2013
Somewhere on the political left is a school of convoluted thinking. That process holds that more government is better at “solving” social ills. So when more people enroll in Medicaid for example, that’s good. In fact, the reported enrollments in Obamacare exchanges such as they are so far, are largely Medicaid enrollment. In Kentucky, the reported best functioning system, as of Nov. 8, more than 33,000 had enrolled in Medicaid and 7,000 had enrolled in a qualified health plan. The number of Americans on Medicaid grew from 34 million in 2000 to 54 million in 2011.
In 2000 there were 17,194,000 Americans receiving food stamps (SNAP). In 2012 the number was 46,609,000. Even before the recession hit, the number in 2007 was 26,316,000, an increase of 50% over 2000.
In 2000 there were 1,330,558 applications for Social Security disability and 5,042,334 Americans receiving benefits. In 2007 there were 2,199,196 new applications and 7,101,395 actually receiving benefits. In 2012 there were 2,820,812 new applications and by October 2013, 8,936,932 Americans were receiving disability benefits.
Total number of Americans on welfare; 12,800,000 in 2013 (over 100 million if you include every conceivable form of government assistance). This is a good thing?😕
Some people will cheer the expansion of programs to help the less fortunate, they see such expansion in the number of Americans receiving assistance of one kind or another as success for the government; for the Country.
I see it as abject failure. Shouldn’t we be striving to cut all these rolls, to make them less and less necessary? Isn’t that real success? The growth in government assistance programs of one kind or another is phenomenal and yet we have solved nothing, especially poverty. Take a look at this report from the Cato Institute on poverty in America.
Every time we add a new program or expand an existing one we acknowledge failure and yet we keep doing it over and over. If we have a problem to solve and institute a new assistance program and solve the problem, the program should go away should it not? Instead, every major welfare program keeps expanding and many among us rejoice in this; and this is what we call success? 😦
If each of the numbers cited were declining because the programs were needed less and less and because there was less fraud, we would have something to cheer about. Will that very be the case? Not if we continue to view more and more programs and dependency as success it won’t.
From the Cato report referenced above. Shouldn’t success be measured by spending less because our welfare programs were successful in lowering poverty and the need for public assistance?
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
Once again I completely agree with everything stated and am familiar with much of this data.This is why many would agree we are in fact a welfare state. But we are on a path to our own destruction.The dependency “gravy train” is moving along full speed like a runaway train and politicians simply refuse to put on the brakes.
We can argue that this is essentially a democratic “liberal” thing but of course this is not the case at all. Spending went off the chart even under the Bush “republican administration. And laws which are suppose to cap budgets and spending mean nothing to politicians bent on giving the store away and enhancing their own political power.
LikeLike