Total federal and state welfare spending rose from $431 billion in 2000 to $927 billion in 2011. Both parties are responsible, but President Obama bears particular responsibility. Last year, explained my Cato Institute colleague Michael Tanner: “Welfare spending increased significantly under President George W. Bush and has exploded under President Barack Obama. In fact, since President Obama took office, federal welfare spending has increased by 41 percent, more than $193 billion per year.” And this is just the start. From 2009 to 2018, figured Heritage Foundation scholars Robert Rector, Katherine Bradley, and Rachel Sheffield, at current rates the federal government will spend $7.5 trillion and states will spend $2.8 trillion on welfare, for a total of $10.3 trillion. Washington can ill afford such expenditures. Uncle Sam ran more than $5 trillion in deficits over the past four years and is expected to run up a deficit of $845 billion this year. The Congressional Budget Office recently warned that while deficits are expected to decline over the next two years, they then will start rising again to $1 trillion annually. Over the next decade, assuming unrealistically that Congress doesn’t add any new programs or increase outlays for any old ones, the accumulated red ink will be $7.0 trillion. Alas, this is merely the brief break before the tsunami of entitlement outlays hits. The total unfunded liability for Social Security and Medicare exceeds $100 trillion. To that must be added a long list of contingent, likely, and potential liabilities. Even the Post Office is broke and needs a bail-out! Economist Laurence Kotlikoff estimated total federal indebtedness at an astonishing $222 trillion. Despite facing financial doom, government provides welfare to “a growing number of people who increasingly are not ‘needy’ by any rational definition,” write Carleson and Mashburn. Wasteful duplication isn’t limited to welfare, of course. Yet abuse of programs supposedly directed at human needs seems especially odious. There are people in need. In their name government is taxing away people’s earnings and wasting the proceeds.
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 02:05:42 +0000
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