They attack the most vulnerable among us
You hear it all too often: “Paying them not to work, encourage them to collect will make them stop looking for work” There is a great divide between their perception and reality. The reality is that there are very, and I mean very few people who would like to just collect unemployment rather than having a job. In any case, when they work they do pay into a fund that will be there just in case.
When it comes to welfare; the Republicans have created a myth and it has unfortunately percolated into the general consciousness: that there are “WELFARE QUEENS” out there just spewing out babies and living off the life of Riley. The Republican talking point is that we are rewarding these people with welfare for doing the wrong things, for making mistakes, for being raised in a ghetto and denied educational opportunities like the rest of society.
Republicans are not going to be satisfied until there are 25 million of us Americans living out of cardboard boxes under the expressway.
Repubs don't blink when it comes to giving tax cuts to the rich and funding unnecessary wars, but they have a cow if they have to prevent people from having their homes foreclosed or for just collecting Social Security.
My point is simply this: A reward would be if you moved that single mother into a swanky high rise (rent free) and then tripled what she gets on welfare. But if anybody thinks that the miserly amount people get on welfare affords a decent living they are mistaken. What welfare does is keep those at the very bottom from starving or having to go out and beg. It is not to feed sparrows.
Another point: If you think that either unemployment or welfare is easy to get and it is just dished out to anybody who applies for it just ask a recipient. Not only do they have to jump through all kinds of hoops but also endure all kinds of humiliation and deriding from those who administer these programs and from society…Giving up your dignity is a very dear price to pay to get as little as it is given…that is why some would rather stand in corners with signs and hope they get coins from the cars that stop at traffic lights.
So, Republicans, get over yourselves, you really want to PUNISH those you perceive to not embrace your standards and your ideology, particularly if they are in the bottom of the income scales. Sadly and what seems obscene is that the Republicans would begrudge a few lousy hundred dollars to that welfare mother while giving tax cuts to the very rich and blow it on unnecessary wars. This of course is very much in keeping with what the Founding Fathers had intended and said: that we should raise an army to be able to defend the United States from foreign aggression, not to raise an army to be the aggressor.
