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.
1 comment:
I am pretty much in agreement with Mitt on this issue. The media makes a big whoop about every sound bite because there are too many talking heads and not enough news to keep them usefully busy. We have been throwing money at the very poor for decades and that does not seem to solve poverty.
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