From Social Security to Food Benefits, It’s Welfare Gone Wild
The numbers are in, and the news is bad: our public benefits system has gone to rack and ruin. From Social Security to food programs and other pillars of the welfare state, waste, fraud, and abuse is rampant.
Take disability payments. According to an Inspector General’s report obtained by PJ Media, the Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance program (OASDI) has provided significant benefits to people who should not have them — including the dead. A newly commissioned audit reveals that more than 2,900 dead people may have received more than $23 million in Social Security disability insurance payments. As detailed in the IG’s report,
4,699 beneficiaries remained in suspended pay status despite the death information on their Numident ["Numerical Identification System," the Social Security Administration's (SSA's) file on an individual.] We estimate 2,976 of these beneficiaries were improperly paid approximately $23.8 million.
And 157 people whose benefits had been terminated were still paid more than $300,000. The IG even concluded that the personal information of 2,715 beneficiaries was at risk of being released to the public. What’s to blame? According to the IG, SSA
did not have adequate controls to identify and timely resolve discrepancies between the Numident and MBR [Master Beneficiary Record].
Bureaucracy, its own excuse, strikes again. As of Feb. 2009, the report goes on to note, there were also more than 6,000 people on the books whose benefits had been suspended, and whom the SSA knew were dead. And in nearly half of the cases, someone had been receiving payments for people who were dead.
The IG also discovered, based on a random sample, that nearly half the people receiving benefits should not have received them:
Based on a random sample of 250 beneficiaries, we found that 121 (48.4 percent) had improper payments. This consisted of 114 beneficiaries who remained in suspense and 7 beneficiaries whose benefits SSA subsequently terminated for death. In addition, 66 (26.4 percent) suspended beneficiaries were properly paid, and 63 (25.2 percent) were properly terminated for death.
There were beneficiaries who had been in suspended pay status for as much as 22 years. SSA was found to have been unable to resolve benefit suspensions properly in nearly three-fourths of cases:
Our review disclosed that SSA did not properly resolve the benefit suspensions of 180 (72 percent) of the 250 beneficiaries in our sample. These 180 beneficiaries had been in suspended pay status for an average of 11.2 years since SSA recorded their death information on the Numident. Of these, 114 beneficiaries had improper payments, and 66 did not.
The IG bothered to issue several recommendations for SSA, suggesting that the agency
- take appropriate action to terminate benefits or remove erroneous death information for the 180 beneficiaries identified by the audit;
- identify and take corrective action for the remaining population of 6,277 suspended beneficiaries with a death date; and
- take corrective action for the seven beneficiaries terminated for death with improper payments, evaluate the results of its corrective actions, and determine if it should review the estimated remaining 150 beneficiaries terminated for death.
Its shortcomings put on embarrassing if clinical display, SSA declared that it “agreed” with all the recommendations made by the IG. The question is, what actions will follow from this agreement? Any?
The weird thing is that the SS admin routinely turns down applications for benefits. You have to go get a lawyer, who gets 25% of your back pay once you begin to get benefits. It routinely takes 18 months to get approved. Yet, we have all these folks scamming the system, clearly.
I cannot wait until we have Universal Healthcare provided by the government. What could possibly go wrong?
I don,t know where you got your time frame from but for disalibty here it takes 3 to 5 years to go through the proscess unless your not white food stamps is diffrent because is got built in time limts and at last they are trying to weed out ones in Fl.at least that get welfair by making them take a drug test
Be thankful its not a spelling test!
Welfare is only a symptom of the underlying disease of equality and its enabler statism.
In order to correct the mistakes of the original bureaucracy, you need to add secondary bureaucracy. In order to correct the mistakes of the secondary bureaucracy, you need to add tertiary bureaucracy. In order to correct the mistakes of the tertiary bureaucracy, you need to add…. etc., etc., and BTW, throw a few “fact-finding committees” and “reorganizations” into the squalid vicious cycle as well.
This is not just the ratchet effect, it is the geometrically-increasing ratchet effect, which inevitably leads to an all-powerful State. That State not only must lay claim to all private resources, but then conspires via its intelligentsia/oligarchy to parcel out largesse as it sees fit, accompanied all the while by rationalizations of “fairness” and “equality”, or in the case of special interests, nary a sound.
This is the progressive agenda. Their unexamined dream is one of man-made perfection for all, but the inevitable reality is tyranny. Since there is ALWAYS error, since the statist process is static and not dynamically self-correcting (in contrast to free enterprise), then there must always be ‘hope and change’. But the hope for improvement simply adds more dead-weight onto the system with each next change. Meanwhile, the oligarchy in control becomes ever more arrogant, sanctimonious, corrupt, and removed from the people it professes to be working for. And if you don’t pay obeisance to the State, you will be quickly punished.
