Proving they are serious about mitigating their citizens’ dependence on government welfare programs, conservative members of Maine’s state legislature continue to push the state towards meaningful welfare reform. Although some proposed legislation has faced setbacks in committee hearings, members have succeeded in drawing attention to the fiscal and economic challenges posed by the state’s welfare system. Maine’s dependence on government programs is amongst the highest in the country. As of 2008, it had the second-highest percentage among states of households receiving food stamps, households with cash public assistance income, Medicaid …
Fifteen years ago, Congress voted to “end welfare as we know it.” As a result, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program was created (in place of the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children), which, for the first time, inserted work requirements and a five-year time limit for those receiving federal cash assistance. The success of the reform was notable. Millions of families left welfare for jobs, and the poverty rate among African-American children dropped to an all-time low. Unfortunately, the aspects that made TANF successful have been …
Catching you up on clips, commentary and news of the day. Sign up for the daily email update from Scribe. Evict Fannie and Freddie – Ed Feulner Debt Debate: Are the Poor in Poverty? – Z. Byron Wolf How Will al Qaeda Mark the 10th Anniversary of 9/11? – Marc Thiessen Justice Department trying to shield officials in guns scandal, ATF chief says – Richard A. Serrano The Obama administration’s disparate impact on taxpayer – Hans von Spakovsky & Alex Ingram Don’t Forget Welfare Reform – Mike Needham An agenda for …
Welfare spending is projected to skyrocket over the next 10 years, costing taxpayers $10.3 trillion and driving the United States toward bankruptcy. To make matters worse, a new report shows that the United States is seeing large percentage of its immigrant population exacting a costly toll on the welfare roles. According to Steven A. Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies: In 2009 (based on data collected in 2010), 57 percent of households headed by an immigrant (legal and illegal) with children (under 18) used at least one welfare program, …
Which American politician said the following? “The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.” Had to be a mean-spirited Tea Party conservative, right? Wrong. President Franklin Roosevelt included these words in his 1935 State of the Union Address. Twenty-nine years later, the American welfare state was still relatively small, …
The 112th Congress is out of the gate, and so is its mantra of getting government spending under control. But there’s one piece of the spending pie that legislators can’t overlook if they plan to get the United States back on the track of fiscal responsibility: welfare. Despite the commonly held belief that the government “ended welfare as we know it” back in the 1990s, this year alone, federal and state governments will spend nearly $900 billion on means-tested programs for low-income people. (And no, this does not include unemployment …
According to British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, the United Kingdom will put into place “a radical new welfare state where it always pays to work.” Newly elected British Prime Minister David Cameron has set forth plans that, according to analysts, will result in the nation’s most dramatic welfare reform since World War II. Wracked with debt, the U.K. is attempting to whittle down their government’s largest expense—welfare—which today stands at approximately $350 billion, or 15 percent of the nation’s GDP. Currently, 5 million British citizens receive welfare, and …
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is attempting this week to schedule a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on a measure that would extend expiring tax breaks. But the “American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010” (H.R. 4213) would shut the door on the important success of welfare reform. That’s because the legislation includes is a one-year extension of the so-called “TANF Emergency Contingency Fund” with an additional $2.5 billion in spending. This fund was originally created as part of the 2009 Stimulus package and directly undermines the …
Last week, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) launched an innovative new tool in the fight to cut spending called YouCut. It allows regular American citizens to vote to cut wasteful spending in Congress. Its purpose is to challenge the culture of spending that has dominated Congressional thinking and replace it with a renewed focus on savings. Weekly, YouCut will post several wasteful spending programs and give citizens a week to vote on which they favor most being eliminated. The results are announced the following week and House Republicans will …
President Obama’s budget outlines a plan to pay states to grow their welfare roles and eliminate efforts to fight family breakdown in low-income communities. Despite the fact that low work hours and fatherlessness are two of the greatest contributors to poverty in the United States, the newly released budget provides incentives for states to increase the size of their caseloads and also wipes out funding for healthy marriage programs that aim to decrease the number of children growing up in single-parent homes. Prior to 1996, the federal government increased a …
