Dakota Beacon

In 1964, federal handouts to needy Americans constituted a mere 1.2% of our gross domestic product. Only 7% of babies were born into broken families.

Then LBJ decided to “lift” the poor out of poverty. Thus began the precipitous downhill slide of people who need not have been “poor,” but who succumbed to the victimhood mantra of liberal politicians offering “help.”

As Heritage Foundation’s Conn Carroll puts it,

Forty-five years and $16 trillion later, thanks to big government, poverty is winning. Thanks to over $900 billion a year (over 5 percent of GDP) of spending on over 70 means-tested welfare programs spread over 13 government agencies, more than 40 million Americans currently receive food stamps, poverty is higher today than it was in the 1970s, and 40 percent of all children are born outside of marriage.

Last year, in his proposed 2011 budget, Barack Obama requested 42% more for welfare programs than the amount spent in 2008.

Let’s tally.

• 1964: Welfare spending at 1.2% of GDP; 7% of babies born into situations other than intact families
• Washington then sets about confiscating $16,000,000,000,000 from earners to give to low- and non-earners.
• 2011: Welfare spending at more than four times 1964 levels; nearly six times the percentage of babies born outside of marriage; 40,000,000 people using taxpayer dollars (and of course dollars with wet ink) to put food on the table.

Add to this horrfic yardstick the disintegrating effects that the welfare state has had on Blacks living in inner city neighborhoods. Sol Stern points out that

…far from sparking a restructuring of American capitalism, [the] explosion of the welfare rolls only helped to create a culture of family disintegration and dependency in inner-city neighborhoods, with rampant illegitimacy, crime, school failure, drug abuse, non-work, and poverty among a fast-growing underclass.

Indeed, a staggering 71% of black babies are now born out of wedlock. That’s a Black culture-killing 218% explosion in illegitimacy over four decades.

The “war on poverty” must be phased out. Otherwise poverty may score an overwhelming victory.