I've been re-reading the autobiography of Ronald Reagan, "An American Life." Between my fears about some on the Right forgetting who we are, I was struck by the story Ronald Reagan wrote about visiting his Father, a Democrat, at his office as a government aid worker during the Great Depression. I believe this story shows what is wrong with government bureaucracy and the welfare state, so I will retell it as an introduction to this primer on reforming Welfare, as we conservatives see it.Jack Reagan worked in 1933 in the federal unemployment office in Dixon, Illinois. Ronald Reagan came by the office while visiting from Eureka College where he was enrolled. He was shocked to see fathers and schoolmates waiting in line for handouts, destitute. And none of them were proud of it. Their spirits were being crushed.
Jack Reagan was an old school Democrat, something dead today. He saw what the handouts were doing, and on his own time he travelled around the county asking if any temporary jobs were available, even negotiating with farmers and shopowners to take on extra help. Then Jack would go back to the office and start handing out these temporary jobs to those who had been out of work the longest. President Reagan wrote observing that when these men were given the jobs
I swear the men were standing a little taller....They wanted work, not handouts.
However, in came the meddling and stupidity of the federal government, and the overriding desire of the bureaucracy to perpetuate itself. Shortly after this successful personal initiative started, Jack noticed that there were no takers when he would bring in work, even though there were people lined up for handouts. One person finally levelled with him, saying, "Jack, the lsat time you got me some work, the people at the relief office took my family off welfare; they said I had a job and even though it was temporary, I wasn't eligible for relief anymore. I just can't afford to take a job." The government, in other words, was quashing the man's desire to work by holding his family hostage.
Later on, Jack Reagan was put in charge of the WPA office in Dixon. The WPA, as you might know, put people to work building roads and bridges and infrastructure--something the unions would not allow today--instead of just giving handouts. It was an early form of workfare. You know, workfare--where you do something for that check from Uncle Sam.... Everything was going great until the bureaucrats had to ensure the perpetuation of their existence.
All of a sudden, even though manhy were still out of work, the number of people applying for these WPA jobs was dwindling. Jack Reagan started asking around. He found out that down at the welfare office, federal workers were advising able-bodied men not to take WPA jobs. These scumsucking bureaufarts were saying, 'the welfare office is taking care of you now. You don't need to work a WPA job.' These bureaucrats, for the sake of their own existence, were seducing these men into not working, into the idea of free money, and in turn killing their drive for work and the desire to be productive.
Aside from these, the sins of the welfare system are many:
The Sins of the Welfare System
Its destruction heaped on individuals and families include:
_rewarding idleness and punishings work;
_killing individual initiative;
_sapping our economy and diminishing our productivity;
_forcing middle class taxpayers to support those who refuse to support themselves and their families;
_rewarding immorality and unwed childbearing (welfare benefits increase as more kids are produced);
_rewarding irresponsibility of unwed fathers;
_encouraging families to split up (benefits are terminated if the father stays in the home);
_rewarding and subsidizing drug abuse and alcoholism, as well as gambling addictions;
_sudsidzing crime (gang members sometimes live with welfare dependent girlfriends using the young woman's govt. check to support and sponsor a thugalicious lifestyle)
Welfare--everybody talks about it but no one does anything about it. Even Bill Clinton, who promised to end welfare as we know it, called for 9.3 billion in additional funding. The problem with welfare is not that it is underfunded, but that it overspends about 300 billion a year.
Expansion of this dreaded creature is going to happen unless we start thinking about some real solutions to it. And we have to be on guard about not letting this liberal Congress give us a onceover and force more welfare down our throat, which is what they are going to try to do. However, seriously talking about welfare is tough, due to some misconceptions and barriers to a lasting solution.
Roadblock 1-The idea that Government should be in the charity business.
