How Much

[rojawe]

The American Welfare State —
$15 Trillion and Little to Show for It

In 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson declared a “war on poverty” in America, the poverty rate stood at around 19 percent.

Since then, total federal, state, and local spending on anti-poverty programs has amounted to $15 trillion, yet the poverty rate now stands at 15.1 percent, the highest level in nearly a decade, and more than 46 million Americans continue to live in poverty.

“Clearly we are doing something wrong,” according to the Cato Institute, which has released a new Policy Analysis on welfare spending entitled “The American Welfare State: How We Spend $1 Trillion a Year Fighting Poverty and Fail.” The Cato report calls the war on poverty a “failure.”

Incredibly, federal, state, and local governments now spend $20,610 a year for every poor person in the United States, or $61,830 for each poor family of three, with federal spending accounting for $44,500 of that figure.

“Given that the poverty line for that family is just $18,530, we should have theoretically wiped out poverty in America many times over,” writes Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute and author of “The Poverty of Welfare: Helping Others in Civil Society.”

The federal government will spend more than $668 billion on anti-poverty programs this year, an increase of 41 percent or more than $193 billion since President Obama took office. State and local government expenditures will amount to another $284 billion, bringing the total to nearly $1 trillion — far more than the $685 billion spent on defense.

Measured as a percentage of GDP, federal spending increased more than fourfold since 1965, from 0.83 percent to 4.4 percent, and total welfare spending rose from 2.19 percent of GDP to 6 percent.

“By any measure, U.S. welfare spending has increased dramatically since 1965. In constant 2011 dollars, federal spending on welfare and anti-poverty programs has risen from $178 billion to $668 billion, a 375 percent increase, while total welfare spending — including state and local funds — has risen from $256 billion to $908 billion,” Tanner observes.

Most welfare programs are means-tested programs providing cash, food, housing, medical care, or other benefits to low-income persons and families, or programs targeted at communities or disadvantaged groups, such as the homeless.

The federal government alone now funds 126 separate and often overlapping programs designed to fight poverty.

There are 33 housing programs run by four different cabinet departments, 21 programs providing food or food-purchasing assistance administered by three different federal departments and one independent agency, and eight healthcare programs administered by five separate agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services.

The largest welfare program is Medicaid, which provides benefits to 49 million Americans and cost more than $228 billion last year — excluding funding for nursing home or long-term care for the elderly.

The second largest is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — food stamps — with 44 million participants and a price tag of $75 billion. About 15 percent of the population now receives food stamps, the highest number in U.S. history.

The Earned Income Tax Credit (Refundable Portion) benefits 27 million households and costs $55 billion.

The fourth most expensive program is Supplemental Security Income, costing $43.7 billion, followed by Federal Pell Grants ($41 billion), and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families ($21 billion).

Federal welfare programs range from these big-ticket items down to lower-cost programs such as Weatherization Assistance for Low Income Persons ($250 million), the Senior Farmers Market

Nutrition Program ($20 million), and Rural Rental Housing Loans ($18 million).

At least 106 million Americans receive benefits from one or more of these programs. Including entitlements such as Social Security disability and Medicare and salaries for government employees, more than half of Americans now receive a substantial portion of their income from the government.

According to projections from the Obama administration, welfare spending will not drop significantly once the economy fully recovers, the Cato Institute report points out.

By 2014, welfare spending is likely to equal $1 trillion per year and will total $10.3 trillion over the next decade, with federal and state governments spending $250,000 for every American currently living in poverty or $1 million for every poor family of four. And those figures do not include increased spending for Obamacare, which will dramatically increase the number of low-income Americans receiving Medicaid.

“Clearly we are spending more than enough money to have significantly reduced poverty, yet we haven’t,” Tanner concludes.

“It is time to reevaluate our approach to fighting poverty. The vast majority of current programs are focused on making poverty more comfortable rather than giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty.

“And we actually have a pretty solid idea of the keys to getting out of and staying out of poverty: finish school, do not get pregnant outside marriage, and get a job, any job, and stick with it.”

[tombogan03884]

And it was originally financed with the supposedly untouchable money from the Social Security Trust fund.
The Republicans fought it.
They said "It will cause a future short fall in Soc. Sec. funding when the younger generations begin to collect and it won't solve the basic problems".
The Dems said,"Those mean Republicans are lying, they just hate poor people."
"They are just looking out for their wealthy donors"

It's nearly 50 years later, who told the truth ?

[twyacht]

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and now if I am wrong somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosper. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And enormous debt to boot."
Henry Morgenthau, May 1938, FDR's Treasury Secretary

They still don't (insert expletive) get it....Do they?