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The Impact of Welfare (Three Minutes to Read)

2/17/2012

 
This is a really difficult subject for me because my strong thoughts towards fixing our economy and my beliefs towards helping people are at odds a bit.

I don’t think we should’ve created welfare in the first place because there’s nothing in our Constitution that reads we should give people money. Benjamin Franklin said: “When people find they can vote themselves money that will be the end of our republic.”  Our Constitution says we have a right to pursue life, liberty and happiness and that our government has to stay out of our way. There’s nothing in there that says it’s our government’s responsibility to create these things for us.

I would’ve preferred handling things like we always have and let people take care of their own. People in the U.S. have always found ways to help people in their own communities through volunteering their time and money. Most of the help given to people who are down and out comes from the religious community. What bothers me is that when President George W. Bush was in office his administration tried to help people in need by funneling money to organizations who provide community services. The ACLU got wind of it and stopped any money from going to religious organizations because they claimed it was a Separation of Church and State issue. As I showed earlier, they’re wrong. These organizations could have helped a lot of people; how sad.

One of the biggest problems with the government being involved in anything is due to them never allocating enough money towards auditing the programs they create. We spend around $466,000,000,000 on welfare and we know there’s a significant amount of fraud associated with it. A lot of people have been found to cash checks from loved ones who have already passed away, claimed dependents they didn’t have, hidden income so they could be on the program. It seems like shutting down fraud would pay for our auditors’ salaries.  

Another problem is that our government tries to hide actual welfare costs by getting benefits to welfare recipients through other ways other than our welfare department. For example people on welfare qualify for a free cell phone that has a lot of great features. If you want to take a look at the program go to
www.assurancewireless.com.

When I contacted the White House about this they sent me over to someone in the FCC. I asked him how the program was funded and who voted for it. He said it wasn’t up for a vote because it wasn’t a tax issue. Guess what, after doing some more digging (something very much required when dealing with the government) I found that it was a tax and they were hiding it from tax payers. What the government did was tell the FCC they needed to increase the Universal Service Fee on our phone bills. The cell phone companies collect the money and then give it to the federal government. I consider this fraud. Not only is it a tax but it also didn’t go to the house floor for a vote nor were taxpayers told about the program. In my opinion this is the very definition of fraud!

I admit that if the government was taking care of me I’d have a more difficult time motivating myself. You’d have to have a tremendous amount of willpower to pull yourself out of a situation like this. I believe in the age old philosophy of: “Give a man a fish you feed him for a day but teach him how to fish you feed him for a lifetime.” When people are dependent on the government for their livelihood versus on their selves, our country loses strength. My opinion is that welfare does our country more harm than good but unfortunately it’s the kind of thing that’s difficult or even impossible to stop now. Having unproductive citizens negatively affects our gross domestic product which is an indicator as to the wellbeing of our nation.


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    Author: John Mann

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