Free Republic

It has become all too easy today to receive government assistance. Half of all babies born in the U.S. today receive food assistance, and half of all children live in a home that will use food assistance at some point during their childhood. 40 percent of the population in Washington, D.C. is on welfare. Between 2000 and 2010 the number of Americans receiving food assistance more than doubled, expanding to over 47 million, which is more than one-seventh of the population. Forty years ago, only 4.3 million Americans received food assistance. According to a Heritage Foundation study, means-tested welfare has...

Late last week, a group of 100 U.S. Representatives sent a letter to the so-called Super Committee urging the handpicked group of twelve legislators to consider “all options for mandatory and discretionary spending and revenues” in order to reach the committee’s goal of $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over the next ten years. In Washington speak, this is code for raising taxes. Among this list is 40 Republicans whose capitulation encouraging the committee to raise taxes is troubling. We shouldn’t be surprised to see 60 Democrats seizing on the opportunity to drive a wedge between conservatives intent on restoring economic...

Rep. Mike Simpson said Sunday that new revenues are central to Congress's efforts to reduce the deficit, but the Idaho Republican drew a line in the sand in his opposition to tax hikes. "The reality is you can't get to $4 trillion without including additional revenues," Simpson told Fox News Sunday. "We might have different ideas what those revenues would look like. I think you could get additional revenues by actually lowering the tax rates and eliminating all of the exemptions underneath. … More revenue is key to this." But Simpson was quick to make a distinction between new revenue...

MONTREAL - Over the past few weeks, leftist activists invaded public spaces in all major cities across Canada, beginning in downtown Toronto. Their actions were inspired by the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) encampment in Zucotti Park. There are, however, a few differences. American protesters are outraged by: The widening gap in wealth between the poor and the rich, to the benefit of the 1% of the most fortunate. Bank bailouts with public money. The impoverishment of the middle class. The drop in the home values. Growing poverty. Increases in health insurance premiums. The phenomenal public deficit. None of these problems...

I Think She Is Upset! Alan Simpson, Senator from Wyoming , Co-Chair of Obama's deficit commission, called senior citizens the Greediest Generation as he compared "Social Security" to a Milk Cow with 310 million teats. Here's a response in a letter from PATTY MYERS in Wyoming ... I think she is a little ticked off! She also tells it like it is! "Hey Alan, let's get a few things straight.. 1. As a career politician, you have been on the public dole for FIFTY YEARS. 2. I have been paying Social Security taxes for 48 YEARS (since I was 15...

GRAY COURT, S.C. – Rick Perry, Republican presidential candidate and Texas governor, has released an economic plan full of long-held conservative goals, including personal accounts for Social Security, an optional flat tax, major spending cuts and a series of tax cuts. The plan would reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, eliminate taxes on dividends and many capital gains and essentially cap individual tax rates at 20 percent. Perry argues these tax cuts will spur economic growth by creating a more favorable environment for wealthy people and corporations to start or expand businesses. But without significant...

I expect Gov. Perry’s flat tax plan to give him a significant boost in the polls. Many conservative and Republican voters who were initially attracted to Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan were likely enthused with the idea of bringing simplicity, transparency, and fairness to our tax system. Still, as details of Cain’s plan – and the additional consumption tax – unfolded, voters have been looking for an alternative. In fact, despite Cain's recent surge, his tax plan is likely the reason there’s still so much uncertainty surrounding him as a candidate. By putting forth a promising – and more realistic tax...

Las Vegas - In a brief speech this morning at the Western Republican Conference, Texas governor Rick Perry announced that in six days he would reveal an “economic pro-growth package that will create growth” and encourage investment in America. The plan will involve major tax reform, entitlement reform, a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, an abolishment of earmarks, and a recommitment to energy exploration in the United States. “Our long term growth requires a fundamental tax reform,” Perry said. Therefore, his plan “starts with scrapping the three million words of the current tax code—starting over with something simple: a...

An utterly shameless sense of entitlement can  justify just about anything, apparently... ________________________________________ Judge Judy: (you receive) $437/mo from "the government"- which government? 20-something welfare sponge/'music student': (laughs) The, uh, the Ramsey County -uh-  Aid Office, that's where I live, in St. Paul.  You know, they got an aid office where- you can't find no job and you're a student- they give you money to live on -youknowwhatI'msayin... JJ: Well, if you were getting money, why didn't you give Miss Reid any money for rent (Plaintiff/fat roommate chick)? 20sWS: Because our agreement was I didn't have to pay any rent... JJ: What...

