In short, Obama decreed that states can now waive the federal work requirement of the law. As you recall, states had tried previously to make a mockery of the work requirement by defining "work" as journaling, massage, personal care activities, bed rest, dieting and host of other bogus activities. So now states won't even have to make up stuff. They will simply be able to write checks to welfare recipients, period.
Not all Americans are happy about this, including a few dead ones.
Guess who said this:
But the stark fact before us is that great numbers still remain unemployed.
A large proportion of these unemployed and their dependents have been forced on the relief rolls. The burden on the Federal Government has grown with great rapidity. We have here a human as well as an economic problem. When humane considerations are concerned, Americans give them precedence. The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for able-bodied but destitute workers.
The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief.
h/t Watchdog on Wall Street
UPDATE: And the answer is: Franklyn Delano Roosevelt. He said in in his 1934 State of the Union Address. Could it be that the man had some common sense before he assumed the throne of Forever Leader?
2 comments:
Linerals sometimes do and say things that don't fit with their ideology. Bill Clinton had spending down to 18% of GDP. Too bad our spending isn't at that level now.
I agree with you. However, in this case I tend to believe that FDR's quote reflected what he really believed, i.e., the cultural mores of America in 1934.
Being on welfare or relief then was a stigma. Then, just about all Americans believed in industriousness, as Charles Murray would put it.
Now, not so much.
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