While conservatives and traditionalists were complacent and/or asleep, this is what our government has metastasized into. It may now be impossible to correct without some kind of ensuing breakdown, at least temporarily. But if we don’t start, if we don’t have a plan of attack, and most especially if we simply wait for the next election to deliver some kind of magical result, then we will fail. We must boldly pursue a proactive plan to root out progressives from under every rock, from behind every tree, and squash progressivism everywhere for the evil that it is.
Good government should act as the fulcrum of a balance, and NOT as the dead-weight placed upon the balance pan. Otherwise, we have the seductive, simple-minded siren-song of equality. But equality of results is theft, and the result of such equality is societal death.
Great comment.
Lets tell it like it is.
Progressivism” is not the problem. Communism is the problem. Obimbo is a communist; not a progressive, even if one uses that term to denote that which is progressively evil.
Since the majority of Americans favor evil over good, the moslem mahdi will be re-elected and, if you think things are bad now…
And this is the same government that thinks it can run our entire healthcare system as well. You think waste is bad now? Just wait until the government handles everything related to healthcare. But Obama will achieve one thing if Obamacare makes it through the Supreme Court. In the true socialist way, he will make sure that ALL Americans have the same crappy health care, instead of roughly 90% of them having excellent health care. The secret is smaller government, not bigger, ever more wasteful, government. Instead of dealing with the 10% of the people who don’t have health care, we have to make sure the entire country has horrible health care. Now THAT is progresss from a true progressive.
“The secret is smaller government, not bigger, ever more wasteful, government.”
Ah, but it shouldn’t be a secret, but it seems to be one, and that is not the fault of government…..rather it is the voters who failed the country.
The democrats are happy with this state of affairs and illegal immigrants aren’t complaining about it either.
Right you are. I assumed this article would cover the REAL excesses rather than ‘pocket change’. Illegals and urban welfare bums steal billions from taxpayers yearly. Time to terminate ALL benefits to illegals and begin means and drug testing for welfare recipients. Enough is enough!
Drug testing and birth control shots before the check is to be printed.
And proof of a high school diploma or GED (exceptions for those who genuinely have learning disabilities). And verifiable name of baby-daddy so we can collect from him first.
It’s even worse than you think.
I work in the Social Services (an odd semi-retirement after 30 years working in science and engineering, I have to say!). My employers run one of the largest homeless shelters here. In that shelter are numerous kids, and I mean kids…19-22. They are ALL there for the specific purpose of gaining the magic disability check due to their “chronic homeless” status.
There’s not a damned thing wrong with them, yet they all have the expectation of retiring at 23, and living the good life on our dime. And the way things work, they will likely get it too.
The system allows it to happen.
What I see from my position of inside looking out, so to speak, isn’t that there shouldn’t be a disability compensation system (there will always be people with legitimate disabling conditions, of course); it’s that the current system is broken due to the definition of “disability” having been perverted to cover anything under the sun. Anything at all. If you get the proper advocate, being lazy will be represented as chronic fatigue, or angst over life, or a psycho-social disorder. Whatever.
It is simply maddening.
Oh, and I am a disabled Veteran, but always have worked. Always. So I find myself in the position of ministering to the needs of people who are working the system, when I myself am disabled.
Doubly maddening.
An acquaintance of mine is “disabled” due to alcoholism and the fact that his life has been that of a career screwup. Yet, as we speak, he sits in his apartment, drinking like a fish (yes, at 8 AM) and surfing the internet for fun, and you and I are paying for it. He makes almost as much as I do working, and his sole responsible action is paying his (subsidized) rent each month. The rest of the time, life is one long party for him. He is “Disabled.”
I could continue to regale you with further tales, but you get the point: this system is so messed up, that it’s sickening.
Allston, I can’t tell you how helpful your comment was to me. I have lived on the edge of these situations most of my life but have always hesitated to condemn the system completely for the same point you made, obviously there are clearly some people who truely do need the help. What we are really talking about here is a much broader issue of a failure to have the so called management in our Governments at all levels actually act in a responsile way to the taxpayers. It is often the legislatures that compound the problem by teeing up the various social welfare programs as money pots for various groups of lawyers and others who can game the system to their own advantage. Thanks for taking the time to comment and especially thank you for your service to our country.
You become addicted to “Meth”, you are now “disabled”. You then receive SSI, (Social Security Disability benefits). After 2 years on SSI you become eligible for Medicare (even though you’re only 25). You can’t afford the 20% Medicare “co-pay” so Medicaid will pay that for you. Collect your food stamps, get section 8 housing and the subsidy for your utility bills. Don’t forget to tell everybody how you look for a job every day. In reality, you work on the “side” for cash, pay no taxes and live a good life off of the government. The thought of having to take a drug/alcohol test to qualify for benefits is “insulting” and “demeaning”. (I have to take a drug test where I work so I can earn money to help pay for their benefits) No wonder we’re broke!
