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Call it whatever you want. But when people are doled out money when they should not be, I don't like it. Ever stood in line and watched a mother with 3 kids pay cash for 4 cases of beer, then pull out food stamps for a bunch of cheap, unhealthy food? Where I lived growing up, it was a regular scene when visiting the grocery store.
And lets not even get started on people being coached on how to collect "crazy" checks. I've sat and listened to people who receive their mental disability check every month tell me how they learned from their uncle/cousin/whatever how to get their check as if it was some great thing that I should learn how to scam for. I remember getting laid off in 2000 from a manufacturing job. The majority of us were talking as we were getting our stuff together to leave about what we would do to get a new job, where to look, etc. One guy said we were all stupid and that he was glad he got laid off because now he can go sign up for his unemployment check and sit "at the house" until the last check comes in.
Yes I realize they are all called different things, but they are designed for the "welfare" of citizens. And as long as there are lots of people blatantly abusing the system, whether for life, or for a year, I will not like it.
There will always be people who need it. There will always be people who purposely scam programs for every penny they can get from it. 5 years of welfare is way to long if someone has other opportunities and the ability to provide for themselves.
Every country has them and it`s been going on for as long as tax evasion. Although I also believe it to be wrong, can they really be blamed for trying it on when they look around and see what appear to be accepted scams? Tax evasion, for some reason, seems to be something to be proud of....
I think what will work is to stop hiding the criminals in the system for fear that exposing them would harm the rest.
Then you and your mother-in-law and your cousin should get off your lazy duffs and get on one of the fraud hotlines you've here been pointed to. Operators are standing by. Here you are claiming that you see cases of welfare fraud all over town, but what do you do about it...whine on some message board? There are state and federal workers waiting out there whose generous pay-for-perfomance bonuses depend on their being able to take action against exactly the sorts of people that you seem to come across every day. But they won't be able to take any of that action unless you pick up the phone.
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Originally Posted by camping!
Maybe community activists would be wise to seperate the wheat from the chaff and focus their energies on helping those that want it and will benefit from it versus those that are content to live a marginalized life on government handouts.
The class of people suggested is fictional. Assistance programs are targeted, temporary, and meager. The caricature of a welfare class laughing all the way to the bank to deposit their many generous checks is propaganda that you seem to have fallen for.
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Originally Posted by camping!
I am in no way saying that all forms of welfare should be abolished. I am saying that there is fraud, and it is important to free up those funds for those that need it.
No, that's what I'm saying...that there is some level of fraud in every system and that rational steps should be taken to minimize it. What you are saying is that fraud is endemic, that you and everybody you know sees fraud all the time and all over town, and that responsible people refuse to do anything about it for some cockamamie political reason. That in itself is fraud. If there were a hotline for reporting fraudulent reports of welfare fraud, I'd be dialing it right now.
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Originally Posted by camping!
Btw, do you know anyone on public assistance? Or are you just theorizing from your tower?
No, at the moment I don't have family or friends whom I know to be on public assistance. Of course, where I live, people don't seem to go around boasting of how well they are doing thanks to being on public assistance. My area appears to differ from yours in that regard. Neither do I have an inclination to make up stories about how my wife's hairdresser is a chain-smoking illegal immigrant who uses food stamps to buy her cigarettes in order to put some sort of phony authenticity behind my statements. The facts are the facts, regardless of my personal acquaintances or whether I live in a tower or not. You have not been dealing with those facts. Period.
Probably because America spends most on Social Services (Health and Human Services, HUD, Food Stamps), about half of all federal budget.
No. Actual means-tested assistance programs are about 18% of the federal budget, not 50%. Medicaid would account for well more than half of that. Here are some data from FY2002 since I happen to have them handy. These totals include both federal and state expenditure.
Medicaid:......$258.2 billion
SSI:.............38.5
EITC:............27.8
Food stamps:.....24.1
TANF:............24.0
Section-8........18.5
Pell grants......11.4
Foster care:......8.6
Child care........8.6
Head Start........8.2
Vets med care:....8.2
Public Housing....8.2
School meals......7.6
S-CHIP:...........5.4
WIC...............4.4
The total expenditure in FY2002 was $522 billion, of which $363 billion was federal. While one-third of those who are qualified for benefits do not actually receive any, here are FY2002 recipient numbers for five major programs...
Medicaid:........50.9 million people
Food stamps:.....20.2
EITC:............16.8
SSI:..............6.9
TANF:.............5.1
Sources: Congressional Budget Office, Congressional Research Service.
Last edited by saganista; 12-05-2008 at 06:19 AM..
My very disillusioned niece quit after 15 years as a case worker.
She said at least 80% of the recipients handled in her county perpetrated some amount of fraud but the budget for investigation and enforcement is so low there is little to no reason to do other than close your eyes and just process the paperwork in any other than the most obvious (easy to prove) cases.
The most common is to have unreported income producing person(s) living in your subsidized household, most often the daddy of ones latest baby.....or next one.
20 million on food stamps... yet according the the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 37 million Americans living below the poverty line. (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/threshld/thresh07.html - broken link) I suppose we could use a few more cheats.
And we have spent how much on the Iraq War so far? We have sent how much to Israel over the years? We authorized the bank bailout for how much? An F-22 Raptor costs how much? We are still buying M-16 rifles?
There is fraud as done by a few welfare scammers and there is fraud as done by the professionally connected and too big to fail.
Because it's the only way for certain people to have a "reason" for their illogical, unfounded, and false belief that our cities - the engines of America's wealth for over 200 years - are somehow dragging them down and using up "their" tax revenue. When in reality, as everyone knows, state and federal funds are spent disproportionately on rural services.
The most common is to have unreported income producing person(s) living in your subsidized household, most often the daddy of ones latest baby.....or next one.
I don't know where your niece worked but most municipal housing authorities have their own dedicated police departments with nothing else to do but to investigate and enforce rules and regulations of the clients. One of my former clients was the Philadelphia Housing Authority and I can guarantee that there were quite a few evictions due to violations. Even minor infractions of Housing authority rules can restrict a clients ability to move into better facilities so folks don't tend to take the rules lightly.
Which brings up an small nagging point regarding your narrative. Housing authorities are run on a city or county basis, these are not Federally run programs, but the Fed is quite interested in how their money is used by these local agencies. I can assure you that if 80% of the clients in her county were living in Federally subsidized housing fraudulently, the Dept of Housing and Urban Affairs has no shortage when it comes to investigating such wide spread fraud.
In-laws argue that they paid into Social Security so the checks they are receiving is money they paid in. In college econ we learned that this is true to a point, however, if you take the money they paid and compound it there is a point at which the funds run out. This is especially true due to the fact that more people are living to a longer age.
There is a point at which those receiving Social Security are not "getting back" the money they have paid in but are receiving welfare benefits.
Thought this was interesting: Statements by one of the original SS actuaries, Robert Meyers, reflecting on 50 years of SS, what was projected for 1980 and what was actual for 1980:
Quote:
It was anticipated initially that about 30 million persons would be in covered employment each year, whereas currently there are about 120 million. ..... outgo of the program ... estimate was $4 billion, ... actual figure ... was $108 billion.
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