Progressivism transforms “welfare to work” to “welfare to not work”

 Millions of Americans get some kind of financial support from the federal government. Some of them have earned it (Social Security and retirement recipients), some of them really need it (the poor and disabled), some need it temporarily (like those who can’t find a job in the non-recovering economy) and some don’t really need it, but get it anyway.

The widely reported number of Americans in poverty is 46.2 million, about 15 percent of the population. July’s Household Survey revealed that 11.5 million were unemployed; 2.4 million will work but aren’t actively looking; and 8.2 million wanted full-time work but could only a find part-time job. And the Civilian Labor Force Participation rate was a very low 63.4 percent.

Yet CBS News reported that a survey of 2,000 employers showed one-third of them said lots of jobs go unfilled for three months or more. Many of the roughly three million unfilled jobs are in skilled trades and pay good wages, making one wonder about the current “everybody needs a college education” mania that now grips the country.

Another reason that good jobs go unfilled is that the federal government’s assistance programs make it easy to not work, and frequently pay more than some jobs.

The Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner, writing in the Los Angeles Times (Online) notes that, “Contrary to stereotypes, there is no evidence that people on welfare are lazy. Indeed, surveys of welfare recipients consistently show their desire for a job.” Yet the “U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says less than 42 percent of adult welfare recipients participate in work activities nationwide,” he continued. “Why the contradiction?”

“Perhaps it’s because, while poor people are not lazy, they are not stupid either,” he writes. “If you pay people more not to work than they can earn at a job, many won’t work.”

In looking at federal assistance programs, Mr. Tanner noted that most reports on welfare focus on only a single program, the cash benefit program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. But he explained that “focusing on this single program leaves the impression that welfare benefits are quite low, providing a bare, subsistence-level income.” However, most get assistance from more than one of the federal government’s 126 separate programs for low-income people, 72 of which provide either cash or in-kind benefits to individuals.

In order to analyze how the federal assistance programs affect recipients, the Cato Institute created a hypothetical family consisting of a mother with two children, ages 1 and 4, and then calculated the combined total of seven of the most common benefits that the family could receive in all 50 states.

In Washington, D.C., and Hawaii, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Maryland, New Hampshire and California, that group of seven programs provide benefits worth more than $35,000 a year. The value of the package in a medium-level welfare state is $28,500.

Since welfare benefits are not taxed, to put the benefits issue in perspective the Cato study calculated how much pretax income the family would need to earn in order to provide the same amount as a 40-hour-per-week job. This calculation took federal and state income taxes, earned income tax credits and the child tax credit into account.

The study found that welfare pays more than an $8-an-hour job in 33 states and the District of Columbia, and that in 12 states and the District of Columbia welfare pays more than a $15-an-hour job. And, in Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, D.C., welfare pays more than a $20-an-hour job.

Comparing the results with specific jobs, the Cato study found that in California and 38 other states, it pays more than the starting wage for a secretary and in the three most generous states, welfare benefits exceed the entry-level salary for a computer programmer.

While not every welfare recipient gets these seven benefits, many do, and some receive even more than the package used by the Cato study. “Still,” Mr. Tanner concludes, “what is undeniable is that for many recipients in the most generous states — particularly those classified as long-term recipients — welfare pays substantially more than an entry-level job.”

Welfare is supposed to be a temporary thing for most recipients, not a career. Yet in many cases able-bodied men and women do not look for work because they can do better on welfare.

Such a system discourages people from taking responsibility for themselves and their families. It creates a large faction of government dependents; a status that deprives people of self-respect and the pride of accomplishment that results when one succeeds in life because of their own efforts.

Even a low wage job is better than welfare, as it often is only a first step to better jobs. U.S. Census figures show that only 2.6 percent of full-time workers are poor, while 23.9 percent of adults who do not work are poor.

This country became what it once was not by millions depending upon government to feed and clothe them, but by Americans making themselves successful through determination and hard work. That is the goal our welfare system must have.