Yep, same here. I took a drug test to get my part-time retail job. However, I have not been able a full-time job, simply because employers don’t want to take the risk of hiring permanent full-time employees as long as Obamacare is in effect (along with all of the other tax and regulatory mischief at both the federal and state level). My health benefits are very minimal. But the miscreants and ne’er-do-wells that you describe are getting full health benefits that I don’t have for myself, and can’t afford to buy, while our taxes go to pay for their benefits.
Grrrrr…
It’s amazing how the socialist ideas of the 19th Century have permeated Western culture. Since Europeans had a long history of elitism with centuries of highly structured society, it’s understandable that they would embrace Marx and his fellow travelers. However, the people who came to America were escaping the old order, and their dreams were fulfilled by free market capitalism and small government. Yet, for 50 years Washington has said we need to be more like Europe.
One would think the failure of the USSR and the freeing of markets in India and China over the past 30 years would influence Americans and Europeans. We seem to be plunging headlong over the cliff of insolvency, denying history and the laws of economics. Our MSM is just like the old Russian state media, beating the drum for social justice, where it is unfair to start and run a business that makes too much money. Who would have thought that capitalism would be demonized as a bad thing when it was capitalism that fed the American dream for 200 years?
Paul Ryan is the answer to the question posed by this article.
I have to really ask; What does anyone really expect when there are criminals like Rangel, Reid, Pelosi, Clinton, Frank, Kerry, etc., etc., etc.? They know they will not face any legitimate prosecution from their own peers, that would convict them.
Until there is a complete purge of criminals in Congress, things will never change.
And there’s evidence the federal government CAN manage a retirement program, as demonstrated by the retirement plans administered for federal employees since early 1980′s.
For a brief history and comparisons of Federal Retirement plans in use today, see:
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0306/033106rp.htm
The story of welfare fraud is as old as the story of welfare. If money’s on offer without having to work for it, there will be no shortage of people trying to get it. And our ability to discriminate between the truly deserving and those who’re just along for the free ride is perilously poor. Our systems for doing that always err on the side of generosity, never on the side of frugality.
For me, the revelatory moment at which this became crystal-clear for me was when the food stamp programme did away with caseworkers because the bureaucrats realised that paying a caseworker $100k in salary and benefits to save $2,500 in fraudulently obtained benefits was a suckers deal. That caseworker would have to root out 40 cases of fraud a year to justify the expense. So it was just cheaper and more ‘efficient’ to mail the food stamps out, knowing full well that a certain percentage were either being fraudulently obtained or stolen.
And yet our progressive buddies are constantly contemplating new programmes to give away our hard-won earnings to people who can’t be arsed to pay their own way in life. Enough is enough – it’s time that decent folks took back the reins of power. The first step is to stop electing psychopaths to legislative office.
@Libertyship46:
“Instead of dealing with the 10% of the people who don’t have health care, we have to make sure the entire country has horrible health care.”
Government should have no power to even address 1%, much less 10%, of people without health care. This is where we frequently go wrong.
We justify government intrusions into our lives by saying “Well, we can use our taxes to provide for such a small percentage of TRULY needy people, can’t we?”. When we say this we forget human nature, that there will always be people who will go to great lengths to not work, always a few grasshoppers among the ants.
The moment we allow a single dollar to be forcibly taken from us (as opposed to voluntary charitable giving), there will be someone who wishes to obtain that dollar who could easily earn it on their own.
@Cybergeezer:
“And there’s evidence the federal government CAN manage a retirement program, as demonstrated by the retirement plans administered for federal employees since early 1980′s.”
It’s a mistake to assume that just because the designated “authority” manages these programs that they are any less subject to fraud than privately-managed pensions. In fact, I’d argue that they are more subject because those who manage these funds work within the same system supposedly protecting depositors. Kinda hard to maintain your savings account when the bank teller is sleeping with the bank robber.
Ask Tim Geithner, who is currently raiding government retirement funds (which are already underfunded and too-generously projected) to pay for Washington’s spending addiction.
Okay; Where’s your references for your claims of crooks in the FERS/CSRS administration?
Aside form Social Security old age benefits and Medicare which have been paid for by the recipient, no money or benefits so go to anyone that has money for tobacco, alcohol, drugs or a cell phone.
Food stamp, WIC, Medicaid and housing programs have a vested interest in increasing the number of recipients. This increased the number of employees, makes more room for advancement and forwards a social agenda all to the detriment of a functioning society.
My personal opinion is that any money that goes to slackers and bums,(this includes all aliens both legal and illegal) is wasted money. Why? Any alien the costs the society money is not a asset and should be sent home.
