Our Democrat Welfare-State Drug Lords

by Star Parker | October 26, 2015 12:02 am

Five liberal Democrat presidential candidates — one actually honest enough to label himself a socialist — appeared before the American public in their first debate. They made it apparent that the only variation between any of them was just how much bigger and how much faster each one wants to grow government.

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Democratic Party politicians no longer feel any need to even pay lip service to the idea that America has anything to do with a free people.

Their unabashed rendition of the American dream is increasing percentages of the American population dependent on getting money recycled to them from the government — money taken from other citizens or from ever-increasing government debt.

And seeing as record numbers of Americans have become dependent on government, Democrats have a pretty powerful political strategy. More and more Americans just want assurance that they won’t lose their government money. They are less interested in where the money is coming from; whether we are going bankrupt; what bloated government is doing to the performance of our economy; or the moral price they are paying for this government dependency.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, 70 percent of U.S. government spending in 2013 was government transfers — direct payments of the government to individuals. Before 1960, transfer payments used less than 20 percent of the U.S. government budget.

According to a Pew Research survey, 55 percent of Americans have received benefits from at least one of the six best-known federal entitlement programs.

And it is no accident that most loyal Democratic Party supporters are those most dependent on government.

Twenty percent of Democrats report having received benefits from three or more government programs in their lifetime, compared to 12 percent of Republicans. And 27 percent of blacks report receiving benefits from three or more programs compared to 14 percent of whites.

You might say that more Democrat voters get government money because more Democrat voters are low-income earners. But then I ask: Which is the chicken and which is the egg?

Black poverty is overwhelmingly concentrated in single-parent households.

The breakdown of marriage and the American family has occurred in parallel with the massive growth of big government and the America welfare state.

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam’s Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America’s Poor and What We Can do About It.

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