From National Review Online:
- The District of Columbia was one of the few jurisdictions that chose to extend welfare benefits far beyond the Federal time limit of 5 years.
- DC residents on welfare > 5 years: 40%
- DC residents on welfare > 8 years : nearly 33%
- DC’s poorest ward family makeup: 66% are unmarried women with children.
- Money spent since the start of LBJ’s "Great Society"’s war on poverty: more than $13 trillion
- Additional welfare spending by local governments: another couple of trillion.
- Federal welfare spending this year: exceed $600 billion,
- Anti-poverty programs: 122
- Bush: hiked welfare spending by $80 Billion.
- Obama: pushed that up, in two years, by another $120 Billion.
So, has all this spending actually worked to lift the poor out of poverty? No. Even with having spent over $16 trillion dollars, the poverty rate has simply wavered between 13 – 16% of the population. This is "smart government?"
Bonus – go see who actually denounced welfare, based that it has put into place "a cycle of generational poverty, governmental dependency, and economic disparity"? Eye Opener.