There is a central problem with this concept and the discussion so far, and it is the same central problem that pops up in discussions of affirmative action, gun control, and a whole host of other social/legal issues:

WTH is "welfare?"

"Welfare" is one of those words that people casually toss about without really knowing what they mean.

So in order for this to be a meaningful exchange, we first have to establish what exactly we are talking about.

What I also don't get is what one has to do with the other.  Here is the argument restated:

1.  I work 

2.  I pay taxes

3.  I get tested for drugs

4.  Some small portion of tax revenue gets spent on "welfare"

Conclusion:  Welfare recipients should get drug tested

The conclusion does not even begin to follow from the premises.

impulse! wrote: Any government funding for those who "can't" something. I.E. Can't afford health insurance, can't afford drug treatment etc. Needs to be cut from our our government spending. Why the hell should we pay for people who are too lazy to work. Or have a drug addiction so bad they can't work. Are you freaking joking me? They are really going to say they have a drug addiction to bad they can't work? Wow these are the people who need to die already, they are a burden on society. But if they die, WE have to pay for the EMT's to pick them up, WE have to pay to bury their ass etc. Just get some illegal aliens who WILL work for cheap, and a chevy truck. To pick up these dead, burden to society people, and throw them in a dumpster!

Translation:  I have no idea what the heck I am talking about.

Good lord, dude.

impulse! wrote: Please explain. When I go to a hospital in a rough area, the waiting room is full of people without health insurance. But our current laws say we must treat them to a extent. Or people on foodstamps, I have seen that personally, working at a grocery store. And they don't have stamps anymore, it like a debit card hahahaha! These people are a joke. Akhmed, tell your family to get off welfare, I don't feel like paying for your food etc.

Where even to begin...

Did you ever attend a public school?

Benefit from police presence?

Drive on a public road?

impulse! wrote: Akhmed wrote: impulse! wrote: Please explain. When I go to a hospital in a rough area, the waiting room is full of people without health insurance. But our current laws say we must treat them to a extent. Or people on foodstamps, I have seen that personally, working at a grocery store. And they don't have stamps anymore, it like a debit card hahahaha! These people are a joke. Akhmed, tell your family to get off welfare, I don't feel like paying for your food etc. Where even to begin... Did you ever attend a public school? Benefit from police presence? Drive on a public road? I believe in taxes dumbass. But I don't believe our taxes should go to people who are too lazy to work etc. Please tell me why I'm wrong, obviously I don't know what I'm talking about seeing I'm not on welfare or any government assistance. But it sounds like you have PHD on this subject, from personal experience?

I'm gonna have to go with Clark here. You have seemed to single handedly generalize the entire group of people who receive assistance from the government. How you equate food stamps to TANF to the WIC program to a number of other programs is beyond me. Furthermore, to exclaim that they are all "too lazy to work" shows me that the very essence of your argument is based on some neo-con ideal and general stereotype about goverment assistance. Step back, do some research, then argue against it, because the last thing you really want to do is get your ass handed to you in a debate with Clark because all you wanted to do is take Sean Hannity's opinion for gold.

impulse! wrote: Any government funding for those who "can't" something. I.E. Can't afford health insurance, can't afford drug treatment etc. Needs to be cut from our our government spending.

You say you believe in taxes - but what do you think taxes are for?

They exist SPECIFICALLY to provide government funding those those who "can't" something.

Public schools exist because most people cannot afford private schools.  Public police exists because most people cannot afford personal security guards.  Public roads exist because most people cannot afford to build their own.

Each of those things exist in private form - there are private schools, police, and roads.  Yet we have decided that it is for the betterment of society to have this type of welfare, where we provide this benefit "for free" to all, regardless of the amount of taxes they pay.

The very purpose of taxation is to redistribute wealth.  That's what taxes do.  You may disagree with some particular application, but to bluntly say that we should subsidize "stuff" that people cannot afford tells me that you do not understand taxes as well as you think.

You say you are not on any government assistance, when you obviously are - we all are. 

impulse! wrote: TANF: Basically their trying to get away from the "welfare" stereotype. But I don't believe in it, if you have children and can't afford to raise them, tough <poopy>. WIC: Don't get knocked up, keep your legs closed.