Many people assume that one of the functions of government is taking care of people. Looking at the Constitution, I don't see that. Of course, many would take that part about promoting the general welfare and decide that means our term welfare. Not so, in fact welfare destroys the common good and wellbeing of our society. Welfare robs the taxpayer, deepens the debt, reduces productivity, kills the human spirit, divides families and enslaves the poor. Until FDR, the primary functions of our government were to provide national defense and protecting rights and freedoms. Our founding fathers were worried someone with the best of intentions would twist the definition of general welfare. A look at the writings of Madison shows this. Adam Smith said "[Charity] is always free. it cannt be extorted by force." Congressman David Crockett said,
"we have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please to charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money."Many people blame FDR for welfare, and they are right, but what many don't know is that, had he lived to complete his final term, FDR would have shut down many of the Depression programs he started. A look at Roosevelt's platform shows that he wanted to reduce waste and fat in the federal government. he called for cutting federal spending by 25 percent, eliminating boards and commissions and returning to states and communities many of the powers the federal government had seized. Franklin Roosevelt Jr. often observed that his father said his relief programs were meant to be temporary. FDR himself said that government giveaway programs "destroy the human spirit," and he was right. Unfortunately, he became distracted by war and poor health. Others came and made his programs permanent and tried to create a permanent welfare state.
Compassion is great, but it should be a personal act, not mandated by someone else. Then it is not compassion, it is confiscation and forced redistribution of wealth. If you want to really experience compassion, do you go to a govt. agency, or do you go to a church or private concern? Compassion belongs in the hands of private institutions.
Obstacle 2 The idea that everyone has a "right" to a decent standard of living.
Contrary to what libs think, no such right exists. You won't find it in the Constitution (just like you won't find right to kill babies, separation of church and state, and the list goes on and on). You won't find it in the writings of the founders. You won't even find it in the Judeo-Christian heritage, nor the Islamic one, for that matter.
Government exists to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." Note: governments exists to maintain our lierty, not our prosperity. Liberty entails the freedom to succeed (or fail). If you spend your days on the street corner hanging at the quick stop, or playing video games til the electricity gets cut off, that is your right as well. But, the Constitution does not say that others have to subsidize your life of leisure. Nowhere is there any suggestion you have the right to stand in line and recieve money that the government has coerced me to give to you. The welfare state is fundamentally wrong, and fundamentally unAmerican.
If you want to live well in the greatest nation on Earth (the US), then you have to get out of that line in the government office and learn how to access the unlimited opportunities in this country. The American dream is the free and unfettered ability to work as hard as you want, to be as efficient as you can be, and to enjoy the fruits of your labor. That's where a decent standard of living truly comes from: ingenuity, work, and productivity. Everything we have in America comes from work and productivity. All the wealth and goods and services we enjoy are a direct result of the fact that a lot of people in America get up and go to work. They should not have to subsidize you, when they are working on their own pursuit of happiness.
Obstacle No. 3: The myth that Poverty Programs alleviate poverty.
In 1964, LBJ introduced what he called the Great Society, which he kicked off with a massive increase to government spending on antipoverty programs (and a rather R rated claim that because of this effort, he would have (the n words in his language) blacks voting for Democrats for the next 200 years). From 1964 to the present, spending has increased from 50 billion to over 300 billion dollars a year. In total, since the beginning of the so called war on poverty, we have spent TRILLIONS trying to end poverty. You want to talk about wars we cannot afford? Look no further.
What have we gotten for this massive amount of money? Go to Detroit, Watts, Cincinnati, Over the Rhine, any downtown of any American city and you can see for yourself. Go to the federal housing projects, where people live without hope and a future. Go to the inner city schools (I have) where kids cannot read. Go to the needle parks where people convert their government checks into smack and speed and crack and crank. Go to the inner city maternity wards and look at the writhing crack babies and AIDS babies. Look at the hopelessness and anger in the faces of the inner city. Look at the ngelected, fatherless children, the ones who will grow up to produce more fatherless children, who will seek guidance in gangs, and live for murder and the quick high.
Take a good look. That is your so-called "Great Society." Ain't it grand?
Obstacle No. 4: Welfare is BIG Busine$$!
Welfare in America is a multibillion dollar industry supporting millions of people across the country, and I am talking about the bureaucrats, not the recipients. The poverty industry has created many millionaires with taxapayer money. It provides job security for thousands of bureaucrats. Powerful well-heeled interests seek to perpetuate and grow this welfare leviathan, and the obscene amounts of money that flow like water through the system make it a hard puppy to wean, much less kill.