I ask everyone. When has the Federal Government EVER delivered ANYTHING on time on budget and as promised? I do not think there is one federally elected official that has been in office more than 12 years is anything but turd in the punch bowl of this Republic. Barney Frank? John Karry? John McCain are you reading this?
I personally grieve for the people who will never see a dime of there social security contributions. The way the government has gambled this money away is sinful. Without Medicaid, WIC, SNAP, I wouldn’t be able to provide for myself or kids. TANF and HUD assistance helps provide a roof over our heads and sustainance for our bodies. I’d love to find a job, but sadly their are none out there. Recently over 50 people applied to our local McDonalds for 12 part time positions (I was one of them). My life might be a bit easier if I could get the fathers of my kids to help support them. Sadly, one is in prison, and the other is a crack/meth addict who is in and out of rehab constantly. In short, its the alphabet soup of these goverment programs that keep our bellies fed. Belief me if I could do it on my own, I would.
While I wish you the best in what seems like a difficult situation for you, I’d like to challenge your thinking a bit. In the absence of those programs you rely on, how do you know that there would be no voluntary charitable giving to take up the slack?
Isn’t it conceivable that without the enormous tax burden required to pay for this welfare state, that we would find charitable hospitals better funded, and more physicians willing to see poorer patients?
Without the incredible costs associated with mostly unnecessary food and labor regulations, would you find your food bill drastically reduced?
Without housing assistance (which has the unintended consequence of keeping rents and property prices artificially high), would you suddenly be able find affordable housing on your own?
In the absence of costly housing regulations and property taxes (the most immoral and repugnant form of taxation, as it reduces property owners to mere renters), would the market finally be able to find a suitable housing price point for low-income single mothers?
While I’m sure you cherish the government safety net, let’s call it what it really is, a government dependency assurance program. Never forget that your “leaders” want to keep you dependent, desperate, and afraid to vote away the status quo.
And I can’t leave without saying this…if the fathers of your children are both degenerates, perhaps you should have chosen your mates more wisely. It is surprisingly easy and quick to determine which men would make suitable providers and which will end up in prison and/or rehab. At the very least you can choose not to reproduce with them.
Perhaps your right about me having had bad luck with the boys fathers. But before you judge me, please understand that I was raped by my stepfather when I was 15. This went on for about a year before my mother found out and threw ME out, not my rapist stepdad. We lived on the streets for about 18 months after I gave birth. Some guy offered me a place to crash. It was cold, and my son needed a place to live, so I took him up on it. I knew right away he was an addict, but I had nowhere else to go. Thought I could change him. Got pregnant with son #2 after about two years with this slob. By this time I was smart enough and old enough to seek help. It took me about five more years to get my GED and six to qualify for government assistance. This was after crashing on friends couches. I may not have made the best choices with my life, but I don’t have the priviledge of sitting on a high perch, proclaiming others pull themselves up by there bootstraps. But hey, that’s just me.
Before you judge me, please understand that I was raped by my stepfather when I was 15. This went on for about a year before my mother found out and threw ME out, not my rapist stepdad. We lived on the streets for about 18 months after I gave birth. Some guy offered me a place to crash. It was cold, and my son needed a place to live, so I took him up on it. I knew right away he was an addict, but I had nowhere else to go. Thought I could change him. Got pregnant with son #2 after about two years with this slob. By this time I was smart enough and old enough to seek help. It took me about five more years to get my GED and six to qualify for government assistance. This was after crashing on friends couches. I may not have made the best choices with my life, but I don’t have the priviledge of sitting on a high perch, proclaiming others pull themselves up by there bootstraps. But hey, that’s just me.
Mika, I’ve met you with another name. You are from my vantage a genuine victim. This is what safety nets are for, but not for those gaming the system and I see that all the time. Albeit as you move forward don’t let your kids pass when they make bad decisions with any regularity, correct them when they are wrong, get them on track and see it through. Don’t let your misfortune turn into their misfortune.
OK go for it, you have support from many of us.
P.S. I grew up poor on a dirt farm in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska. I get it. And I overcame it.
Mika
With your history I hope you have given up sex and save all of your love for your children. If you don’t have cable TV, a cell phone, don’t smoke and don’t drink you should get financial help raising your kids. I hope you are using the internet at the library and haven’t wasted any tax payers money on a personal computer. If you are raising your kids in a home that insists on doing well in school and punishes bad or illegal behavior fine, but if any of your minor children get arrested you should be charged with child abuse and your children should be taken from you before you go to jail. Since you had a hard start what have you done for yourself? Have you signed a complaint with the police claiming the abuse by your mothers live in hump? Have you gone to school or taken any job training? As a tax payer you owe me. You need to work at improving yourself and raising educated and law abiding children. If you do this I don’t begrudge you the money. If you don’t you aren’t worth the money spent to feed or house you. I don’t know you personally so you can evaluate your own value to society and to your children.