Maybe in your perfect world that would work. However, not everyone was raised the way you were and shouldn't be punished for that either. WIC is a great program because of it's regulations, and what Tommy Thompson did with "welfare" in Wisconsin was also impressive. It's not really what you think it is.

impulse! wrote: TANF: Basically their trying to get away from the "welfare" stereotype. But I don't believe in it, if you have children and can't afford to raise them, tough <poopy>.

See, the thing about TANF is that it is meant to keep the children going, not the parents.  Are you prepared to let children starve because they parents are out of work?

And speaking of out of work, can I assume that everybody in Flint, MI is out of work because of a city-wide epidemic of lazy, and not because GM shut down some factories?

And speaking of children - did you at any point get food, shelter, etc from your parents?  Did you pay them for it, or were you getting welfare?

impulse! wrote: You make a valid argument, but I don't believe in some area's that we have government aid for. Is that such a big deal to say? Yes I believe in that, but at the same time this should be different?

We all disagree with with various spending programs, and those are good conversations to have.

But you need to have a reason.  "They are lazy" is not a reason.  So far all you have done is state that we should cut TANF/WIC, and presumably other unnamed state and federal programs, but you have not said why.

At the same time, you appear to be supporting other welfare programs like public schools (and presumably student loans/grants for college as well?), so you need to explain why one is better than the other.

If you cannot provide those reasons and explanations, then your opinion holds no sway.

impulse! wrote: If the parents cannot afford to raise their kids, cps needs to take them away and put them in a group home. AKA orphanage. I will support that government aid.

And why is this a better solution?

adrenalinejunky wrote: personally, i think programs that provide assistance while setting people up with jobs would be much more benificial to society then just giving them a check or food stamps... and if they refuse jobs or are consistently unable to hold them down, THEN cut them off, and let them learn responsibility on thier own.

And this is consistent with the thinking underlying many current "welfare" programs in the US, including TANF.  The old "dole" where you just get money forever with no requirements is long gone.

TANF is limited to 60 months of total lifetime benefits - hardly something to build a career on - and there are various job-seeking requirements as well.

There is certainly much to be desired on the effectiveness front, but clearly the underlying intent is one of getting people off welfare, not keeping them on.

adrenalinejunky wrote: while 60 months isn't exactly a lifetime, it is an inexcusably long amount of time to be burdening society when it is not hard to find a job. and while things are moving that way, i do personally know people who are collecting some sort of government aide that have absolutely no buisness doing so... i just think the system could still use quite a bit more work...

I generally agree.  It benefits nobody to have people not working.

But on TANF - I don't want to appear to be defending this particular program, but there are further limitations beyond the 60 months, such as a requirement that you must have found work within 2 years. 

I always laugh at what Johnny brings to the table, but there are only minor things I dissagree with. The explanation for the poor to be obese is because McDonalds makes everything on the menu cheap so that the poor think they are spending less on food by taking themselves there to feed. In actuality, they spend MORE than they would in a month at Mcy-d's than if they were to go to the grociery store and buy the necessary fixins' for a home cooked meal.

They have the mindset that after speding $20 bucks to feed their whole family a "meal" at a fast food joint, that they saved money. In actuality they will end up spending way more money because it is really more expensive to sustain a family that way. If you sing up for a free membership to a Safeway you get discounts on food products. using that discount and spending the same $20 at the Safeway will last you a week or more whereas you would otherwise dump it all in one place at one time for one family "meal" at a fast food resteraunt. They don't understand this type of math and want to see fast results and that's what the image is when buying meals at McDonalds.

Those who are poor and fat that also have jobs work these jobs to the point where they are too tired to cook a meal at home from scratch because of the 16 hour work days at $4 an hour just to support a family so again, it's off to Wendys or McDonalds for dinner so they don't have to continue working.

Do I support these types of mindsets? Not at all. Raising a family is hard work and there is no time clock that you can punch when you feel like you have done enough work for your family. Punching out at 5 at your regular job is fine, but you still have to work to keep up a family and if you aren't 100% dedicated then you aren't a great candidate for further breeding.

