THE WELFARE STATE GROWS WITH "STIMULUS" BILL

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” —Ronald Reagan

Welfare reform in the mid-1990s led to a dramatic reduction in welfare dependency and child poverty. This successful reform, however is now in jeopardy: Little-noted provisions in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate stimulus bills actually abolish this historic reform. In addition, the stimulus bills will add nearly $800 billion in new means-tested welfare spending over the next decade. This new spending amounts to around $22,500 for every poor person in the U.S. The cost of the new welfare spending amounts, on average, to over $10,000 for each family paying income tax.

What President Obama and Harry Reid neglected to mention, was that of the $816 billion in new spending and tax cuts in the House stimulus bill--32 percent or $264 billion--is new means-tested welfare spending, providing cash, food, housing, and medical care to poor and low income Americans. (The figure in the Senate bill is about 15 percent lower.)The total 10-year cost of welfare increases will not be $264 billion but $787 billion. This new spending will amount to around $22,500 for every poor person in the U.S. The cost amounts, on average, to over $10,000 for each family paying income tax in the U.S.

source:Heritage Foundation

In 1966 Welfare reform changed the policy of paying State welfare agencies more money
when their case load of welfare dependents who received welfare checks increased. The new laws set maximum amounts of taxpayers money that was distributed to the State welfare agencies regardless of any increase in welfare recipients. The idea was to reduce the number of people who made no effort to get of the welfare rolls be trying to find work. prior to this change welfare mothers received money depending on the number of children they had. Thus encouraging welfare mothers to have more children to raise their monthly welfare check.

The present 789 billion dollar House and Senate "stimulus" bills will overturn the fiscal foundation of welfare reform and restore an AFDC-style funding system. For the first time since 1996, the federal government would begin paying states bonuses to increase their welfare caseloads. Indeed, the new welfare system created by the stimulus bills is actually worse than the old AFDC program because it rewards the states more heavily to increase their caseloads. Under the stimulus bills, the federal government will pay 80 percent of cost for each new family that a state enrolls in welfare; this matching rate is far higher than it was under AFDC.

It is clear that--in both the House and Senate stimulus bills--the original goal of helping families move to employment and self-sufficiency and off long-term dependence on government assistance has instead been replaced with the perverse incentive of adding more families to the welfare rolls. The House bill provides $4 billion per year to reward states to increase their TANF caseloads; the Senate bill follows the same policy but allocates less money.

This is just another spoke in the wheel of voter base that the Democrats hope to lock into voting for them for the rest of their lives. When you add up the welfare roles, food stamp recipients, teachers union, government workers at all levels and the trial lawyers, just to mention of few groups that are beholding to the Democrat party., You can see that this so called stimulus is more of a payback by the Democrats to those who voted for them in the last elecion and to assure that they continue to vote Democrat!

On top of it all, the President is using tactics reminiscent of the years that FDR was president. In those days, when the symbol of NRA was a sign that was placed in a prominent place in each and every place of business that had agreed to set their prices in conformance with the NRA limits. It was a sign that the business and the owner was co-operating with the government, and any one who did not have the NRA sign was considered uncooperative, and customers were encouraged not to patronize these establishments. Government extortion in the name of patriotism!

The NRA failed to bring the USA out of the great depression and only WWII pulled us out of the deep recession we had in my childhood. The war jump started the middle class, with full employment making everything from tanks to machine guns.
Today, the President and demagogues like Senator Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are telling us that anyone who doesn't support this ""generation Theft", as Senator McCain called the Stimulus is unpatriotic, and their is no place for politics in solving this economic "crisis"!

If there is no place for politics what do we send representatives to Washington for?
They dare to tell those who voted for someone who wanted the Country to remain a free enterprise system based on Democracy not Socialism, is interfering in the rescue of OUR economy. This Country is not yet a dictatorship