Forgotten Man,
Don’t be more of a jerk than your mother made you. Mika is obviously the sort of situation for which the welfare system was created. We can debate whether the welfare system should exist or not, but you cannot blame her for taking advantage of the help that’s there to work on getting her life straightened out. I’ve known more than one person with this sort of story who is using the help the way it should be — to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and put their life back together.
I suspect Mika will find a job soon enough and as quickly as she can after that be off the dole. In the meantime, how about a little compassion? Judge not lest ye be judged?
Patrick
No, her situation is what voluntary charitable giving and church communities were made for, not bloated government bureaucracies that obtain their funds at the point of a gun.
It always starts with the genuine tough cases. Government thieves preying on our sympathy and desire to help people who are in a bad situation and are trying like hell to get back on their feet. Problem is, those bona-fide tough cases are hard to weed out from those who are gaming the system. Those in charge don’t care…the more on the dole, the better! Nothing like guaranteed votes!
Remember the words attributed to De Tocqueville, “The American Republic will endure until Congress discovers that it can bribe the people with the people’s money.”
You see, this is what we always fall for…the idea that government should be a provider of basic needs and not a protector of our God-given rights. Always limited in scope, allowing people to succeed or fail on their own. Or in some cases, lift each other up instead of allowing those in power to erode even more of our freedoms, including the freedom to fail.
I agree with you. However, to berate Mika for using the extant system when she is a legitimate victim is silly. Yes we need to get back to churches and charitable giving as a safety net. I’m not certain at this point that’s possible.
My point was simply that Forgotten Man was being needlessly cruel.
Broken, busted, broke, bankrupt system,huh? I’d say that all those folks calling the leftst government inept and incompetent are missing the simple fact they they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and are on the verge of being gifted with still another free shot and the finishing off of a fallen America -without a single gun being fired.Without a revolution. They have buried us with our own shovels and coerced us into willing do the shoveling first.
Deceit, carefully laid upon willing ears, outduals the finest guns.
I know somebody who became disabled for a few years a quarter of a century ago. She began earning again, and talked to the local SSA office. “The money is still coming,” she said. “Don’t worry,” they said. “We’ll fix it.” The money kept coming, until it was replaced by demands to repay something like $15,000. SSA had to declare her dead to stop the checks from coming, but the part that wanted money knew she was still alive. The other part of SSA kept refusing to accept her SSA taxes, because she was dead. It took twenty years to get the mess unraveled.
This is the type of duty that Congressmen are supposed to handle with efficiency.
It’s worked for me when I had problems with the lethargic response from bloated government agencies.
After 35 years as a successful Publishing Operations Executive I became, you guessed it, a bail bondsman and bounty hunter in my old age. Hey I still wanted to work and learn. Lord what an education I have gotten. A Masters in the plight of the disenfranchised.
To the point:
I deal with the poor and their criminal friends. 95% of the criminals I deal with come from the ranks of the disinfranchised poor. Sorry about that but that is just the way it is folks (the middle/upper class are to busy working or buying yachts to get in trouble). I tell my wife with no disrespect that I deal in saddness and stupid every single day 24/7.
When I am bailing a person out I would estimate that 40% of the time one of the people posting bail is on SSI and usually under 40. In this comunity of the poor several things stand out.
1. Just about all of my clients and their friends quit school at the earliest possible time they can or they just quit going.
2. Almost all had babies as soon as possible ( 19 or 20 year old male or female with 3 kids is not at all unusual and not always with the same mate).
3. Few work or have the skills necessary for anything but the most menial of labor.
4. IT IS A HIGH ART FORM AND A STANDARD DEVOUTLY DESIRED TO FIND A WAY TO GET SSI. Usually it is the “Oh man my back hurts” scam, but if that doesn’t work try a new doctor or come up with something better and just keep going back until you get on SSI, eventually you will. I see healthy 25 year olds all the time with bad backs and whatever else they can dream up. CaChing $770 SSD a month for life. Add in food stamp cards at $385 a month (you can also sell the cards to other people and then buy stuff you really want), subsidized housing, medicade, add in the sale of some stuff on the street, and some other unreported income and you got a life, a shitty life but a life none the less.
Last week I tracked down a felon who had been on the run from us for over a year, he was on SSI and had a food stamp card, that’s how we found him, the feds and states don’t check criminal records, they are too busy writing checks.
It is not my wish to insult the honest hardworking poor, I do not, I praise them and truly wish to help them. Still I see so many wasted lives among the poor (White and Black alike)who have no future because daily they make innumerable bad decisions.
Decisions the rest of us pay for as noted.
I have seen the poor, way more than your average social worker sees any day of the week and it isn’t very pretty. CaChing……….
OOPPPs s/b Larsky, that’s my street name. It gives me cred.
And the answer is???