The bottom line is, these problems have existed in government spending for decades. Voting is probably your best bet.

Forget McDonalds - go to the grocery store.  Healthy and lean food is drastically more expensive than unhealthy and fattening food.

With $20 in food stamps you can get three stalks of asparagus, or 12,000 calories worth of junk.

In this country, at this time, it is pretty hard to be poor and NOT fat.

Mack wrote: Akhmed wrote: In this country, at this time, it is pretty hard to be poor and NOT fat. Then we should just decrease the allowance they get until they are no longer fat.

This goes back to my initial post - what program exactly are we talking about?  Are we indeed talking about any program at all?

You don't have to be on welfare to be too poor to buy healthy food.  Millions of hard-working Americans are too poor to be healthy.

And if we are talking state/federal assistance - which kind?  If it is TANF, for instance, are you prepared to let children starve rather than eat junk food?

Mack wrote: Roads and schools are a good thing because they serve the betterment of society by promoting education and commerce.  Aid on the other hand does not provide as identifiable a benefit to society as roads and schools.  It provides a more specific benefit to certain specific members of society and in many cases promotes only the breeding of another generation of hand-out grubbing couch potatoes.

That depends on the aid, now doesn't it.

Pell grants and Stafford loans, for instance, allow people to educate themselves (and thereby providing a benefit to that specific individual), and presumably benefits society in the same way as public schools. 

It isn't always easy to separate private and public benefit.

The interstate network benefit us all, but it does so mostly by benefiting private trucking companies.  Tax deductions for mortgage interest benefits the (relatively) wealthy directly, but benefits us all by encouraging home ownership and stability.

TANF is there to protect the children to make sure that we don't have starving children, which society deems a bad thing.  This is the same logic that leads to the dependant exclusion on your income tax return (which unlike TANF does not come with a 5-year limit), to ease the financial burden on families with children.  Everybody in this country with a child is eligible for a form of direct personal government welfare as a result.

Again, what do we mean by "welfare?"

Second Edit:  A side effect of this is the ever-increasing mass of the population who votes based on "what's good for me."  Of course, everyone does this to some extent (probably greater than any of us want to admit), but the difference here is that such social programs can be used to develop a "politics of need" that locks the poor into a cycle of having to vote for certain candidates to further the subsistence programs they depend upon.  In return these candidates expand these programs and those who use them become even more dependent.

This is a giant unfounded myth.  Not only is it unfounded, but it goes contrary to observed fact.  Poor people in this country are significantly less likely to vote at all than wealthy people, and the more poor, the less likely they are to vote.  There is no "wefare voting bloc."

adrenalinejunky wrote: source?

This falls into the category of "stuff I have read in many place many times," so I have no particular single source leading me to my understanding of this phenomenon.

Wikipedia does have some discussion of this, however, as do various demographics sites on the web: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout#Socio-economic_factors - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout#Socio-economic_fa ctors

Seven percent is a good voting bloc - but not when it is outweighed by bigger blocs.

Mack's claim is that this "welfare voting bloc" gets its power from the self-interest of voters.  Welfare recipients vote for more welfare.  However, by that same logic, non-welfare recipients should be voting against welfare.  Certainly a survey of this forum yields high resistance to welfare programs.

And since the non-welfare voting bloc is much bigger than the welfare group, more likely to vote than the welfare group, richer than the welfare group, and more likely to donate to campaign coffers than the welfare group, it would be rather counterproductive for an aspiring politician to cater to the welfare bloc.

And, of course, this theory is based in the unfounded claim that welfare recipients do indeed vote as a bloc rooted in this single issue.

The various forms of welfare exist not because the beneficiaries support it, but because millions of non-welfare Americans support it.

I would tend to agree - welfare is presumably a more important issue to the people who use food stamps than to those who do not.

But in today's political climate there seems to be a strong general sentiment against welfare programs (this thread being a good example), and it would seem very unwise for any politician to make "more welfare" a big part of his platform.

That's no way to get big political donations.