Who benefits from welfare? The recipients themselves? Honest research may surprise you. One study of 2300 unwed welfare mothers may shed some light. Beginning in 1989, these women received(in addition to their regular welfare benefits) job training, education, intensive family planning and counseling services. Two years later, 82% were still jobless and on welfare, and 57% had become pregnant again. A control group that did not recieve any such additional services actually fared slightly better than the test group. Did the women in this program benefit from the added services? Obviously not.
But someone benefited! Who? The contractors and employees, administrators and service providers of the programs! They benefited plenty, but they had no positive impact on those they "helped." That's the problem with welfare! Only the special interest groups, govt. employees, and the private contractors benefit, not the recipients themselves!!!!!
The poverty industry is ginormous! It's bigger than the total combined revenues of Exxon, Ford, GM IBM and GE! At the federal level, the welfare budget includes HHS, HUD, the food stamp program and SSI, among other things. In all, we spend over 300 billion a YEAR forcibly transferring wealth!
As a business, welfare is wasteful beyond belief. Did you know that of every tax dollar that goes to the welfare budget, ONLY 24 CENTS actually goes to the welfare recipients in the form of cash transfers and other services? That other 76% goes to administrative overhead! That's right! What is compassionate about a "charity" that keeps three times more than it gives away?
Obstacle No. 5: The assumption that everyone on welfare is "poor."
Five TRILLION dollars is a lot of money. What did we spend all that money on? A big bit of it went to irect cash transfers. Some of it went to housing relief and urban development. Some went to family planning and education. With all that assistance, surely we must have lifted an awful lot of folks out of poverty, right? Right?
Wrong! Though the poverty rate in America was steadily declining prior to 1964, it has steadily grown ever since we started throwing bushells of money at the problem. In part, this is because handouts and programs can't help people who are unwilling to help themselves, and the more money and benefits we give away to poor people, the greater their incentive to remain eligible for those benefits.
Another reason poverty has grown is that the definition of "poor" is so slippery. Every few years, the government redefines poor so those in the poverty industry can maintain their power and profits. When you increase the number of people eligible for government benefits, you enlarge the poverty business and generate more employment for bureaucrats. Today, many of those considered poor by the government would have been called middle class just a few decades ago. Noweadays, it is common to think of people as being above or below the poverty line. Prior to 1963, though, there was no poverty line ordained by the feds. In that year, the government first established a poverty line. The first line considered all forms of income. Today, the poverty line only takes into account cash income. While cash assistance accounts amount to only 25% of total welfare spending, the value of other benefits like food stamps, healthcare, childcare, job training, etc. is not even counted in the equation. Because of all these noncash benefits that welfare recipients enjoy on top of their cash benefits, the "welfare poor" in this country are not in such bad economic shape as a group.
According to a group of studies, those below the poverty line: own two cars, have multiple tvs, with cable/satellite in at least one room, and according to one study, at least 40%own their own homes! Many of these so-called poverty folks also have microwaves, at least two VCRs/dvd players, and a good portion have some type of video game system. And these are the "starving?" Hey, I know, run to gamestop and sell that gamecube!
Here are some interesting tidbits I have found:
_In several states, welfare pays more than a janitorial job;
_in several states, welfare pays more than an $8.00/hr job;
_in a few states, welfare pays more than a $10/hr job;
_In Hawaii, Alaska,CT, NY, RI, and DC, welfare pays more than a $12/hour job, and over 2 and a half times the minimum wage;
_In a few states, welfare pays more than the average entry year salary for a computer programmer;
_In six states, welfare pays more than the average first year salary for a teacher;
_In 29 states, welfare pays more than the average starting salary for a secretary
Think about it. The welfare recipient enjoys a higher standard of living than the secretary; yet the secretary is FORCED BY THE GOVERNMENT to support the welfare recipient.
Obstacle No. 6: The assumption that ending welfare is politically impossible.
When the Republicans came to power in 1994, they didn't revolutionize the system, they just tweaked it, with the Personal Responsibility Act, which President Clinton signed to triangulate his reelection. Even with this tweaking, 70% of our welfare problem still exists. The problem with government programs is that you can't tweak them, reform them, trim them back. The reason is because they won't stay trimmed, tweaked, or reformed. They grow back and become larger, more bureaucratic, and more powerful. The only way to make sure a government program doesn't grow back is to kill it.