Make it harder to get on SSI? Not if Larsky’s experience reflects the real situation.
Perhaps make it easier to knock people off. Move? Off. Seen running or lifting? Off. In other words guilty until proven innocent. Will that cause some to have to reapply often? Probably. So what! But to get this passed into law in such a way that the courts won’t treat SSI as some kind of new RIGHT and declare back-payments necessary, this will take a lot of political tough love and a bruising fight with the bleeding hearts. But this is their fault in the first place, ergo, again so what.
The answer is to inject some pride into the slackers that abuse the system. But that takes a HUGE social change, and that will never happen. While I feel for the people that truly need the SSI system I shutter every time i see a perfectly healthy person cashing the SSI check each month, and I say healthy because I see them out and about doing normal everyday activities week in and week out (live in a small town). I have to wonder why I get up and work every day 9 plus hours a day just to do OK when these folks are waking up at 10:am and only doing as they wish on MY tax money.
This SSI abuse is only one tiny part of this Countries problems, but they all have the same root. Big Government handing out money$$ to get votes and that is not restricted to “entitlement programs” look at construction jobs on public works, defense contracts and the “arts” , what we as a country have done is to allow slackers a way to make a living out of the “system”.
Thomas Jefferson said “We should not make a man comfortable in poverty” and it seems we have made a whole slew of people comfortable and in poverty. But if we had not then the Democrats and “Progressive Republicans” would have no one to “help”.
So who do we blame them or us, we voted ……even if we did not go to the poles.
They’re all regular church goers and married too. I presume.
How is it that I grew up – forced onto welfare and raced to start working (14)to get off. Navy,hon discharge, Masters degree plus -a bunch of kids and grandkids and none are felons, dredges on society, or unmarried. It is a lie that poverty breeds the evil done by so many of today’s poor. Victimology is a too (politically planned and enforced) convenient replacement for responsibility.
I’m not alone from back in Old America. Now, we gave up God and conscience -
so necessary before you start worshiping the great state god.
The first rule of the statist is in order to make them your dependents, you first have to ween them off of the real God. He’s competition.
The real scandal with SS is the hundreds of thousands of people who receive disability payments but aren’t anywhere close to disabled. It’s an entire industry unto itself. If diabetes was removed as a cause of disability payments, the welfare roles would probably be reduced by tens if not hundreds of thousands. And many of those people will receive cpi adjusted payments for 40 to 50 years. Note also that people on SS disability also get medicare. The impact is tens of billions of fraudulent payments annually, perhaps as high as 100 billion.
Redistribution.
“The real scandal with SS is the hundreds of thousands of people who receive disability payments but aren’t anywhere close to disabled.”
Make that MILLIONS…not to mention people on SSI haven’t paid anything into Social Security. The Social Sec Admin claims SSI comes from a “different source” but, like so many other things, it’s “appropriated” from SS funds. Babies, kids, drug addicts, alcoholics & sometimes their dependents, can collect this phony “disabilty” without ever paying a dime in. Many on SSI also get MEDICAID which requires little, or in most cases, no co-payment or deductible…in one word, FREE! People on SSI w/all the other subsidies end up getting more per month than those who got SS deducted from their paychecks all their working lives.
And they also get “providers”, ie, personal servants to run their errands, do their housework, etc.Many on the dole have no intention of ever going to work.
Welfare is a wasteful sponsor of dependency. But it buys votes for the babykilling queerlovers, an we tolerate such evil.
“…more than 2,900 dead people may have received more than $23 million in Social Security disability insurance payments….”
Gee, that doesn’t seem fair. I think they should have gotten more, after all, they are totally disabled.
“Gee, that doesn’t seem fair. I think they should have gotten more, after all, they are totally disabled.”
$23 MILLION to be dead AND totally disabled seems pretty stingy to me too, but the Dems also put a lot of effort into “helping” the “totally disabled dead” vote every election cycle. $23 mil AND voting…that should settle the “fairness” issue once & for all. Feel better?
We can not blame the politicians for what we let them get away with. It is time to tell these free loaders that the government, which is us, owes them nothing but a fair chance at success at making it or failing. As far as the disenfranchised and poorly educated it is by their choice. The tools and the opportunities are available to them. I know this to be true because when I was a I union representative, I was involved in helping some of these organizations, they may not be the newest books or gadgets out but you can still learn, it is to easy to blame someone else for your own stupidity and go for the free handout. You have to want to better yourself and study and work hard to succeed, nothing in this world is free someone worked for it! Great people like Dred Scott and Abe Lincoln taught themselves and turned out to be great leaders!
My father was a veteran and a successful businessman for his entire life. He paid the maximum benefit to ss his entire life. He died the night before he was to retire. My mother was able to have a portion of his benefits as he set everything up so that if he died she would be taken care of.
