Welfare Reform that Works

I woke up in the middle of the night and I had an epiphany! I had discovered a way to effectively solve the welfare problem in America. It is so simple that it’s scary, but with that being the case it seems unlikely that it would ever occur.

First, let me start by saying that I am against any form of public assistance. To quote one of our founding fathers the great Thomas Jefferson, "The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not." Add on top of this the fact that those who do not work or contribute to the republic have an equal vote as those who do and you have the eventual creation of a state in which the politicians are more concerned with satisfying the non-working with the labors of the working.

Welfare plagues this country to so vastly and deeply that it is hard to fathom. For fiscal year 2000, which is the last year to have complete data, the Federal, State and Local government expenditures for welfare were $1.01 trillion. That’s right TRILLION! Out of that total social security and Medicare were 53% of funds distributed. That’s fine because those people paid into the system. The remaining 47% was paid to low income / needy families. So their total was roughly $470 billion. These figures were based on information provided by the website https://webmail.pcsoweb.com/OWA/redir.aspx?C=01b146c1fa5d421c8ebcf208f0a7a5b1&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.libraryindex.com%2fpages%2f72%2fHow-Much-Does-Nation-Spend-on-Welfare.html The problem is that this is not a onetime charge. This is an ever revolving, ever growing behemoth that threatens to engulf us all. Check out the previously listed site for the particulars on the magnitude of growth that has occurred in welfare expenditures.

So I’ve given some quick information about the problem we face. Now stand back and be amazed at the simplicity in which the problem can be solved. As I explain this solution I will attempt to thwart any attacks on this proposal by the bleeding heart ACLU card carrying left.

I want to start out by saying that I've got nothing against the ladies. Actually my problem is with the males. We have successful forms of contraception protection already, but I don't trust the men to use them. Unfortunately the only recourse for males is surgical procedures which is more expensive to perform and extremely more expensive to reverse. So this forces me to look like a woman basher when the contrary is actually true. Women are the ones that are saddled with the upbringing of the children while the males can reject their responsibilities. Keeping that in mind her is my plan.

First, any female that is public assistance welfare should have an Intrauterine Device (IUD) inserted in them. For those that are not familiar with these devices here is very basic overview. The IUD is a small plastic device containing copper or hormones and is inserted into the uterus by a medical professional. The IUD does not stop the sperm from entering into the uterus, but rather it changes cervical mucus decreasing the probability of fertilization and it changes the lining of the uterus preventing implantation should fertilization occur. These little gems work from 5-10 years and have a 90% effectiveness rate. There no side effects and they can be easily removed to allow the female to become impregnated after she gets off of public assistance.

I can hear the phones at the ACLU ringing already, but give me a second to explain myself. People are on public assistance because they simply cannot afford to make it on their own for whatever reason. I know many of these reasons are temporary, but they can become long term if you add an extra mouth or two to feed. One estimate I recently read for the cost of a single child was approximately $200,000. This included housing, food, transportation, clothing, healthcare, childcare and education. If 200K seems like a lot, it is. Remember these people are already on public assistance so all of these additional costs are being carried by the taxpayers.

I will now list why each of these areas are all of problems.
Housing – obviously more people means a bigger house and the higher utility bills that coincide with it.
Food – yes you have to feed them. Three times a day, 365 days a year.
Transportation – Public busing systems that has to take them to and from school. Along with the housing theory, bigger family bigger car and fuel charges that go along with it.
Clothing – self explanatory.
Healthcare – oh yes the big one. We incur the cost of their prenatal, birth, pediatrician, gynecologist (if the child is a girl) and dentist.
Childcare – again if these people want to or have to work to some degree we’ve got to watch their kids somehow until they get home.
Education – more schools, more teachers, more buses, more books that the parents to have the money to pay for via local taxes. You get the picture.

Now I understand that we do not necessarily pay all of these items (unless of course the parent is in jail and oh yeah we pay for their necessities also). Something has to give in the process either the parent works and we pay for child care and some assistance or the parent stays home and we pay for everything. Just remember though, it’s an all or nothing situation when it comes to public assistance. If the family was good with two kids and then have a third and need public assistance we have to cover all three of the kids and not just the new one that put them over the edge.

Now that we’ve got current burdens to the system limited to some degree we now work on future burdens. Again it is simple to achieve. Once welfare assisted children become school age you tie their parents’ eligibility of benefits to the child’s school performance. In other words if a student is taking five classes in school they need to get a “C” or better in all classes to get full benefits. As the child performs worse the benefits continue to decrease to a minimum level. If the student drops out of school or gets expelled the parent loses all benefits for that child. The reason for this is if a child chooses to not attend school then they should be working and they need no further government assistance. Additionally, once a child drops out of school they are automatically emancipated and the parents are no longer legally responsible for them.

This kills two ideological birds with one stone. Liberals argue that underprivileged children don’t get the support they need from home which helps explain why they struggle in school. Keeping that in mind, I guarantee that you tie the parents’ government check to the scholastic success of little Johnny or Susie and you’ll get some parent involvement.

