"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it." --Benjamin Franklin

2012-07-20-digestIn yet another under-the-cover-of-darkness move, Hope-'n'-Changelings at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) abetted the Obama administration in pushing the limits of unconstitutional, executive-fiat government even further. This time, they quietly waived welfare work requirements for able-bodied individuals under a twisted reading of the Social Security Act. Ignoring both the letter and spirit of the original 1996 welfare-reform law while effectively establishing "new" law from the Oval Office, the move is entirely in keeping with the administration's selective enforcement of federal statutes and the imperial diktats of the Chosen One, who sponsored the policy change through his HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. This latest maneuver is simply one in an extended series that shows blatant disregard for Rule of Law and the Separation of Powers doctrine under the Constitution.

 

Recall that the Republican-led, Clinton-era welfare reform of the mid-1990s freed almost four million adults and three million children from the welfare plantation, halving welfare caseloads and childhood hunger while slowing out-of-wedlock childbirths. With this most recent welfare policy change, however, those days are effectively over. Witness now the return of the "Good Old Days," where virtually anyone is eligible for welfare handouts from an unlimited funding source, the U.S. Treasury (read: your tax dollars).

 

Why would the president do this? To make more people dependent on government, of course. Those dependents are thereby more likely to elect those who see government as the solution to every problem and who eschew individual freedom and initiative. Practically, this new edict means virtually anything amounts to "work" for the purposes of meeting able-bodied-work prerequisites under the program -- including bed rest and hula dancing (we wish we were kidding) -- thus entitling the qualifying recipient to endless welfare largesse.