Jobless Claims, Welfare Spending Up. Way Up.

The 4-week moving average climbed to 365,500 from 364,750.

Last week’s 339k number was revised up to 342k.

Last week’s numbers were only that low because one state — reportedly, California — failed to report its numbers.

The second awful number of the day, is that according to the Daily Caller, the United States spent $1.03 trillion on welfare in fiscal year 2011. Welfare spending has increased dramatically during the Obama years.

According to the [Congressional Research Service] report, which focused solely on federal spending for federal welfare programs, spending on federal welfare programs increased $563.413 billion in fiscal year 2008 to $745.84 billion in fiscal year 2011 — a 32 percent increase.

Further, spending on the 10 largest federal welfare programs has doubled as a share of the federal budget in the last 30 years: In inflation-adjusted dollars, according to Republican staff on the Senate Budget Committee, the amount spent on these programs has increased 378 percent in that 30 year time frame.

CRS reports that food assistance programs — the third largest welfare category behind health and cash assistance — experienced the greatest increase in spending, with 71 percent more spending in 2011 than in 2008. The agency explained that this spending increase was largely due to the growth in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps.

The government cannot say anything about the increased SNAP spending other than, mission accomplished. The government advertised SNAP — food stamps — to families that have jobs and own their own cars and houses.

We are spending more on welfare than we are spending on maintaining our national defense.

The total federal spending on federal welfare programs vastly outpaced fiscal year 2011 spending on such federal expenditures as non-war defense ($540 billion), Social Security ($725 billion), Medicare ($480 billion), and departments such as Justice ($30.5 billion), Transportation ($77.3 billion) and Education ($65.486 billion) — a fact that alarmed the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, who requested the report from CRS.

Those numbers don’t include state spending. Adding that gets us over the trillion dollar mark, on welfare spending.

When state spending on federal welfare programs — specifically Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program — was thrown into the mix, the amount spent on federal welfare increased 28 percent, from $798.813 billion in fiscal year 2008 to $1.028.54 trillion in fiscal year 2011.