This will also give extra incentive for kids to stay in school which will help out later on down the road. Depending on which stats you look at, it is estimated that roughly half of all welfare recipients do not have a high school diploma. This lack of a diploma hinders future earnings throughout their life and contributes to keeping them in the welfare system also.

Now we have one last step that is similar to the first step which will again lock down future need for welfare. Anytime a family gets on welfare, if they have a juvenile daughter she must also get an IUD when she reaches puberty and has her first gynecologist appointment. If people were not outraged before when I suggested the same for the mother they certainly will be now. Let’s use another one of the key arguments that Liberals have for the need of public assistance to defend this position. They argue that lack of education is one of the main reasons why the impoverished can never rise up become financially secure.

Minus the eye the pie situations when a lone independent woman rises up with her baby still clutched to her bosom the odds are highly stacked against them that they will graduate high school or college. Remember the family already cannot support themselves currently so how can they do so when a grandchild arrives extremely early.

Let’s not forget that these IUD’s are not permanent fixes. They can be used until the age of 18 or they graduate high school and we would even pay to have them removed by the doctor. It’s a small price to pay to ensure that these young ladies get a fighting chance at bettering themselves.

That’s it. That’s the plan. I told you it was simple, but the liberal cry of individual rights will drown out any debate that provides a non-permanent plan that would change the vicious welfare cycle for generations to come. Plus Democrats manipulate the welfare system to create a mob of indentured servants and do not want to fix the system because they do not want to destroy their election base.

Strike Two for the Big Three

So, Detroit is back with their hats in their hands begging for more money. This time they at least drove down instead of flying in their private jets. They brought a plan this time, but reading through them they are filled with more statistical propaganda and woe is me pleads and lack any real “plans”. GM lists the outcomes of liquidity and market share based on upside and downside targets, but where do they get these assumptions. They are based on no facts especially since they have been losing market share forever.

Also all of GM’s earning projections are estimated on a pro forma basis. The following is the definition of pro forma according to investopedia.com. Items sometimes excluded in pro-forma earnings figures include write-downs, goodwill amortization, depreciation, restructuring and merger costs, interest, taxes, stock based employee pay and other expenses. The company excludes these items with the intent to present its figures more clearly to investors. However, whether or not this is accomplished is debatable. This has spawned such nicknames for pro-forma earnings as EEBS (earnings excluding bad stuff). So again GM has come up with assumptions that have no factual basis and has to use a reporting system that does not include all of their actual costs.

Next, GM discusses that they want the total $15 billion distributed by March 2009. Understandably they need money and they need it now, but wait there’s more. GM discusses that they are in talks with their “labor partners” (IE. UAW) to be fully competitive with foreign manufacturers operating in the US by 2012. When do these labor talks have to be completed by you may ask? The answer is March 31, 2009 after GM has received all bailout distributions. By then GM and the UAW have already received their money so what consolations do you think they’ll really make.

Then, GM starts talking about the “sacrifices” their senior staff is willing to make in the form of salary and bonus reduction. Are you kidding me? How in the world can you have the arrogance to even suggest that you are “sacrificing” a bonus when you’ve been bleeding money for that past 4 years and are so badly off that you have to beg congress to stay afloat? They claim they have to do this to retain top staff to help them with the restructuring of the company. Why would you want to retain any of these clowns when their decisions have put the company in this predicament in the first place?

GM also discusses new hire employee pay and benefits and how they have been comparable to Toyota recently and will be completely competitive by 2012. At the same time though, they state that they will be reducing their workforce from 96,500 to 75,000 by 2012. If you know anything about employee contracts a familiar phrase is last one in, first one out. In other words, seniority rules and the newer cheaper hires will be out the door while the older workers that are still under the previous contracts will remain.

Lastly, GM discusses their commitment to creating more fuel efficient and alternative fuel vehicles. They are so committed that they plan on spending $2.9 billion from 2009-2012 on research developing these types of vehicles. There is only one catch though. Earlier this year congress gave the Big 3 $25 billion to do this. So where is the other roughly $5 billion that should be allotted for this type of research.

Public Financed Campaigns

We have got to stop the corruption of "for hire" politicians. Each election season, big business and the affluent spend millions of dollars to get their politician elected. After the elections these entities get their spoils in the form of government contracts and beneficial legislation which quickly makes back the money they poured into the election. I propose an alternative form of camapign finance.

Clean Elections gives candidates the option to qualify for public funding to run their campaigns. While the specifics vary, typically a candidate must collect a set number of small qualifying contributions—usually $5—from people in their district. The number of signatures and contributions required varies according to the office sought.

If a candidate runs under the Clean Elections system and is outspent by a privately funded opponent, the law will typically provide a matching grant to the publicly funded candidate, up to a limit. Extra funding is also often available if there is independent spending against a candidate by an outside group or individual.

Candidates who choose not to be participate in the Clean Elections system can raise money from private donors, but must follow state campaign finance limits and disclosure laws. Clean Elections laws must be voluntary to comply with the Supreme Court’s 1976 Buckley v. Valeo ruling, which specifically approved of voluntary public financing systems.

