Monday, March 28, 2011

I don't think CBPP will like this idea

1 comment:

PL said...

This kind of idiocy is why people are doing this: http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/appropriations/152025-activists-to-begin-fasting-monday-to-protest-gop-budget-cuts

Heritage in their infinite wisdom points out why “welfare” spending has increased- it’s almost entirely attributable to Medicaid- which is entirely attributable to rising system-wide health care costs. In fact, over the last decade Medicaid has grown far slower than the rest of the health care system. The Heritage Foundation’s graph clearly shows that other welfare programs are not “exploding.” http://familyfacts.org/charts/310/since-the--war-on-poverty--began-in-1964-welfare-spending-has-skyrocketed

By the way, some might point to the “cash” section as growing slightly over time- of course, that measure is primarily a measure of the increases in the EITC- which has been overwhelmingly shown to increase employment among single-mothers. (In case you didn’t get the memo- these people are considered parasitic leeches, “welfare queens,” and “undeserving”- which contrasts with the rest of America which places like the Mises Institute refer to as the “productive classes.” So it’s hard to see how the increases in the “cash” section could be contributing to “dependency”- when in fact the EITC is promoting work-entry and independence (For a sampling of the relevent literature, see Meyer, 2001; Eissa and Hoynes 2004, 2005; Grogger, 2003; Meyer and Rosenbaum, 2001; Hotz and Scholz, 2003).

May I remind people that Republicans want to cut food stamps and not farm subsidies?

Also, these welfare programs are means-tested. Maybe if the economy wasn’t in the toilet with 8.9% unemployment and five people competing for each job being created, there wouldn’t be so many people struggling to get by and qualifying for these means-tested “welfare” programs. If Republicans don’t like poor people, maybe they should have thought about that before they drove the economy into the toilet with their brilliant oversight of the financial and housing sectors!

You have to love Republican priorities. Just like their idol Reagan, modern Republicans are fond of flashing beaming smiles as they try to slip a knife into your back…