Extreme opinions, "alt-stupid" Blogs, use wrong data, idiotic illustrations, and fake facts to say there is rampant fraud with welfare. In distracting where the majority of the fraud and waste resides in government, these social welfare haters give the rich a big boost.
We are being run over by a Mack truck full of tax dollars, folks, and it is not the poor driving the truck.
"After Welfare
Working two jobs, Elizabeth Jones does her best for her family. But is it enough?"
By Katherine Boo "April 9, 2001
This is about Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996.
"Since the law’s passage, Miss Cookie, as Shrimp Boat kids [read the article to know this neighborhood] call Elizabeth, has done everything that reformers could reasonably ask of the daughter of a single mother and a father she never met who, by the age of twenty-one, had a high-school diploma, a history of victimization by rape and domestic abuse, and three babies by three hit-and-run men. After a volunteer clerkship and a course in WordPerfect, she got, at twenty-seven, the first real job of her life, as a receptionist, with a salary of twenty-two thousand dollars a year. Not long after, she saw, on the side of a bus, a recruitment poster for the Metropolitan Police Department. In September of 1998, she graduated from the police academy and became an officer on the night shift in Southeast D.C., the city’s most violent quadrant—her own."
Do you know how hard people work to stay off welfare?! Do you really KNOW?!
"When Elizabeth was on welfare, she sometimes watched “All My Children.” She also volunteered regularly at her children’s schools, keeping an eye on their teachers and friends. This year, her schedule does not permit such luxuries. When her police shift ends, at 4 A.M., she sleeps for two hours, wakes her children for three different schools, sees one to the bus and drives the two others, along with four neighborhood kids who depend on her, to their schools. Then she heads downtown to her part-time job as a private security guard. When she finishes, at 5 P.M., she fetches her children and the four others from their schools, drops them all at their doors, and goes to the police station to start her shift. On days off she sleeps."
Could YOU do this?!
The truth is, welfare recipients are not trying to defraud the Government. There are a lot of bureaucratic errors and management cheats, not so much cheating by the recipients.
"Welfare fraud by providers is bigger problem than individual ‘welfare cheats’"
By The BDN Editorial Board • May 29, 2015
In my opinion and sense of welfare recipients is that 99.9% do not "take advantage" of the system, rather the system takes advantage of them. America's RIGGED capitalism is partly to blame for welfare needs.
Of course there are cheats, and it is normal. The system offers free stuff so there will be people who want free stuff who do not deserve the free stuff.
"Just How Wrong Is Conventional Wisdom About Government Fraud?"
Entitlement programs, from food stamps to Medicare, don't see unusually high cheating rates -- and the culprits are usually managers and executives, not "welfare queens."
Eric Schnurer Aug 15, 2013
"It’s not easy to get agreement on actual fraud levels in government programs. Unsurprisingly, liberals say they’re low, while conservatives insist they’re astronomically high. In truth, it varies from program to program. One government report says fraud accounts for less than 2 percent of unemployment insurance payments. It’s seemingly impossible to find statistics on “welfare” (i.e., TANF) fraud, but the best guess is that it’s about the same. A bevy of inspector general reports found “improper payment” levels of 20 to 40 percent in state TANF programs -- but when you look at the reports, the payments appear all to be due to bureaucratic incompetence (categorized by the inspector general as either “eligibility and payment calculation errors” or “documentation errors”), rather than intentional fraud by beneficiaries.
A similar story emerges with everyone’s favorite punching bag, food stamps (or, as they’re known today, SNAP). Earlier this year, Senator John Thune of South Dakota and Rep. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana, both Republicans, introduced legislation to save $30 billion over 10 years from SNAP, purportedly by “eliminating loopholes, waste, fraud, and abuse.” Once you dig into their fact sheet, however, none of the savings actually come from fraud, but rather from cutting funding and tightening benefits. That’s probably because fraud levels in SNAP appear to be as low as with the other “pure welfare” programs we just touched on: “Payment error” rates -- money sent in incorrect amounts and/or to the wrong people -- have declined from near 10 percent a decade ago to 3 to 4 percent today, most of it due, again, to government error, not active fraud. The majority of food-stamp fraud appears to be generated by supermarkets “trafficking” in the food stamps. Beneficiaries intentionally ripping off the taxpayers account for perhaps 1 percent of payments."
