Even More on Our 1970s Redux - Welfare Fraud is BACK!

With the relaxing of the incredibly successful welfare reforms of the late 1990s has come the predictable return of welfare fraud.

One thing you can count on as assuredly as the sunrise is that “when a liberal gets an idea, he usually gets it wrong.”

Wrong on “housing as a human right,” most of those “low income Americans” treated to mortgages they couldn’t afford thanks to Fannie, Freddie, Barney and Dodd among others, are now in foreclosure.

How’s that “human right” working out for you, now?

Wrong on championing illegal immigration for “creating more Democratic voters” - turns out that the vast majority of the Catholic immigrants wind up more socially Conservative and more averse to Democratic policies than most Americans!

And woefully wrong on “welfare rights.” Dolts like the Rathke’s (Dale and Wade) once posited that by overburdening the system, they could bring about socialism.”

FACT, once a support system like that fails, there is an immediate and unavoidable return to what can be best termed “anarcho-Capitalism.”

Today (Tuesday, April 27th, 2010), WCBS News York reported; “Authorities said 32 people, some of them financially well-off, have been indicted in a welfare-fraud crackdown.

“Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes said the defendants stole about $1 million in benefits, including welfare, Medicaid and food stamp assistance. Some of the defendants owned homes and businesses.

“Authorities said one couple, who were in real estate, had about $2 million in their bank account at one point.”

SEE: http://wcbstv.com/local/welfare.fraud.crackdown.2.1658844.html

Welfare fraud once accounted for over one-third of new York City’s welfare rolls, which is why New York City’s welfare population dropped by a third in the wake of the Gingrich-driven welfare reforms.

Those reforms ultimately dropped New York City’s welfare population from just over 1 million to under 400,000 and in the process saved New York City, at least $20 BILLION per year, based on $25,000/year in welfare benefits across the 800,000 people dropped from the rolls.

A return to welfare fraud - yet another indicator of our ongoing 1970s Redux.

Welfare Reform and Workfare Have SAVED New York!

On June 30th, 2008, New York’s welfare rolls plummeted to their lowest tally in 45 YEARS!

When Rudy Giuliani took office there were over ONE MILLION people on New York City’s welfare rolls (1,160,593), today there are under 400,000 (341,329)!

Yes, workfare helped some people get back to work, BUT what welfare reform (including workfare) really did was to eradicate the massive FRAUD and abuse that had plagued that system rooted in a failed 1960s ideology that “work is wage slavery, and we should seek to free poor people from the shackles of employment and employer abuse.”

Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute, who studies these kinds of policies, attributes all the gains made to Giuliani’s welfare reform, instituted back in 1995. "I think it's very much a product of the change in welfare philosophy that Mayor Giuliani introduced in '95," MacDonald said.

The savings to New York, at a time when tax revenues are falling due to the volatility on Wall Street, cannot be overstated. Given that the average welfare recipient in New York City costs the city at least $30,000/year, those 820,000 fewer recipients means the city is saving (at minimum) a staggering $2.4 BILLION/year! That’s got to be GREAT news for a cash strapped city like New York.

And the welfare rolls are perhaps the very best indicator of individual poverty that we have. Despite rising unemployment (the current rate has still not risen above 5%) and with many people leaving the workforce to work for themselves, the welfare rolls have, not only, not grown, they’ve continued to fall, indicating that actual individual poverty continues to fall, as well.

And that’s good news all around. No one should be mired in the generational dependancy that welfare progrmas breed, as that is the closest thing to a living death.

Happy Birthday to Wisconsin’s W-2!

Wisconsin’s ground-breaking welfare reform program (W-2) is ten years old!

Then WI Governor Tommy Thompson (pictured left) instituted the reforms back in 1997 and since then Wisconsin’s welfare rolls have dropped sharply.

W-2 requires recipients, including single mothers, to work or get job training in exchange for a check and child care. It replaced the conventional welfare program, Aid to Families With Dependent Children, which had been around since the 1930s.

When W-2 began in full in 1997, 34,491 families received cash assistance. This past March, it was 6,047 families.

Detractors point to a 2005 state audit that found that only about 20 percent of participants earned more than the poverty level in the year after they left. The audit also learned that mismanagement led to $1.3 million in overpayments to some parents.

Critics also point to higher costs. AFDC cost $430.9 million in fiscal year 1996-97, the last full fiscal year before AFDC ended. For the current fiscal year, W-2 is expected to cost $591.2 million, down from $707.8 million in 2002-03.

Jack Tweedie, a welfare expert at National Conference of State Legislatures, said at least four times more money went to cash assistance under AFDC, whereas more money now goes to child care.

Of course the initial aim of W-2 was and remains to get people OFF the dependency cycle of old styled welfare and back into the workforce and the real world. Thus, despite the outlays for child care having increased costs, the initial goal of W-2 has been met.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070509/ap_on_re_us/wisconsin_welfare