The United States of Welfare

By Mat Lasater | January 5, 2013 |

Recently, I saw a graphic on Facebook depicting certain states in the USA where there were more people on welfare than working in that state. A couple of days later, I read a post that a friend shared on Facebook, again, about welfare.

I was not surprised at the post, rather, reminded that sometimes it takes a couple nudges for us to see what we’re really seeing. The post was from Mike Huckabee, a former preacher and presidential candidate.

Here was the gist of the post:

Last month, the Senate Budget Committee reports that in fiscal year 2011, between food stamps, housing support, child care, Medicaid and other benefits, the average US household below the poverty line received $168.00 a day in government support. What’s the problem with that much support? Well, the median household income in America is just over $50,000, which averages out to $137.13 a day. To put it another way, being on welfare now pays the equivalent of $30.00 an hour for a 40-hour week, while the average job pays $25.00 an hour. And the person who works also has to pay taxes, which drops his pay to $21.00 an hour. It’s no wonder that welfare is now the biggest part of the budget, more than Social Security or defense. And why would anyone want to get off welfare when working pays $9.00 an hour less?

Did you just read that? Do you understand what that means? It’s ludicrous what our country has come to. I believe those on welfare should be limited to receiving support (not entire life-pay, but ‘support’) for a short period of time to “get them by.”

However, welfare recipients, nor the general concept of publicly supported personal aid is not the root of the problem. The problem is a power-hungry government that believes it’s good at what it does because it has a no-limit credit card that it can spend without consequence because it’s creditors (the people of the US) won’t get off their butts and undo what our elected/hired government employees have done.

Too many people sit by blindly and say “it’s ok, it will all be fine.” Or, “we just need to pray.” Don’t get me wrong, I strongly believe in the power of prayer (to God), and that God’s plan is sovereign, even with all the nonsense that seems to come from our own doing.

However, I also believe that we’re not supposed to be robots, but to voice our beliefs in how our government runs. We do pay it’s bills, right? The downside is that the government has gotten so big that we cannot simply undo what’s been done. Look at abortion – we ok’d the killing of thousands of babies every day in the USA. We are fools to look the other way or even think that we will not be held accountable for our actions.

Back to the size of our government… one reason our government can do what it wants is because it’s got a few bucks behind them – we give them our tax money every year. Here’s a quick list of a few ways the government spends your tax dollars (there’s many online sources for this info, just google “wasteful government spending 2012″):

The soccer field at Guantanamo Bay

1. New soccer field for detainees at Guantanamo: $750k
2. Indonesian students getting degrees: $16-$20 million
3. Determining if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior: $175k
4. Department of Health and Human Services program that will, among other things, seek to solve the problem of 5-year-old children that “can’t sit still” in a kindergarten classroom: $500 million
5. Countless more…

Unbelievable. One day someone’s going to call our country’s loan. One day, we, as American citizens will have to pay for what we’ve allowed to be done to our country, financially and spiritually. It’s absolutely out of control.

When I write these types of articles I’m usually left with an “oh, crap” feeling, and then a “God, help” feeling. That’s where this all points to. When something is so out of control there is only ONE that can change a situation or even the hearts of man. We need God back in our country more than ever before.

Gun control won’t fix things… Taxing people more won’t fix things… More regulations won’t fix things… God is the only answer. We’ve removed Him from our schools, public places and any other place that might offend someone. We’re foolish to think we can do ‘life’ on our own and by our own power.

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