Heritage Foundation: Welfare Spending will Bankrupt U.S.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has warned that the out of control spending & the ever increasing federal entitlement programs equal to $53 trillion in unfunded liabilities are "unsustainable" and has our country barreling down the path to an unrecoverable financial ruin.

As we see, President Spend-A-Lot & his merry band of congressional misfits have ignored these warnings.

The below report stresses the same concerns - STOP spending us into oblivion....

From The Heritage Foundation --

Over $10 trillion in welfare spending will drive the nation to bankruptcy unless Congress puts on the brakes and passes reforms that hold increases to inflation, tie government assistance to work and encourage other responsible behavior, a new report from The Heritage Foundation concludes.

“Careful policy reforms focused on fiscal restraint, strong work requirements, the promotion of marriage and personal responsibility can transform the federal welfare system,” the report states, “reducing dependence on government and increasing the well-being of families and children.”

The Heritage study, co-authored by welfare experts Robert Rector and Katherine (Kiki) Bradley, arrives as President Obama and congressional leaders seek to push through $2.5 billion more in “emergency” welfare spending.

Using the recession as cover, liberals continue to undo the welfare reforms – including work requirements for able-bodied adults – passed by Congress in 1996 and signed into law by President Clinton. Taxpayers would be better served if lawmakers instead looked to common-sense controls on the nation’s six dozen welfare programs as part of the solution to runaway federal spending and resulting budget crisis, Heritage argues.

Welfare spending totals $953 billion in Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget request – a jump of 42 percent from fiscal 2008, the final complete budget year of George W. Bush’s presidency. The Obama administration plans to spend more than $10.3 trillion on means-tested welfare – or about $100,000 for everyone in the poorest third of the population.

Hear podcast: Heritage’s Katherine (Kiki) Bradley on welfare spending.

Rather than continue to allow unrestrained growth in the more than 70 anti-poverty programs, Bradley and Rector recommend that, once the current recession ends, Congress should roll back welfare spending to pre-recession levels and limit future increases to the rate of inflation. This cap would save $1.4 trillion in 10 years.

Today only one welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), effectively promotes self-reliance. Reforms that created TANF in 1996 – largely inspired by Rector’s research and writing for Heritage – moved 2.8 million families off the welfare rolls and into jobs. Those gains are being reversed as the Obama administration and congressional leadership undo the signature employment and training requirements enacted 14 years ago. Click to read more....