The Obama Years- A GOP love story

[Chico23231]

Originally Posted by Hog1

For almost three generations people, in some cases, have been given handouts,” Johnston said. “They have been ‘enabled’ so much that their paradigm in life is simply being given the stuff of life, however meager.”

“What you see is a setting for a life of misery is life to them never-the-less,” he continued. “No one has the guts to just let them wither and die. No one who wants votes is willing to call a spade a spade. As long as the Dems can get their votes the enabling will continue. The Republicans need their votes and dare not cut the fiscal tether. It is really a political Catch-22.”

The wither and die is a bit harsh.....but is there anything more F..d up than our welfare system? Is their any better example of Federal waste and incompetence? And he is correct, politicos on both sides of the fence are afraid to deal with it because of the possible backlash form voters...or worse
And THEN, someone might want them to change their name and logo...too

As I get older I see peers, co workers, etc who openly talk about taken advantage of the system and I agree its time for change. We need to look closely at long term welfare reciepient and how we define disability payments. We created a culture of fraud and abuse. You should aim for a 5% threashold with fraud and waste within all govern programs...I think disability and welfare, we are dealing around the high teens to possibly 20% or 1 in 5. That's terrible.

[tshile]

Originally Posted by Chico23231

As I get older I see peers, co workers, etc who openly talk about taken advantage of the system and I agree its time for change. We need to look closely at long term welfare reciepient and how we define disability payments. We created a culture of fraud and abuse. You should aim for a 5% threashold with fraud and waste within all govern programs...I think disability and welfare, we are dealing around the high teens to possibly 20% or 1 in 5. That's terrible.

I'm glad you brought this up because in my opinion it's the starting point of the conversation and most people skip it.

When you have an entity trying to 'take care of' a group of people there is going to be waste. It's unfortunate, but there are just too many people that are more interested in gaming the system instead of living an 'honest' life; whether that be welfare recipients getting money they shouldn't, or organizations/businesses/'community groups' that seek to keep the system broken so that their role in it is preserved/increased.

So the question is - what is an acceptable level of waste? Once we can agree on that, then we can actually start talking about how we can take the current system and alter it to meet that goal.

Until we, as a country, start discussing it in that way welfare is going to be remain this broken point of contention between the two sides. The arm waving about abuse and anecdotal stories of beach bums from the right lacks the substance needed to actually make a real case for real reform without hurting the people welfare is actually intended to help.

The left is all too happy just leaving things the way they are right now. If you're going to incite change, you have to make compelling arguments. The Right hasn't been very successful lately in doing that. The fact that there's a large group of people on the left looking for any chance to label the Right's ideas as racist, classest, etc shows just how carefully you have to attack the subject if your interest is in actually causing change.

[Giantone]

Originally Posted by tshile

The left is all too happy just leaving things the way they are right now. If you're going to incite change, you have to make compelling arguments. The Right hasn't been very successful lately in doing that. The fact that there's a large group of people on the left looking for any chance to label the Right's ideas as racist, classest, etc shows just how carefully you have to attack the subject if your interest is in actually causing change.

I fully and whole heartily agree there needs to be change in the welfare system ,people who have been on it forever need to be trained to take care of and for themselves .Your big mistake is blaming the left ,it is in reality the fault of everybody in government ,left ,right ,tea ,independent etc ,what needs to be done is stop the "blame game" .

[Chico23231]

Originally Posted by Giantone

I fully and whole heartily agree there needs to be change in the welfare system ,people who have been on it forever need to be trained to take care of and for themselves .Your big mistake is blaming the left ,it is in reality the fault of everybody in government ,left ,right ,tea ,independent etc ,what needs to be done is stop the "blame game" .

Yeah I think when u talk about these issues, people need to put aside GOP or dem, left and right and politics in general. Just sit down and say hey we have a possible issue with the welfare system and go from there. U need an outside audit from the private sector as well.

In fact that is how everything should start, no politcs and actual real numbers

[tshile]

Originally Posted by Giantone

I fully and whole heartily agree there needs to be change in the welfare system ,people who have been on it forever need to be trained to take care of and for themselves .Your big mistake is blaming the left ,it is in reality the fault of everybody in government ,left ,right ,tea ,independent etc ,what needs to be done is stop the "blame game" .

My 'big mistake' is blaming the left?

I had a post where I blamed the right and the left for their politics on the issue. I also blamed the middle by saying we're constantly having the wrong conversation. You took a few sentences out of the whole post and then said I was 'blaming the left.'

The left does have blame. So does the right. The entire subject has become the stereotypical political football.

If our 'leaders' stop engaging in idiotic games of rehtoric over the issue, then we can actually go about trying to solve it. I do not see a point in hiding from the fact that these people have done a bang-up job in getting people riled up over the wrong things, stifling any possibility of actually fixing the problem.