A phase out of the welfare system as we know it is needed. However, it should be certain and firm and take place in a limited amount of time. Or, as with another issue, we need an exit strategy from the War on Poverty, a terrible quagmire we have been embroiled in for 40 years, which has caused thousands of lives to be shattered.
WAITAMINUTE! WHAT ABOUT COMPASSION? WHAT KIND OF CRUEL WORLD DO YOU WANT US TO LIVE IN?
Is it compassionate to continue to feed crack to an addict? Is it compassionate to let people continue to engage in bad habits just because we don't want to confront them? Nope. The current system is neither compassionate nor caring. The Great Society produced neither anything great nor a better society. Look to the projects, look to the rising crime despite more and more spending.
Conservatives have a vision for what has been called an opportunity society in which people are set free from addictive handouts and oppressive taxes--free to pursue a better and more productive life, free from govt. endorsed poverty, drugs, and violence. That kind of freedom does not come from the govt. It comes when people learn THAT THEY ALONE have the responsibility for their lives and actions
HEY, WHAT ABOUT THE TRULY NEEDY? HOW CAN WE REFUSE TO TAKE CARE OF PEOPLE WHO CAN'T TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES OR ARE DOWN ON THEIR LUCK?
We are not talking about doing away with charity in America, or SHORT TERM unemployment benefits, or retraining programs. We are mostly talking about privatizing them. Seventy years ago, virtually everything that the welfare state does today--more compassionately, more effectively, less expensively by private and religious charities. Given what we have seen welfare does to people and society, going back a few decades can only be called truly progressive.
Here is a story I read that will tear your heart out. It is true but names have been changed to protect young people:
A little 9 year old named Alex was hauled off his school playground for fighting. He had tackled another kid and repeatedly kicked him in the head. You might think, "juvenile delinquent, repeat offender!" But you would be wrong. This boy had never been in trouble before. The victim was not seriously hurt.
When asked by the administration, Alex said the reason for his action was that hte other boy had made a disparaging remark about his mom. Digging further, it was discovered that Alex's mom was home in bed, dying of AIDS. There was no adult in the house. Alex was taking care of the house, his mom, and himself, not to mention his seven year old sister. They came to school everyday. Pent up fear of what would happen to him and his sister caused him to lash out when the remark was made.
See, liberals say, we need welfare for families like this and you evil bastard conservatives want to take it away! Not true. I want them to be adequately cared for by peole who care for them, really care about them--not just a caseworker from the government, no offense to them. These caseworkers, however, are terribly overburdened. If we privatize the compassion industry, and unleash the market forces, then people like Alex and his mom will get the quality help they need.
WAITAMINUTE! PRIVATE AND RELIGIOUS CHARITIES ARE ALREADY STRETCHED! THEY CAN'T ABSORBE 400 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR!
Wrong, and wrong! First the fact that government spends that much does not mean there's that much need. Remember, 3/4 of that 400 billion goes to administrative overhead--and more goes to fraud, waste, and abuse. Private and religious charities operate on much less administrative overhead (ex. the Freedom Alliance)and are better and more careful about weeding out cheats and con artists.
Second, ending welfare will free up enormous resources for private and religious charities. When you kill the modern welfare state, you cut taxes--drastically! Most of our costs of government have to do with entitlements like welfare! People will feel more economically secure, and when they feel economically secure, they are apt to give more. They give to charities, and those charities ahve the greater ability to help people in need. Look no further to the comparison between FEMA and private disaster charities during Katrina. The Salvation Army and such were in there with generators quicker than any govt. agency. And the stories go on and on.
BUT, YOU SAY, IF YOU TAKE ALL THOSE PEOPLE OFF WELFARE, HOW WILL THE ECONOMY ABSORB THEM?
Freeing up more money to people will spur the economy even more than it already is being spurred. When people have more of their money, the invest and spend it on the economy. By increasing private spending, it builds demand, leading to more jobs and more possibilities.