To find out more about clean elections checkout the website publiccampaign.org

Bye-Bye Big 3

No more bailouts! That is something to get excited about, but is it going to happen? Detroit has already flown into Washington on their private jets with their platinum cups in hand begging for money. Is it just me or has Detroit been losing money for years and now they’re blaming the financial crisis for losses. Oh no, it’s not the financial tsunami that put the automakers in this pickle it was there own ineptness.

According to the big three they built huge gas guzzlers because the American people wanted them and these gas guzzlers were supposedly hugely profitable. Well let’s look closer into that. The balance sheet of GM indicates that they have lost money since 2005 when the economy was still humming along. Ford is in a similar predicament. They have lost money since 2006. Since Chrysler is now private it is hard to look at their books to see how much they were bleeding, but we can see what they sold for as a gauge. In 1998 Daimler purchased Chrysler for $37 billion and conversely in 2007 Chrysler went private for the whopping sum of $7 billion. Not exactly what you would with a thriving profitable business model.

Everyone knows about the legacy costs and failed bargaining agreements with the UAW that have placed the big three into this situation. It was not the financial crisis, but the inevitable compounding burden that these union contracts have placed on these companies that are to blame. Foreign automakers who build in America average $48 a hour in salary and benefits, but the big 3 average $75 a hour for the same thing. Why the big difference? Foreign automakers don’t have unionized workers and their sense of entitlement.

Bankruptcy would be a blessing and not a curse for the big 3. It would allow them to tear up all non-beneficial contracts including those with the UAW. It would settle current debt issues and provide a clean slate to move forward. Contrary to popular belief filing for bankruptcy does not mean that the kitchen is closed and the big 3 would blow away and never be heard from again.

If the politicians do bailout Detroit then where does it stop? Retailers are suffering, restaurants are suffering, manufacturing is suffering it appears that everyone is suffering so where do the handouts/bailouts/bridge loans end? The only question that remains is will congress act in the best interest of the country and not the lobbyists. The funding for these bailouts comes from loans that WE have to pay interest on for years to come. Why should we pay for 10-20-30 years to come to bailout business models that were failing before the financial crisis and will continue to falter after the dust clears?

A call to action

Recent events have again brought to the forefront the recurring theme that our politicians refuse to work for the people. They suffer from some or all of the following. Being inept, unintelligent, dishonest, disconnected and/or leaderless.

The question remains though who is to blame for their inability to work in the best interest for the people. Is it the American people who continue to vote in the same clowns spouting the same rhetorical B.S. year after year or is it the political system as a whole that puts the interest of lobbyist and campaign contributors in the top slot for the politician's concern. I say the answer is both.

First, the American people seem more concerned with what the latest contestant of American Idol thinks than what their politicians think. They're more concerned with how their favorite sports team is performing rather than how their government is performing. They're more concerned with what is the most immediately gratifying versus what is our best long term interest. So we vote based on issues we are ignorant on and for politicians that give us immediately what we desire. A question to probe at a later time is what we desire our politicians to be. Should they truly represent us in all our uninterested and ignorant glory or should they LEAD us looking more at the future consequences of their decisions rather than what the latest skewed poll says we want them to do.

Second, books upon books have been written about what is wrong with Washington. So I shall only touch upon a few of the issues that I consider to be the most egregious.

Campaign contributions - the American people pay the politicians salaries, but big business and lobbyist pay to get them elected. So if getting elected guarantees you get the paycheck then who do you think the politicians care the most about. As long as we allow businesses and wealthy individuals to back the politician that best serves their interest we'll never get a politician that serves our interest. I believe all campaigns should be paid out of taxed money. Expensive you say, well consider how much money is given away and policies put in place that benefit the current campaign contributors. The best thing about taxed campaign financing is that we the people decide how much these clowns spend on their campaigns. Also, when the election is decided by who has the best policies rather than the most money we'll get the best the person for the job.

Earmarks and grants - We seem to forget that these guys are spending OUR money. So every time you see an earmark or grant that goes to benefit a road program for lets say Houston TX that program is being paid by the taxes of all 50 states. So the local or state population elects their US congressman and that congressman then earmarks all of our money into his local economy. Now take that problem and multiply it numerous times for all of the congressman trying to get in the good graces of their voters. How much of our tax dollars are being spread through out the US on projects we did not vote on or approve. I got a novel idea. If you want to better your local community use your own money.

No line item veto - Refer to the above earmark section. Give the president the power to look past the pork and cut it from legislation. Once it is vetoed it can go back to congress and they can vote on that measure individually. This forces each congressman to be put on the record that they voted on wasteful spending and they can't hide behind the good intentions of the original bill to justify their vote.

Keeping these items in mind we need to change our ways and I mean all of us. No more uninterested and uninformed voters. Also we need to change how Washington is fundamentally ran so we get the best people doing the job working for the people that voted them in place. Change is coming and I hope it's a change for the better.