I do not call that welfare when someone pays in to something for their entire life and then finally gets to draw it out. Also because other pensions were set up with the same type of benefits my mother also had other income as well. She continued to pay taxes on money from her pensions until her death.
I think a good choice for funding government programs would be to have our government do only the things it can do that private entities can not do. Example would be security of our national boundaries, defense of our country etc.
We have welfare now that allows a co-workers cousin and her two illegitimate children to make more money than either of us and to enjoy free health care as well. My wife and I have both worked to provide for our three children our entire lives.
One way to begin ending this is to stop new benefits in one year. Next step we continue to cut the number of existing recipients every year by 5% until they are all eliminated from the system and the system is eliminated entirely. In 20 to 25 years we could eliminate the department of welfare and the big drain on our economy. We would also be able to carry the truly unfortunate for a while till they get on their feet and off their ass.
As far as corporate welfare and bailouts go I will not buy a car that is made by an aflcio worker again if I can help it. If it means I will buy imports so be it.
Think this over: Social security recipients pay in to the system – no argument there, but what kind of system has people paying in, for example $200 a month for 20 years ($48,000) and collecting for example, $1500 a month (roughly) for 10 years or more ($180,000)? Th fact is that it takes x many people working today to ensure that the remaining money is available when you retire. So it is just not welfare, rather it is a pyramid scheme. There is no way for sufficient money to keep coming in unless the economy is constantly growing and the number of working people is enough to support those retiring. But when there is high unemployment, the unemployed ar not paying in. When people are living longer than the scheme forecasts, it takes a lot more money to support the longevity (and let’s not forget costs of living increases). Your father was an honest man. The system is dishonest, corrupt and unsustainable, because its original assumptions are no longer valid, and no adjustments have been mad to compensate for the changed assumptions.
howiem, I think that the republicans have a bill passed to phase out SS. If the politicians would pay back the money they stole from SS we would be okay and with phasing out SS over the coming years, that would end this problem
Rob, my condolences on the passing of you Farther. He sounds like he was a hard worker and a smart man an all round good person. Your Mother still paying taxes on her income from your Dads SS and retirements will go on forever. We get to pay a tax even when we die. I to have pensions set up for my wife for when I die. It is sad but true I am paying more taxes now then when I was working and making a lot more money! I believe there is a republican plan to phase out SS and Media Care but our good friend harry reid will not vote on it in the senate and our king obama said he would veto it anyway.
“We can not blame the politicians for what we let them get away with”
It is a good point, but often we elect the politicians and then they do what they want to, not what the people want and not what the country needs. They get 2-6 years to mess things up and how many more years does it take to undo the mess they make with their arrogance and stupidity? One voter error is of course re-electing those that refuse to listen and think they know what we need better than we do. The voters in many cases do not understand that every piece of legislation is to some extent a loss of freedom, whether it be freedom of choice or freedom of movement or whether it limits our options. The voters are told that in the name of freedom their freedoms are being taken away, and the voters just don’t get it. Th voters do not understand that everything that is done has impacts, some known, but many unknown and unintended. Unknown, unintended impacts can be good and bad, and many take a long time to manifest themselves. Th problem is that those who tell us they know what is best are in fact saying that they know the future. They do not know the future. The best they can do is make guesses based on the past, and based on assumptions projected from the past. Being close is not good enough, because even small differences between the forecast and the actual events of the future will have enormous impacts. Social Security and other going-broke programs are nothing more than a combination of pyramid schemes and central planning that is sure to fail. Using the same failed methods to “fix” them will just not work.
howiem, first question answer is 2 election cycles and your right most people do not know what and who they are voting for. When I have ignorant politician standing there and telling me that we have to pass the bill to know what`s in the bill. Then gets reelected in their district and then hands out obama care waivers to certain people and we stand by and do nothing. Then we deserve what we get. Remember if these politicians are so smart, then why are we in the financial mess were in? Our government is nothing but legalized corruption.
What I see is too few wolves and too many sheep. The sheep heard needs to be thinned. Cut everyone off all assistance programs that currently has a cell phone, smokes, drinks, does drugs or pays for cable TV. They all have more money than they can spend wisely so force them to spend wisely, or die. Either is fine with me.
What is wrong with you people who think Social Security is an entitlement. Social Security is insurance paid for by money deducted from paychecks. Wake up America, know the truth!
Mr. Richardson.
I think the Mika has a lot of responsibility for here situation. Father of one child in prison, father of another a meth. freak I do not deny she is not in a good situation, but she needs to accept some responsibility for this. I do not think respect is owed to anyone, it needs to be earned. I also do not think society owes her more than a basic subsistence and the chance to improve herself or her condition. In return for society’s financial support she owes society. This debit includes raising children that are reasonably educated, and provided with a basic moral grounding that keeps them away from crime. If she does this fine, if not she is of no value to society. I am tired of people confusing a condition with a cause. Her condition is poverty and need. She is the product of dysfunction at home and so far she is continuing this dysfunction. The excuse that 50 people applied for a job is no excuse for not applying for that job with them. If there is no employment where she lives, move since she has no family support anyway. Call it what you will but she is collecting welfare and owes society an effort to improve her condition and the lives of her children.