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The Obama “War on Coal” is a disgusting government over-reach

President Barack Obama continues working to destroy the coal industry, most recently by changing carbon emission standards in such a way that a) coal-fired power plants will be heavily affected, b) encourages plant owners to convert to natural gas, and c) will discourage the construction of coal-fired plants overseas.

Rather than work to solve the very real problems of the nation – like unemployment, the economy, his scandal-ridden administration and the troubles on the international scene – he chooses to fight a war on coal through agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, which impose extreme regulations and severe penalties on the industry.

Federal agencies routinely put regulations in effect without regard for the chaos and harm they will cause. Coal mining and related job losses and other financial repercussions just don't matter to the president and the bureaucrats. To them, the jobs of tens of thousands of Americans and the economies of 27 states are far less important than their narrow ideological goals.

These agencies criminalize behavior through regulations and impose fines or jail time as if those regulations were law. But according to Article I of the U.S. Constitution, only Congress can make law.

These agencies create regulations and penalties because Congress repeatedly fails to determine how measures it passes should be implemented, and allows or directs the Executive branch to decide how to do that. But the Constitution does not provide the Legislative branch the authority to transfer its law-making obligation to Executive branch agencies.

The Founders deliberately set up a tripartite government with specific and limited roles for each of the branches and a system of checks and balances specifically to prevent any of the three branches from assuming too much power, all based upon the concept of a limited government with few and specific responsibilities.

Briefly summarized, the Legislative branch makes laws, the Executive branch administers and enforces laws, and the Judicial branch rules on questions of law and operates the court system.

By abdicating its duty to complete the lawmaking process, and leaving part of that function to the Executive branch, the Congress has failed in its fundamental duty, which is a basic tenet of the Constitution, and it abets the Executive branch in developing its evolving tyrannical persona.

Since the nation's law-making authority resides with the Legislative branch, the rules and penalties federal agencies wield so freely and often arbitrarily are void of any true authority. It is time, therefore, for the people and the states to stand up and say, like Howard Beale in "Network": "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

The federal government collectively does not have the authority to target a given industry for destruction, and the Executive branch darned sure doesn't have that authority all by itself.

If any one or more of the 27 states that mine coal want to mine continue doing so, they need to do it as responsibly as is possible and feasible, and tell the federal government officially and formally to buzz off. The time-honored mechanism for restraining an over-reaching federal leviathan is known as "nullification."

The United States seems to be infected by a philosophy like that expressed by entertainer Britney Spears, whose inferior talent actually looks good compared to her abysmal thinking: "I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens."

Fortunately, Ms. Spears' naive reasoning was not shared by Thomas Jefferson, who had a better idea and suggested that rather than just sit back and allow a president or Congress or judges to arbitrarily alter the meaning of the Constitution, we must make only those changes that have popular consent and do so through the amendment process, which the Founders sensibly included in the Constitution.

Not all amendments have been good ones, of course, as evidenced by numbers 16, 17, and 18 (which was repealed), but that process is far superior to what we have done and are doing to the first 10 amendments the other way.

It is indeed sad to observe the embarrassing and shameful lack of knowledge and understanding of the founding principles of our country and how legions of Americans who don't know or understand them threaten our very survival as a free nation.

But as bad as that is, it is far worse when our elected officials, who took an oath to "preserve, protect and defend" the United States Constitution, share in this ignorance. Or worse, if they ignore their oath in favor of not preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution in order to "fundamentally transform the United States of America" to meet some foreign ideological vision.

Just how many of our 535 elected representatives in Congress and the hundreds of thousands of other federal employees – including the president and his cabinet – really understand the supreme law of the land, the United States Constitution, is unknown. But watching Mr. Obama's behavior and the behavior of the rest of the government suggests that number is horrifyingly small.

Ignorance is bliss, they say. But not in our government.

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Foolish big-government policies continue to impede economic recovery

Economic news continues to be slightly positive, with May's numbers a mixture of good and bad.