It’s a simple concept that’s been around since Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden: Get a job. That’s how all the stuff you have is paid for, even if you live in a socialist country. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return - Genesis 3:19 KJV Of course capitalism produces more bread, more efficiently, and there is more innovation and surplus than in socialist countries. Out of that surplus bread come things...

On September 12, the pioneering Rep. Thaddeus McCotter introduced trailblazing legislation providing workers the freedom to choose personal savings and investment accounts to finance half of their future Social Security benefits. This legislation would completely solve the future Social Security financing problem, without cutting benefits or raising taxes, as officially scored by the Chief Actuary of Social Security. Indeed, because standard, long-term market investment returns are so much higher than what Social Security even promises, workers with personal accounts will enjoy higher rather than lower benefits. Moreover, the legislation would result in the greatest reduction in government spending in world...

Families were more dependent on government programs than ever last year. Nearly half, 48.5%, of the population lived in a household that received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2010, according to Census data. Those numbers have risen since the middle of the recession when 44.4% lived households receiving benefits in the third quarter of 2008. The share of people relying on government benefits has reached a historic high, in large part from the deep recession and meager recovery, but also because of the expansion of government programs over the years. (See a timeline on the...

Families were more dependent on government programs than ever last year. Nearly half, 48.5%, of the population lived in a household that received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2010, according to Census data. Those numbers have risen since the middle of the recession when 44.4% lived households receiving benefits in the third quarter of 2008. The share of people relying on government benefits has reached a historic high, in large part from the deep recession and meager recovery, but also because of the expansion of government programs over the years. (See a timeline on the...

Obama’s claim that Americans have grown soft has received a lot of justified criticism. Having blamed his troubles on everything from ATMs to Japanese tsunamis to the Arab Spring to FoxNews, he’s finally resorted to going after you and me. Not satisfied with the backlash he got by telling black Americans they are complainers, the President decided to dish on everyone. He's ended up looking a bit silly in all of this. But we shouldn’t let our criticism of Obama prevent us – even in these economically troubling times – from reflecting on the question of whether we have the...

His aides believe that his decade of experience as a border-state governor bolsters his credibility on immigration and border security. He said he vetoed a Texas bill that would have given illegal immigrants driver's licenses, helped pass a bill requiring voter identification at the polls, spent $400 million on security measures to help secure the state’s border with Mexico, and strongly opposed granting amnesty to people who illegally entered the United States. "I'm a governor. I don't have the pleasure of standing on the stage and criticizing," Perry said. "I have to deal with these issues."

For several years, a heated debate has raged among economists and policymakers about whether we face a serious risk of inflation. That debate has focused largely on the Federal Reserve — especially on whether the Fed has been too aggressive in increasing the money supply, whether it has kept interest rates too low, and whether it can be relied on to reverse course if signs of inflation emerge. But these questions miss a grave danger. As a result of the federal government's enormous debt and deficits, substantial inflation could break out in America in the next few years. If people...

The financial crisis has turned Europe topsy-turvy, with governments freezing pensions, unions voting away privileges and a thick web of safety nets disappearing one strand at a time. But as the role of the state is being reexamined, one country stands apart: Germany, where reforms a decade ago made the country less generous than some of its peers but also helped ease the blow when the rest of the world stopped snapping up BMWs and Bosch washing machines. Now, as its neighbors are being forced to retrench, and the future of the euro appears imperiled, Germany’s social services are running...

President Obama has tried for months to convince critics on the left that entitlement programs such as Medicare had to be cut in order to save the programs, but he seems to have yielded under pressure from his political base. In his new $1.5 trillion deficit-cutting plan, unveiled Monday at the White House, Obama backed away from the changes he had been talking about for months. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/19/obama-yields-to-liberal-outcry-on-entitlement-reform/#ixzz1YSPew3Kd

With a two-year budget of more than $22 billion in state and federal funds, the Human Services Department is involved in the lives of more than a million Minnesotans who rely on state programs for health care, food support, welfare, mental health treatment, home care, nursing homes and child care aid. The agency also licenses 24,000 medical and social service providers.

What If the Tea Party Wins? They Have a Plan for the Constitution, and It Isn’t Pretty Download this issue brief (pdf) Read the issue brief in your web browser (Scribd) In the Tea Party’s America, families must mortgage their home to pay for their mother’s end-of-life care. Higher education is a luxury reserved almost exclusively to the very rich. Rotten meat ships to supermarkets nationwide without a national agency to inspect it. Fathers compete with their adolescent children for sub-minimum wage jobs. And our national leaders are utterly powerless to do a thing. At least, that’s what would happen...