In point of fact she states she DID apply for that job. I did not speak of respect, but of compassion. I agree she needs to improve both her life and that of her children. I suspect she is doing her best to do so.
Compassion should come from churches and private foundations. Taking tax money from one person for the benefit of another is not compassion it is redistribution of wealth. Charity is voluntary and welfare is not charity since the government forces people to support others even if it only benefits politicians and dysfunctional people. She should realize that to support her someone else is paying for it and she does owe them.Since she is getting welfare I hope she does a good job raising her children, and has no more children, and I hope she has the brains not to get involved with any more men until she can support herself. Once her current children are raised I think all support for her should end, and she needs to plan her life accordingly.
Agreed. You won’t get points in heaven by doing charity with another’s money. As for children born to such parents, they’re best given for adoption and taken out of the generational cycle of dysfunction.
Thanks, Pat, for your “compassionate conservatism” absent the respect. I just don’t know what I’d do without you judgemental a..holes to inform me of what I’ve done wrong with my life.
Social Security is corrupt from within. Just by reading the article one can see that the SS workers are not doing their job proficiently. Why; because some of them get kickbacks from the people that are cashing the ‘dead’ peoples checks.
An agency the size and power of Social Security cannot police itself, especially when there are corrupt people in it. IG investigated and made suggestions but did SS make any of the changes? No! Why?
The workers that are not corrupt are fearful of losing their cushy jobs and the ones that are corrupt are certainly not going to blow the whistle and risk imprisonment and loss of their jobs.
More unnecessary spending and waste by our government!
A team of NON-government, qualified money people need to be sent in there and a thorough cleansing done and then a new system of checks and balances put into place.
It is necessary to keep “our” budget in check or we could lose our house or car or get the utilities cut off. What penalties, if any, does Social Security workers face if the system stays as it is? NONE!
Corruption can prevail only as long as it is ALLOWED!
SSI,Disability,welfare,WIC,Headstart,Sec 8,ADC,Medicaid,Department of Rehab,School Lunch Program,After School Program,Acorn …the list of abused social systems never ends.The huge quantity of managerial,office and specialized employees almost invites fraud and guarantees abuse.Are any of these programs even monitored? And why did the gov merge these programs with SS and Medicare? To designate them all entitlements? Pay for a new health care program so all are insured? Then what is Medicaid for?
My former mailman receives disability for his alcoholism.
My father’s neighbor receives disability for 2 of her 5 children for Autism and ADHD.She is paid by the department of rehabilitation to be her children’s care taker.With welfare,food stamps,WIC and school loans she bought the house and a new car.
We had a convenience store owner arrested for food stamp fraud.He sold/traded liquor,cigs,lottery tickets and cash for 1/2 the value on the cards.He netted $1.5m and after buying an Escalade he sent the remaining funds home to Afghanistan.
Gov est 44.9m are on the social benefits programs.Immigrants collecting from 1 social program 61%,2 or more programs 44%.1 in 7 ppl in the U.S. receives food stamps.
My fav was a local woman that had 17 kids.She was at a riverboat casino when her house caught fire at 2am.11 of her children died.She was stealing electricity and heating the house with space heaters which over loaded the wiring.She had never held a job in her life.By the time the trial was held she was pregnant again.She gave birth in prison and 6 months later was impregnated by a prison guard.She received a 20 yr sentence for child endangerment,neglect etc.People protested the “unfair” sentence because she was a victim of society,had a 9th grade education,low IQ and was forced to live in a dangerous ghetto because of welfare.
I had 1 child,it’s all i could afford to give a decent lifestyle to but i’ve PAID for at least 5 kids.How does our gov justify this form of slavery? Odds are i am paying to feed,house,clothe,educate and entertain children that may well carjack me one day.Then i can pay for his prison time.
Didn’t we pay for Obama’s education?How many of you can afford to send your kids to Harvard?
You are missing a little detail which would kill any attempt on cutting off leechies from gov programs – right after the first move would be made, the racial/demographic info of the people mostly affected by the cuts will be released… You can fill in the dots now.
When Americans are no longer depending on my social security taxes and other tax dollars to get their retirement and disability, because they don’t want to work, and no longer getting food stamps, because they don’t want to work, or it’s easier to take a hand out, then I will agree with the anti health care/anti immigrant ideals.
Social Security can be overhauled to last a long time, but MEMOism may eventually overshadow (replace) Social Security.