The Obama Years- A GOP love story

[tshile]

Originally Posted by over the mountain

the system is broken.

reducing the amount of food stamps a recipient gets isnt fixing the problem though.

complex issue.

a politically unfavorable issue as well imo.

If you are for welfare reform = mean and out-of-touch. Against welfare reform = bleeding heart politician letting tax money go to waste.

a lot like the runaway costs of healthcare before ACA, a president/party needs to step up and make some unfavorable decisions to try and reform welfare. a lot like the runaway cost of healthcare, someone needs to put their head on the chopping block and do the right thing for this country.

unfortunately that person will take a lot of immediate attacks and wont be in office in 10-20 years when the benefits of those tough decisions can be appreciated.

I agree completely. It would seem to be a situation ripe for compromise in the interest of what is best for the country... for whatever reason compromise has been made a dirty word (not just by politicians - there are a lot of actual voters that are firmly entrenched in one side so much they view compromise as a synonym for defeat...)

You have to find a way to de-incentivize being on the system without doing harm to those that truly need it.

I have ideas... how about being on gov't assistance = doing work for the government? You need tax payer money to 'live' - then pick up trash on the side of the road 10 hours a week, etc. What they're doing and how much they have to do can easily be modified to strike a balance between pushing people towards getting off the program and recklessly punishing people for falling on hard times.

Or how about making a stamp on your ID that means you're not on welfare? Restrict the purchasing of certain items to those with the stamp - alcohol, cigarettes, etc. Lottery tickets... god, the number of people that waste money on lottery tickets... We can't make those on welfare get that stamp, that would be too 'humiliating', so why don't we do something to those not on the system?

We need to cut where food stamps are accepted... My local pizzeria should not have a sign that says "Now Accepting EBT Cards!" EBT cards should not have transactions from strip clubs on them...

The problem of solving poverty in the US is hard and complicated, and ultimate probably only gets solved by having an education system that's worth a crap (lol - good luck.)

But there's plenty we can do to curb the waste and make the system more efficient and/or have better results. But first we need to determine an acceptable level of waste so we have a goal to shoot for and a way of measuring our progress towards that. We also need an acceptable level of hardship we place on legitimate welfare users (those not abusing the system) because that's going to happen and without know what is acceptable to our society we have no way of measuring success/failure of changes and we continue in this blind-monkey-throwing-darts mentality that got us in this mess to start with.

Those are hard conversation to have, so I have zero faith they'll ever happen.