One of the few things Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich agree on is that President Obama is turning America into "European-style welfare culture."
In his standard stump speech Romney charges Obama with creating a nation of dependents. "Over the past three years Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society with an entitlement society."
Gingrich calls Obama "the best food-stamp president in American history."
What's their evidence? Both rely on federal budget data showing direct payments to individuals shot up by almost $600 billion, a 32 percent increase, since the start of 2009.
They also point to Census data showing that 49 percent of Americans now live in homes where at least one person is collecting a federal benefit -- Social Security, food stamps, unemployment insurance, worker's compensation, or subsidized housing. That's up from 44 percent in 2008.
Finally, they trumpet Social Security Administration figures showing that the number of people on Social Security disability jumped 10 percent in Obama's first two years in office.
They argue our economic problems stem from this sharp rise in "dependency." Get rid of these benefits and people will work harder.
But they have cause and effect backwards. The reason for the rise in food stamps, unemployment insurance, and other safety-net programs is Americans got clobbered in 2008 with the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. They and their families have needed whatever helping hands they could get.
If anything, America's safety nets have been too small and shot through with holes. That's why the number and percentage of Americans in poverty has increased dramatically over the past three years. According to a study by Northeastern University, a third of families with young children are now in poverty.
This is the real scandal. For example, only 40 percent of the unemployed qualify for unemployment benefits because they weren't working full time or long enough on a single job before they were canned. The unemployment system doesn't take account of the fact that a large portion of the workforce typically works part time on several jobs, and moves from job to job.
Republicans also object to Obama's health care law, which covers 30 million more Americans than were covered before. That law still leaves over 20 million without health insurance. They'll get emergency care when they're in dire straights -- hospitals won't refuse them -- but we all end up paying indirectly.
Regressive Republicans pretend they're about opportunity. In reality they're back at what they've been doing for years -- promoting Social Darwinism.
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This is what happens to people who only trust those that tell them what they want to hear.
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It's easer to promote survival fo the fittest when the objective of the individuals who possess the resources and make the rules are intent on so weakening everyone else that they can't compete or produce.
I feel like he's a campaign slogan these days. I don't think any of them care much about the rest of us. I really don't.
All of the catelogues were provided by foreign retailers and all of them provided a sales comission to colleges that passed them on to students.
The group doing the study claimed to have found American made products of equal or greater quality selling for less. They provided a long list of goods along with quality rating and price comparisons.
America is still a great place to do business. Major American corporations may be able to disinvest temporarily for political gain, but foreign corporations are investing heavily.
Romney claims that poor people are lazy & unskilled. They are not incentivized to work but to collect a gov't subsidy. Romney speaks from the foremost concern of an uber-rich parent--namely, how do I get my kids to earn their own money & stop spending all mine? Working class kids intuitively link their future well-being to acquiring a well-paying job. It's a given not a choice.
Fellow Americans, Romney says, ask not what government can do for you! Get a job!
We the people must ask ourselves: What can Romney do for our government? Who does he seek to serve? The answers seem clear in his own words. "Corporations are people, my friend." "I like firing people who provide me services." "I'm not concerned about the very poor."
In college we had to prove eligbility, to get aid. It does seem that the bureaucrats administering some of the safety nets have taken a very "liberal" (not to be confused with the poltical context) interpretation and will grant anyone a disability these days. That's for obvious reasons to prevent complaints about unfairness, but it's also got top-level bureaucrats and some cabinet appointees striving to justify a big chunk of pie and big paychecks that are justified by "all the work we do and people we help". That's reform that's needed but not justification for elimination of entire programs.
As we in business say, it's not the process, but rather the execution that's failing.
Social Security Disability Insurance SSDI is not and has not ever been handed out "liberally." In fact, it is granted based on specific government statutes that enumerate many eligibility requirements. The government does not do the applicant evaluations. Third party private for-profit companies are hired to evaluate disability applications. It takes more than a year for the process to render a decision and there must be a doctor and medical records to support the claim that the worker cannot work.
The GROUP named above are benefactors of the SSDI program and represent evidence that the system succeeds in sustaining a decent quality of life for disabled workers. It is not evidence that the system is flawed or corrupted. It just fails to work well for everyone equally and it leaves far too many people outside the system who rightfully deserve to collect their paid-for lifetime benefits. Money wasted to outsource eligibility evaluations that deny more applicants is better spent providing promised benefits to more disabled workers, not less.
F/F.
Now that $20 an hour job went away and you were forced to settle for $12 an hour, or about $25K a year for a 40 hour week, with smaller and/or more expensive benefits or none at all. You have now gone from lower middle class to the poor. Likely you need food stamp assistance or housing vouchers just to get by.
This idea that Obama wants people to just sit home, watch Jerry Springer, drink Colt 45 Malt Liquor and collect a welfare check is nothing more than GOP bs.
The government failed to adequately regulate the financial industry. There's a revolving door between the regulating agencies and the investment banks, and there's a massive flow of lobbying dollars from the banks to politicians, so no wonder.
There was a time in this nation when if a person worked hard, at nearly anything, they could earn a living wage and actually even support a family. Low-level jobs even earned enough for those basic functions. However, as unions were eroded and destroyed by the right and as the minimum wage stagnated and as middle-class salaries stagnated and went backwards, those low-level jobs no longer were able to support an individual, much less support a family.
The bottom line is that we need to fund our nation from the ground up. Drastically increase education funding so that even the worst neighborhoods have well educated kids. And so that even the poorest of the good students can go to top notch schools. And we also need to make our lowest level jobs pay a living wage. And lastly we need to provide EVERYONE in America health insurance. Those steps will assure that the vast majority will want to work and can survive on the work that they do find.
And there are millions of jobs in America for which companies say they can't find qualified workers, and thus are getting foreign workers to come to America. This is a problem and shows that we need more qualified individuals graduating from colleges and universities.
Education funding? Our nation has sunk to historic educational lows since the inception of the Dept. of Education. Funding is NOT lacking. What is lacking is real accountability, on the parts of both parents and teachers. Return FULL control to the states and communities, and let them have their money back. Then, they will decide what will be taught. Let the Liberals teach feminist literature, while the Conservatives teach match and English. We'll see which group prospers!
Semper fi