The Obama Years- A GOP love story

As I get older I see peers, co workers, etc who openly talk about taken advantage of the system and I agree its time for change. We need to look closely at long term welfare reciepient and how we define disability payments. We created a culture of fraud and abuse. You should aim for a 5% threashold with fraud and waste within all govern programs...I think disability and welfare, we are dealing around the high teens to possibly 20% or 1 in 5. That's terrible.

I'm glad you brought this up because in my opinion it's the starting point of the conversation and most people skip it.

When you have an entity trying to 'take care of' a group of people there is going to be waste. It's unfortunate, but there are just too many people that are more interested in gaming the system instead of living an 'honest' life; whether that be welfare recipients getting money they shouldn't, or organizations/businesses/'community groups' that seek to keep the system broken so that their role in it is preserved/increased.

So the question is - what is an acceptable level of waste? Once we can agree on that, then we can actually start talking about how we can take the current system and alter it to meet that goal.

Until we, as a country, start discussing it in that way welfare is going to be remain this broken point of contention between the two sides. The arm waving about abuse and anecdotal stories of beach bums from the right lacks the substance needed to actually make a real case for real reform without hurting the people welfare is actually intended to help.

The left is all too happy just leaving things the way they are right now. If you're going to incite change, you have to make compelling arguments. The Right hasn't been very successful lately in doing that. The fact that there's a large group of people on the left looking for any chance to label the Right's ideas as racist, classest, etc shows just how carefully you have to attack the subject if your interest is in actually causing change.

Welfare is a really difficult subject. I've met quite a few people that were/are on welfare, and it's interesting. I worked with a guy that worked his ass off every day that had kids too young, and was on welfare. He hated it, but it was a hell of a lot better than his kids going hungry. He worked the whole time and got off it as soon as he could. I then met a friend of my girlfriend, at the time. She grew up on welfare her entire life. She ended up getting a full ride to a top tier university. Upon finishing her degree, she went and lives back home with her mother, on welfare. These are two examples. One of the system being used correctly, the other of the system failing. To be honest, meeting that girl was eye opening. Her comments constantly hinted that she was owed something, and people should be handing her things at every turn. She was given many opportunities and failed to capitalize on either.

The real problem to me, is you have to have a safety net for people. Having a class of people with no money, no prospects, and no hope is bad for countries. Ideally we find a way to shrink welfare programs, but get more people back on their feet. Personally, I feel like pushing for a higher working wage is a step in the right direction. We're paying more one way or another (taxes vs slightly higher prices).

To me, there's a big issue when the single largest recipient of welfare benefits are members of the US military. My guess is this may be more of a loophole than anything. Their paychecks are small, but they also don't have to provide housing for themselves. We need to find ways to help make people self sufficient. Sadly, it's more efficient for a single mother with 2 kids to stay home on welfare than to work a full-time minimum wage job.

To me, there's a big issue when the single largest recipient of welfare benefits are members of the US military. My guess is this may be more of a loophole than anything. Their paychecks are small, but they also don't have to provide housing for themselves .

With all due respect what the hell does that mean ,a loophole ???

The left is all too happy just leaving things the way they are right now. If you're going to incite change, you have to make compelling arguments. The Right hasn't been very successful lately in doing that. The fact that there's a large group of people on the left looking for any chance to label the Right's ideas as racist, classest, etc shows just how carefully you have to attack the subject if your interest is in actually causing change.


I fully and whole heartily agree there needs to be change in the welfare system ,people who have been on it forever need to be trained to take care of and for themselves .Your big mistake is blaming the left ,it is in reality the fault of everybody in government ,left ,right ,tea ,independent etc ,what needs to be done is stop the "blame game" .

It means many members of the military are provided housing, thus their income indicates that. Especially in the DC area an apartment (with a roommate) will run you at least 800 in rent alone. That's far from living large either.
With all due respect what the hell does that mean ,a loophole ???

I fully and whole heartily agree there needs to be change in the welfare system ,people who have been on it forever need to be trained to take care of and for themselves .Your big mistake is blaming the left ,it is in reality the fault of everybody in government ,left ,right ,tea ,independent etc ,what needs to be done is stop the "blame game" .

Yeah I think when u talk about these issues, people need to put aside GOP or dem, left and right and politics in general. Just sit down and say hey we have a possible issue with the welfare system and go from there. U need an outside audit from the private sector as well.

In fact that is how everything should start, no politcs and actual real numbers

It means many members of the military are provided housing, thus their income indicates that. Especially in the DC area an apartment (with a roommate) will run you at least 800 in rent alone. That's far from living large either.


I'm still don't understand what you mean loophole ?So do you think the military should or should not be getting welfare or do you think getting a housing allowance is welfare and just a tip an 800 hundred dollar a month apartment doesn't exist in the DC area (not one that is livable ) .
Question do you consider programs such as "wick" welfare ?Do you know that some Military base's don't have enough housing so they have to find housing else where ,so now there is commuting ,gas ,utilities, which point of fact they also pay while living on a base .I guess what I'm asking you is that do military families deserve help or not ?

I fully and whole heartily agree there needs to be change in the welfare system ,people who have been on it forever need to be trained to take care of and for themselves .Your big mistake is blaming the left ,it is in reality the fault of everybody in government ,left ,right ,tea ,independent etc ,what needs to be done is stop the "blame game" .

My 'big mistake' is blaming the left?

I had a post where I blamed the right and the left for their politics on the issue. I also blamed the middle by saying we're constantly having the wrong conversation. You took a few sentences out of the whole post and then said I was 'blaming the left.'

The left does have blame. So does the right. The entire subject has become the stereotypical political football.

If our 'leaders' stop engaging in idiotic games of rehtoric over the issue, then we can actually go about trying to solve it. I do not see a point in hiding from the fact that these people have done a bang-up job in getting people riled up over the wrong things, stifling any possibility of actually fixing the problem.

To me, there's a big issue when the single largest recipient of welfare benefits are members of the US military. My guess is this may be more of a loophole than anything. Their paychecks are small, but they also don't have to provide housing for themselves. We need to find ways to help make people self sufficient. Sadly, it's more efficient for a single mother with 2 kids to stay home on welfare than to work a full-time minimum wage job.


I'm confused on this as well... as I'm not quite sure what you're getting at.

If you're saying that military members wind up on welfare after their service then I would join you in saying that's a big problem and one that needs fixing. I know it happens, but I'm not aware of it being a huge problem (maybe that's my own ignorance.)

If you're saying the benefits military members and their immediate families receive constitutes 'welfare' in the same sense as what is generally referred to as 'welfare' (ie: poor/non working people) then I'll politely disagree with you. In my opinion we don't do enough for our service members, and I have to strongly question whether the people that feel otherwise have ever bother serving themselves or have had close family that has. Comparing their benefits respective to what they do for a living to those that do not have a job or work extremely low wage jobs to qualify for 'welfare' is, in my opinion, very disrespectful.

I'll take it back. The Military wasn't as high in the spending as I thought. I guess the statistic was government employees, which included Military. 104M worth of food stamps used on Military bases in 2012, which I believe is the most recent number.

A Private is given approximately 20K in salary and approximately 20K in food/housing incentives from the military.

I'll take back my statement.