Mitt Romney recently said that he is not worried about the poor ... they have a safety net ... and if the net is broken, he will fix it. Most "pundits" on the left and the right consider this a major gaff that Romney needs to walk back. I'm not quite so sure. I believe that the safety net that our European-style welfare economy has constructed is nearly as universal as humanly possible ... and our politicians constantly vie to outdo each other finding even newer benefits. I recently wrote about how the poor in this country are now getting free cell phones (see: Alphabet Soup). Now I read that our safety net includes another goodie -- nearly free high-speed Internet access (see: NY Post Article). Wow! We middle-class schlubs are paying north of $50 per month for broadband Internet access. So this reduced fee ($10 per month) then amounts to about another $480 per year of cost forgiveness (this time, courtesy of The Barry) to those who already have a myriad of government benefits.
I would really love to see a definitive financial spreadsheet of all this government largess (Section-8 housing, heating assistance, Medicaid, free school lunches, free cell phones, SSI, cash aid to dependent families, food stamps/EBT cards, free transportation, earned-income tax credits, reduced Internet costs, educational grants, etc. etc.) that a go-getting welfare family does, in fact, receive. I suspect such a compendium would show few if any holes in the safety net and shock the American public into a movement toward real welfare reform. Were this to happen, Romney's words may not be so damaging after all.