Unemployment ticked up one-tenth, from 7.5 percent to 7.6 percent and, oddly, that isn't as bad as it seems, because 420,000 people who had dropped out of the labor force thought that the environment had improved sufficiently to start looking for work again last month. Had those folks remained on the sidelines, the rate likely would have held at a too-high 7.5 percent. However, 101,000 of those new job-seekers didn't find work, pushing the unemployment rate up.

The influx of new job-seekers, however, moved the labor force participation rate from 63.3, a 34-year low, to 63.4.

New jobs totaled 175,000 last month, a little better than the 155,000 average of the last three months, but most were low-paying jobs that are not likely to increase consumer spending. And that number is well below the number needed monthly to make real progress in lowering the unemployment rate. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's calculator shows that more than 400,000 new jobs per month will be needed to get the unemployment rate down to the full-employment level of 5.0 percent in a year, and nearly 261,000 new jobs a month to hit 5.0 percent in two years.

Four years after the $1 trillion stimulus package that was supposed to generate a 5.1 percent jobless rate, we are still a long way from that number with unemployment 50 percent higher than that. And as long as consumer confidence remains low and business uncertainty remains high, unemployment will not change much.

Businesses that scaled back workers during the recession continue operating with fewer employees, uncertain of how their costs may increase through higher taxes and costs related to health care reform, and won't hire more workers until those uncertainties are put to rest, or until there is a surge in consumer demand. However, consumers also are nervous about spending in the current economic environment, and are waiting for stability.

Last Thursday's Labor Department numbers showed that non-farm productivity, defined as output per hour of all workers, rose at a 0.7 percent annual rate in January through March, reversing the trend in the last quarter of 2012, as the economy sputtered.

One explanation for the recent pickup is that businesses saw higher demand for products and services over the winter, and that typically leads to higher wages for workers, ultimately improving living standards. However, it might also mean that employers are getting more out of their current workforce and thus have no urgent need to hire, which does not improve the unemployment picture.

On the topic of health care reform, the public has never embraced the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare, and is even less enamored of it today, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Rasmussen found that only 41percent of the 1,000 likely voters that participated now hold at least a somewhat favorable opinion of the health care law, while 54 percent view it unfavorably. A tiny 15 percent view Obamacare very favorably, while 40 percent have a very unfavorable view of the law.

A slightly better rating appears in the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, which shows that 49 percent of Americans say they believe the Affordable Care Act is a bad idea, while just 37 percent say it is a good idea. Like the Rasmussen poll, the NBC/WSJ poll had a substantial number of participants who strongly believe Obamacare is a very bad idea, at 43 percent.

These numbers reflect an increase in unpopularity since July 2012, when 44 percent of NBC/WSJ poll respondents called it a bad idea, while 40 percent called it a good one.

Some of the reasons for this unpopularity are that while the Affordable Care Act promised to lower premiums for families, regulators decided to impose a 3.5 percent surcharge on insurance plans sold through federally run exchanges. There also is a $63 fee for every person covered by employers, and a "premium tax" that will require insurers to pay more than $100 billion over the next decade. The Joint Committee on Taxation expects insurers to simply pass this tax onto individuals and small businesses, boosting premiums another 2.5 percent.

Earlier this year, the Congressional Budget Office said that 7 million people will likely lose their employer coverage thanks to Obamacare — nearly twice its previous estimate. The CBO said that number could be as high as 20 million.

And in December, state insurance commissioners warned Obama administration officials that the law's market regulations would likely cause "rate shocks," particularly for younger, healthier people forced by Obamacare to subsidize premiums for those who are older and sicker.

Combined with the other liberal policies that have caused the recovery to stall for four years, the unpopular federal takeover of health care deepens uncertainty for businesses and raises insurance and health costs for consumers. Then there is Obamacare's planned involvement of the IRS.

A stagnant recovery and pain and suffering are what happens when the narrow ideological dreams of the ruling elite take precedence over addressing the real needs of Americans.

