submit that in recent years it has led an undeclared but real new war: a War on Work. The government increasingly is using its coercive powers to punish people who want to work, creating a vast class of able-bodied Americans dependent on the government — and politicians — for their daily bread. - Richard Vedder/IBD

While a vast number of government policies cause a decline in work, let me mention just six:

• Extended unemployment benefits.
• Expansion of food stamps.
• Higher taxes on workers, especially the most productive ones.
• Increases in Social Security disability payments.
• Increases in Pell Grants and other forms of federal higher education aid.
• Increases in minimum wage laws at local, state and federal levels.

...No nation ever achieved greatness when vast portions of its productive workforce were idle. America will not regain its economic vitality until it ends this war on work.

In Colorado: Democrats on Wednesday voted against a GOP proposal to add marijuana shops to the list of places where recipients of public assistance can’t use their government-issued EBT cards to access cash.

◼ Use of public assistance cards OK at pot shops - AP via The Pueblo Chieftain

◼ Colorado Dems Endorse Welfare Recipients Using Their EBT Cards At Pot Shops - Right Wing News

The more people on welfare who use pot, the more people who will stay on welfare, the worse off the country will be, but the better off the Democrats will be because people who are dependent on the government tend to vote for liberals. We’ve now reached a point where we have one political party that wants to destroy as many lives as possible because they think it helps. So whether they want to deliberately destroy the country or are just wrecking things out of ignorance or political calculations, it really doesn’t matter because the end result is the same.