After 19 trillion dollars of welfare spending are we better off?

The main theme I have tried to follow with this blog is the inherent unconstitutional nature of the many well-meaning but miss guided programs and laws that are coming out of the US federal government.  But the real crime of the continued infringement on our civil liberties is not only don’t most of these programs work as intended, but many times they do more harm than good.

We see examples every day of failed money wasting government programs. A few months back we talked about the vast amounts of money poured into the Department of Education yet we see no tangible evidence that it has done anything to raise the level of education in the US.

 My good liberal friend Rich often accuses me of being uncaring because I don’t support federal tax dollars used as a form of charity. Even if I could get past the issue of the government redistributing the citizens wealth (which I can’t) or that nowhere in the constitution is the federal government charged with seizing the property from one citizen to give it to another citizen, I cannot get over the total lack of success or accountability of the vast majority of these programs.

Recently a researcher for the Heritage Foundation, Robert Rector, testified before Congress about the size and scope of the welfare programs in this country. Now critics of Mr. Reactor or the Heritage Foundation in general might disagree with the opinions of Rector but you cannot disagree with the facts of his report.

Today in the US there are 79 overlapping separate mean tested federal welfare programs. Means tested programs are programs that provide aid directly to individuals or families.  Unlike programs like Social Security and Medicare, no prior financial contributions are required to participate. In 2011, total federal and mandatory state payments to all federal welfare programs amounted to 930 billion dollars. That amount of money if distributed in cash to every person in the lowest 1/3 of wage earners in the country would amount to over $9,000 per person. Mr. Rector concludes that this amount “is more than sufficient to bring the income of every lower income American to 200 percent of the federal poverty level, roughly $44,000 per year for a family of four. (This calculation combines potential welfare aid with non-welfare income currently received by the poor.)”

Since President Johnson declared a war on poverty in 1964, total spending on welfare programs has topped 19 trillion dollars. As a comparison the Heritage report notes that total spending on all wars from our Revolution through the war in Afghanistan was only about 7 trillion dollars. If America had performed as poorly in our military wars as we have in our war on poverty we would not be here to even have this discussion.  When the war on poverty started, welfare spending equaled 1% of GDP.  In 2011 that had jumped to 6%. Spending on means tested programs has increase 290% from 1988-2008 faster than any other government program. Everyone knows that federal spending on Social Security and Medicare is huge, but few people realize that means tested welfare spending equals 75 cents for every dollar spent on these two programs. And although the majority of welfare money goes to families, 8% actually goes to abled bodied adults with no dependents.

And what does the future hold? Under the last three years of the Obama administration we have seen welfare spending soar. From 2008 to 2011, spending on means tested programs increased 40%. Much of this could be contributed to the lack of recovery from the recession that ended in 2009 but looking at Obama administration projections in the future we see welfare spending increasing not decreasing after the recovery takes place, maybe the President does not anticipate a recovery any time in the future. By 2014 administration projections have welfare spending exceeding one trillion dollars and over 1.5 trillion in 2022.

After 50 years and almost 20 trillion dollars we see absolutely no decrease in the rate of poverty in America but the Presidents solution is to keep doing the same thing.

What if all that money had been left in the hands of the people? What if every citizen had more money to contribute to private charities? What if small business had more money to expand their business and hire more employees? What if the money used to provide office space to the thousands of federal workers who administer the billions of dollars allocated to poverty programs was just used directly at the local level to actually help those living in poverty? Would the country and its citizens be worse off or better?

The Liberals say I am mean for opposing continuing the same failed policies of the past, but then apparently Liberals believe spending 20 trillion dollars of other people’s money and leaving 15% of our citizens mired in poverty is being compassionate.

Their definition of compassionate is a little different than mine.