Welfare spending tops a trillion a year

Realitybatslast ^ | October 20, 2012 | Bryce Buchanan

[Alex Baker]

Welfare spending tops a trillion a year. Senator Jeff Sessions reports on a recent study of spending:

“The results are staggering. The Congressional Research Service identified 83 overlapping federal welfare programs that together represented the single largest budget item in 2011—more than the nation spends on Social Security, Medicare, or national defense. The total amount spent on these 80-plus federal welfare programs amounts to roughly $1.03 trillion. Importantly, these figures solely refer to means-tested welfare benefits. They exclude entitlement programs to which people contribute (e.g., Social Security and Medicare).”

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If poverty was simply a question of wealth redistribution, the sheer amount of dollars spent since the not-so-Great Society programs of the 1960s should have resolved the problem. In 2011, Peter Ferrara calculated that “total welfare spending [in 2008] . . . amounted to $16,800 per person in poverty, 4 times as much as the Census Bureau estimated was necessary to bring all of the poor up to the poverty level, eliminating all poverty in America. That would be $50,400 per poor family of three.

And welfare spending has risen 32% in the last 4 years, so the figures are now much worse. This cancer will kill us if it is not controlled. Believe it or not, there are people who view this as a very good thing. Just Google Cloward and Piven and read the first few entries. Obama taught the Cloward and Piven strategy in Chicago.

Exerpt from: http://www.realitybatslast.com/

[Alex Baker]

So many bad events... so little press coverage...

This is REAL NEWS.

[SunkenCiv]

Repeal Obamacare, cut taxes, cut spending more, abolish the anticarbon agenda, break tenure on leftist “educators” and “scientists”, drill drill drill, harvest ocean floor clathrates, close the border, define Islam as illegal under the RICO Act.

Thanks Alex Baker.

[FES0844]

End the Obamaphones now!

[I cannot think of a name]

“The Congressional Research Service identified 83 overlapping federal welfare programs that together represented the single largest budget item in 2011—more than the nation spends on Social Security, Medicare, or national defense.”

This is really an odd subject, even here on Ree Republic. I have published this same fact on many threads, and usually got a ho-hum response. YET THIS IS THE CANCER THAT WILL EAT THE COUNTRY ALIVE.

I find people, even here, completely passionate about health care costs, illegal immigrants, cost of overseas wars, green jobs, etc. etc, yet NONE of them represents the threat that welfare does.

Back in the 90’s, the master snake clintoon, and his minions convinced most of the sheeple that welfare had been “ended.” What they actually did was scatter it throughout the Federal Budget, call it different things, and make it nearly impossible to account for.

This group, http://www.heritage.org/ are the only people I have found that have tried to find all the various places that welfare has been hidden, and accumulate the total costs. And I suspect they have missed billions.

Yet the country, even conservatives, will continue to obsess about illegals and health care costs, while we are slowly boiled alive.

[Alex Baker]

Because of the importance of this issue, I continue to be mystified at the lack of coverage.

Do you remember when Reagan was president - there was a story on the news every night about starving people, cost of food and gas, increasing ranks of the poor, people losing homes? Things are much worse now - and we talk about women in binders endlessly.

[TheOldLady]

Sunken Civilizations for President!!

[ClearCase_guy]

This will become news when the media learns about it — the devastating news analyses will start to come out in late January 2013, and boy will they make Romney look bad!

[I cannot think of a name]

“when Reagan was president - there was a story on the news every night about starving people, cost of food and gas, increasing ranks of the poor, people losing homes?”

Yes, and the overall theme of those stories was that Reagan, the heartless bastard, was slashing welfare for those people.

Go to this site and scroll about half way down to a graph labeled, Federal, State, and Local Welfare Spending: 1929-2000.

http://www.heritage.org/research/testimony/the-size-and-scope-of-means-tested-welfare-spending

That one tiny little dip in the 1980’s was all that Reagan was able to accomplish, and the liberals had a cow over that.

Given what ACTUALLY needs to be done, I fear that only the second American Revolution will fix the problem. Too many millions of people have been allowed to sit and home and get a check for doing nothing for too long. And since they all vote democrap, one party has a vested interest to see it stays that way.

[PieterCasparzen]

Ping.

[EternalVigilance]

They exclude entitlement programs to which people contribute (e.g., Social Security and Medicare).”

These too are welfare programs, funded by Income Tax II and Income Tax III, with money taken from current producers. Pay as you go transfer payments, wealth redistribution, socialism, nanny-statism, writ large.

Conservatives used to understand this. They once opposed the New Deal and the Great Society. Now they embrace them, support a presidential candidate who fiercely defends them.

How the mighty have fallen.

How far we have moved from the principles and purposes of the founders of this free republic.

How far we have moved from the original constitutional framework that once guarded our liberty.

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

-- James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution

[kabar]

Thanks for the ping. Robert Rector, Heritage, did a similar study over a year ago and found similar results. It is quite apparent that the main function of government is redistribution of wealth. We have a welfare state we can’t afford. The chickens are starting to come home to roost.