What about that Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996? Didn't that end welfare as we know it?
Nope, it only put it on life support. Let's review. By 2000, even with this new legislation, welfare spending was still around 434 billion dollars a year. Since the signing of this reluctantly by Bubba, welfare cases have plummeted more than 50%, employment of single mothers who might have become dependent has increased more than 50%, and child hunger has decreased dramatically.
This law has helped, but it is still not enough, and conservatives need to emphasize this is not done to feed the rich at the expense of the poor, but rather to free the poor from government servitude and dependency. It is time for an intervention, people!
Groups like the Heritage Foundation have advocated more be required of those on assistance, like encouraging marriage and abstinence, as well as requiring increased hours for work.
Long term dependence is still a problem, however. The Cato Institute did a study in which they evaluated how every state has implemented welfare reform since 1996. Missouri and Vermont have had the least success of decreasing govt. assistance and dependence in part because they've never implemented real reform, choosing to continue to reward people for not working. Missouri increased benefits to those who had more children while they were receiving welfare. Vermont didn't implement any program to make people more self-sufficient. There are some success stories, however.
Idaho, and surprisingly here in Ohio have experienced the most significant declines. Idaho had an 85% decrease in caseloads, and 79% of those who had been on welfare had found jobs. In Ohio (at least at the present moment, I think Ted Strickland might turn back the clock to massive welfare expansion) states and counties have taken over administration and have established benchmarks for recipients to meet, and have made the system more temporary. However, if the system is not tweaked, consider these trends:
Since 1965, illegitimacy, crime and welfare rolls have increased dramatically. In the 1960s, only 7.7% of Americans were born out of wedlock, according to the CDC. By 2002, that figure had climbed to 34.5%! Taxpayer funded welfare has led only to more social problems, not less.
So, tough guy, if killing welfare is any solution, where is the evidence?
The evidence lies in the effectiveness of the limited welfare reform of 1996. Even though it has not done enough, it has had some successes. Long term dependency is still a problem. The welfare reform Republican legislation has been primarily responsible for lifting about 1.2 million black children out of poverty. Since that reform, the poverty rate for black children has fallen from 41.5% to 30%. The majority of those still in poverty are unemployed and receiving benefits, primarily in those states that did not enact welfare reform. What this means is that states need to consider more work requirement standards to reduce the incentive to remain unemployed.
The reforms have been most successful in reducing caseloads where they emphasize work and personal responsibility (a novel concept!). The Cato Institute conducted a study which looked at all 50 states including DC on how successfully they have implemented welfare reform since 1996. The study evaluates the reduction in caseloads and poverty rates, but also considers how effectively self sufficiency was achieved. The study found that the most successful states were states that required work for benefits and encouraged students to prevent teenage pregnancy and finish high school. States least successful failed to reduce illegitimacy and didn't encourage either work, personal responsbility or marriage.
Most of the poverty in America is self-inflicted, and self-curable. If we stop rewarding the behavior that leads to poverty--drug abuse, alcoholism, promiscuous sex, broken families--then people will begin to take responsibility for themselves and their lives. America is truly the land of opportunity, but that opportunity cannot be found in the welfare office.
Conservatives stand for helping out the less fortunate, but we realize that government is terrible at it. By getting out of the redistribution of wealth business, the government can do more to help people by letting organizations better geared and more efficient do the work. All government has done is perpetuate the problem. Even after tweaking the system, long term dependency is still a problem, and the inner-cities are still cesspools of crime and destitution. The answer is in what conservatives believe in: personal responsibility, hard work, and the support of families.
No one is saying we should stop helping those who cannot work, but those who are able-bodied and who live in this system are addicts of the government crack of welfare benefits. It is time to get past the different levels of enabling, and it is time for real intervention. Conservatives know that if people have responsibility, work hard, smart, and better, as they are capable of, they will rise up. However, all the government "assistance" does is perpetuate the cycle of poverty that still infests the inner city. The War on Poverty has been lost, and the Great Society didn't produce results, only more addicts. The time has come for an intervention. And the thing is, the history and numbers show us to be right. Stand up against the welfare expansionists. They are the no better than the dealer on the street corner, and produce just as much rancor and heartache.
