Welfare System Is Built On Lies Block Grants Only States Can Deliver The Tough Love We Need

The federal welfare system needs to be jettisoned, not fixed. It’s a $3.5 trillion failure, based on a false premise, that enslaves recipients and promotes illegitimacy.

The false premise (courtesy of The Heritage Foundation): Children in families with higher incomes do better in life. Welfare provides a higher income. Therefore, welfare is good for children.

The reality: The more welfare income received by a boy’s family during his childhood, the lower the boy’s earnings as an adult. More reality: Receipt of welfare and living in a fatherless family during childhood are strongly associated with criminal activity among young men and having illegitimate children among young women.

Murphy Brown, be damned.

The federal government, which siphons 70 cents from every welfare dollar for its bureaucracy, is an incompetent administrator. It’s time states were given a chance, plus no-strings-attached block grants, to return the system to its original purpose: a stop-gap measure designed to help people through hard times.

Now, the average stay of the 4.7 million families receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children is 6-1/2 years - with a total length of stay projected to be an incredible 13 years. We’ve converted a temporary handout into an intergenerational entitlement.

By contrast, states like Washington and Idaho are considering common-sense reform that would require work from the able-bodied, set a lifetime limit on benefits at two years and deny extra benefits to welfare mothers who have additional children out of wedlock. A safety net will be provided for those truly incapable of working.

States and private charities are in a far better position than one-size-fits-all Capitol Hill, to tailor welfare to the needs of their residents. Federal rules are both odd and inflexible. Forty percent of all families living below the poverty line don’t get government assistance, and half the families that do receive benefits aren’t poor.

Transferring welfare rule-making from the distant feds to the tough-love states will be painful. But the payoff will be worth it.

In endorsing a 44-point Idaho plan for welfare reform, Gov. Phil Batt captured the mood of the nation. He said: “The day of lifelong dependence is past. The taxpayers cannot afford it. More importantly, society can no longer tolerate the destruction of the human will.”

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view, see “The poor deserve equal protection”

The following fields overflowed: SUPCAT = COLUMN, EDITORIAL - From Both Sides CREDIT = D.F. Oliveria/For the editorial board