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A national tragedy: We are learning what is really in Obamacare

Many thanks to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi for jamming the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act through the House of Representatives so that finally the people could  "find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy," as Ms. Pelosi so famously said two years ago. This unintentional revelation of what goes on in Ms. Pelosi's mind came in the heat of the battle between the liberal Congress and the American people, a majority of whom opposed this first step in a government takeover of our healthcare system. The American people lost that battle.

Of course, now that the odious gunk contained in the Affordable Care Act, now affectionately known as "Obamacare," has started oozing out, even the people who voted to approve the measure now realize how little they knew about it when the vote was taken.

Searching President Barack Obama's florid promises for a truthful statement about all the wonderful things the ACA would do for us is more challenging than Diogenes' trying to find an honest man.

Like your doctor? You can keep your doctor. Nope!

Like your insurance? You can keep your insurance. Nope!

It will lower costs. Nope!

After all the broken promises, there are also some new goodies in Obamacare:

There are 18 new taxes, estimated at about $800 billion, that will mostly affect America's middle class. And inflation, the cruelest tax on the poor, will increase as businesses find their operation burdened with added costs brought about by higher taxes and onerous government mandates, and pass those costs along to the consumer in the form of higher prices.

Obamacare will add $6.2 trillion (That's "trillion" with a "t"!) to the long-term deficit, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Medicare providers will be expected to continue to provide services despite a cut of $716 billion in payments. Added bureaucracy will make applying for health care even more burdensome than it already is; worse than that, an estimated 7 million people will lose their employer-provided health insurance; and worse yet, thousands of workers will find their hours cut or will lose their jobs entirely.

Just what we need: another government mandate that keeps unemployment unacceptably high.

Opponents of Obamacare warned that forcing companies employing 50 or more full-time workers to buy health insurance for their employees would result in a loss of jobs overall, and many full-time workers would have their hours reduced below the 30-hour weekly threshold. Even though the employer mandate does not go into effect until next January, employers are required to track worker's hours for up to 12 months prior to that, meaning that job and hours cuts have already begun so that employers can escape the $2,000 per-worker fine for uncovered employees, or have to bear the even higher costs of providing health insurance to full-time workers.

So, rather than increasing the number of employees getting insurance from their employers as advertised, Obamacare has instead caused employees to have their hours reduced, or cost them their jobs entirely.

These decisions are being made by more than a few businesses. The International Franchise Association finds that 31 percent of franchisees plan to cut staff to avoid Obamacare’s 50-employee mandate, and a study by Mercer consulting firm found that half of businesses that don’t presently offer health insurance plan to reduce employee hours to avoid Obamacare’s penalties.

The food industry has been particularly hard hit, including: Kroger, Wendy's, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Burger King, McDonalds, KFC, Taco Bell, and Papa John's Pizza. Also affected are government workers across the nation, for the same reasons.

If not keeping your doctor or your insurance policy if you wanted to is not bad enough, or if thousands of Americans losing the jobs or having their hours reduced to less than 30 a week isn't bad enough, how about thousands of doctors taking down their shingles? According to a survey from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, 6 in 10 physicians said they expect many of their colleagues to retire earlier than planned in the next 1 to 3 years.

Another 55 percent of doctors surveyed believe many of their colleagues will cut back on their hours because of the way medicine is changing, and 75 percent believe the best and brightest may not consider a career in medicine, up from 69 percent in 2011.

How could the smartest man ever to inhabit the Oval Office have been so desperately wrong? Curious people want to know: Did Barack Obama just not have a clue about what the law that now bears his name would actually do, or did he deliberately deceive people about what it would do in order to gain their support for it?

There is a faction that firmly believes that if people lose their private sector insurance coverage, or can't afford it, that is precisely what Mr. Obama wants, thus making his dream of a single-payer government healthcare system a reality.

So, will our public servants act to relieve us of this Obomination? They should remember that there are Senate and House elections in 2014. And so should we.

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