The Welfare State of the Union

[Geee]

American Thinker:




President Obama has been speaking lately of what he views as an upswing in the economy. "The economy is growing again," he declared in the State of the Union address. Not surprisingly, he failed to mention that for 104 consecutive weeks, larger and larger numbers of Americans have become dependent on welfare. Or that within those families receiving welfare, fathers have become more and more irrelevant, and youth crime has increased.

But, then, those are not facts that one expects to hear from the President in a State of the Union address, or anywhere else. What we hear, again and again, is the fantasy that government creates jobs, government drives the economy, government feeds kids and sends them to bed happy. The facts are just the opposite.

In fact, the Department of Agriculture has just reported that 43.6 million Americans are now receiving food stamps.

Significantly, in 2006, near the height of the historic Bush economic expansion, the number of Americans receiving food stamps was just over 20 million. Since then, the number of recipients has more than doubled, with nearly all of the increase coming under the presidency of Barack Obama. In fact, one of the under-reported stories of the past two years is that the number of Americans receiving food stamps has increased every single month under the Obama administration. Even with the recent decline of the unemployment rate from 10% to 9.4%, the number receiving food stamps has continued to increase.

That increase is not good for the taxpayer or for the welfare recipient. The increase in federal welfare spending is one of the main reasons for annual budget deficits now totaling $1.5 trillion. In the 2011 budget that Obama has submitted to Congress, over $1.43 trillion is to be spent on Medicare and Medicaid, with Medicaid the fasting growing component. Next to defense, health and human services is the largest component of discretionary spending in the Obama budget, coming in at $83.5 billion. But housing is not that far behind, with $41.6 billion. And other major redistribution programs, such as the Earned Income Credit, do not even appear in the budget.