Quote:
Originally Posted by barbara
Whell, funds for social services have been pretty much stagnant since the Clinton administration. Don't give me that crap about increases from year to year....
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Sorry, but here's some "crap" for you, the source is from Federal Reserve Economic Data / St Louis Federal Reserve
https://blogs-images.forbes.com/mike....jpg?width=960
Quote:
Originally Posted by barbara
And, people do move off welfare, but it takes programs that are funded to make that happen.
What really drives me nuts is that people think nothing of taking in a stray cat or dog.... Taking it to a shelter.... Donating to animal charities..... But when it comes to people....those same people turn the other way.
It is just a fact that not everyone has the where with all, the resources, or the ability to make ends meet. So instead of treating them like that stray cat or dog.... They are ignored and looked down upon.
There is an old saying which I have found to be true.... If you are hungry, don't bother going to a rich man's house but there will always be room at the table at a poor man's house.
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Why is it axiomatic among the left that a reduction in spending in welfare MUST result in a reduction in benefits paid? Just above in this thread, it was observed how politics intervenes in properly addressing wasteful defense spending. The same politics also intervenes discussing reductions in welfare spending. Articles like those below appear from time to time, but we lack the political will to address the core issues, and the waste continues. In fact, in the article below, the GAO admits they don't even know how to correctly quantify the degree of waste in this case:
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articl...l-Programs-GAO
The federal government has no idea how many tax dollars it’s wasting on redundant federal programs every year—but it’s likely in the neighborhood of $45 billion.
That’s according to the Government Accountability Office, which identified more than two dozen new areas of inefficiency and overlap in its annual report to Congress. This is on top of the more than 160 redundant areas that the GAO has identified in its three previous reports.
“It's impossible to account for how much money is wasted through duplication, in part because the government doesn't keep track of which programs each agency is responsible for,” Comptroller Gene Dodaro said prepared congressional testimony.[/B]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.036ab17056d6
For every given problem, there are often several, if not dozens, of programs intended to tackle it. There isn't just one health care program -- there are Medicaid, Medicare, SCHIP the Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies, the employer insurance deduction, etc. There isn't just one higher education subsidy -- there are the American Opportunity credit, Pell grants, Perkins loans, Stafford loans, etc. And that's not even every federal program that serves those two sectors.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...grams/7435221/
It takes 10 different offices at the Department of Health and Human Services to run programs addressing AIDS in minority communities. Autism research is spread out over 11 different agencies. Eight agencies at the Defense Department are looking for prisoners of war and missing in action. And Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado has eight different satellite control centers to control 10 satellite programs.
Now, when you read stuff like this, it sounds like absolute idiocy in action. But it has been going on for years, wasting trillions of dollars in the process. No one is accountable because accountability is buried in politics. There's no collective political will to fix any of this, so it just gets worse, and the budget for most of these agencies goes up every year triggering even more waste.
And guess who pays for it: you and me. IMHO, its idiotic to bray about "cuts" when looking at all of this collective waste. There is absolutely no reason it needs to continue. We can do better.