Posted by
Patrick Henry on Sunday, February 22, 2009 3:00:04 PM
They're dancing in the streets on Chicago's south side and in New Orleans. Welfare is back -- on steroids. One enormous Porkulus and abra kadabra -- the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 is completely undone, and the already broke states are expected by the Democrats and the administration to pick up the tab.
Oh yeah, it's on a few of the 1400 pages YOU didn't read in the so-called stimulus bill. When TANF - Temporary Assistance to Needy Families -- was originated, welfare recipients were put on a five-year clock. They had that long t get a job and get off welfare, and states were given federal incentives to REDUCE their welfare rolls. Under Porkulus, the whole process is turned upside down, and the stimulus "incentive" for the states depends on INCREASING their welfare rolls.
But there is a zinger in the bill, and it's a dandy. While the stimulus money is temporary, in order to get it the states must liberalize their welfare policies and make those changes PERMANENT. Obama intends his "spread the wealth around" policy to be the gift that keeps on giving. Only he expects the states to find a way to keep the money flowing to the hardcore unemployed who have no intention of seeking work. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal says that Obama and the Dems are asking him to "spend a dollar to get a dime." While Dems are attacking him and other southern governors for threatening to refuse parts of Porkulus, they should be hailed in their states as heroes for not saddling their governments with long-term commitments that will threaten to bankrupt their states down the road. Of course the hardcore welfare bums will howl because they don't care. They just want their checks!
In 2006, I talked with one of the non-working poor in Houston, Texas, who had begun receiving TANF checks. He had been into drugs and petty crime, and wouldn't stay in rehab or keep a job even after we helped him get it. When I reminded him that he couldn't live on TANF forever, and that the five-year clock was ticking, he just looked at me with a smirk and said, "No way, man. There's no way the man will really go through with cutting us off in five years." His reasoning was that in the cycle of things, Democrats would eventually regain power, and when they did, they would restore welfare as usual. That young man, by the way, was born in the projects on Chicago's south side. And I couldn't help but realize, as I gagged my way through the text of Porkulus, what a visionary prophet he turned out to be.
There is no nice way to put it. The Chosen One and his Democrat shills are determined to make those of us who work hard and make a living support those who won't. So while the hardcore sits around on their lazy backsides watching their government funded color TVs and making illegitimate babies, the rest of us will have to work deeper and deeper into each year just to meet the tax burden necessary to support their indolence.
Responsibility in America has just taken an enormous step backward. The nimrod politicians in congress don't really represent us. Porkulus, with its "green" golf carts, railways to nowhere and welfare handouts has made that abundantly clear. Maybe it's time to remind them, and the Obama Fuhrer, what happens in America when taxation without representation becomes policy.