Welfare Reforms

With this being an election year, a lot of topics are being brought up by the politicians in an attempt to buy, er, gain votes in their favor. One such topic is welfare reform. While a lot of people couldn't care less, or even hope it never is, reformed, I believe that it is a good first step towards healing the economy and getting this nation back on track. However, it's going to take a lot more than just rhetoric and half measures to make it work. To that end, I've come up with a few ideas. Just a warning, if you happen to be on some form of welfare assistance and you're reading this, you most likely will not like me by the end of this.

First off, (and forgive me if there's already something like this in effect) I believe that there need to be some strict limits on what people can spend their welfare money on. Necessities only. Basic food items, staples, meals, a severely limited selection of snacks and treats, and clothing items, with a strict limit on how much can be spent on clothing to prevent those on welfare from purchasing high dollar items. No major electronics, no video game consoles, no plasma screen tv's, nothing that isn't absolutely necessary to help a person or a family survive. Now obviously, to do that, you would have to be able to track every expense made on the account. Go ahead. Set up a program so that a computer tracks every transaction made on a welfare account, flagging any purchases made on items that are not supposed to be purchased using welfare funds. And then, once a transaction is flagged, lock up the account until an investigator can call the authorized cardholder to find out what's going on.

I'm sure some of you would call that an invasion of privacy and a violation of some freedom or another. But I'll put it to you this way: the men and women who are living on welfare are essentially being given money by the taxpayers without ever being expected to pay it back. This money is to help them get back on their feet, and survive tough financial times, not to provide people who simply choose not to work with a means to buy themselves a bunch of cool new toys. So if it means that these folks have to give up the right to buy what they want without having someone look over their shoulders and tell them they can't buy something, so be it. They want government to be mommy and daddy, and give them an allowance, they damn well better expect to be treated like that's the way things are. But I digress.

Yet another idea I have is to create welfare specific stores. Essentially, they would be stores  that only those on welfare could shop at, that would provide all the items approved for purchase with program funds, and nothing more. They would provide locally grown and made food items so as to help the economy as well as keep the cost lower. They would also provide locally made, off-brand clothing, again to support local business and keep costs down.They could even offer to hire some of the men and women who are on welfare, in order to help them acquire job skills they can use to get a better job elsewhere. It wouldn't be glamorous, but it would be a start.

My final idea is perhaps the most drastic of them all. It would be a means to help prevent fraud, as well as to better track the expenditures of those on the program. Simply put, all those who enroll in the welfare system and receive an account would be required to provide a full set of fingerprints at the time of enrollment. The enrollee's thumbprint would then be electronically linked to their card. Any time an enrollee would purchase an item with that card, they would be required to provide a thumb scan to verify they are who they say they are, and not someone who may have bought the card off of someone who wanted cash to circumvent the limitations of the card. The biometric readers would automatically be installed at the above mentioned welfare stores, and any other store chain which wished to participate in the welfare program would be provided those same readers, at the company's expense.

Is anyone out there screaming "how dare you" yet? I realize that these ideas seem a bit draconian, but the welfare system is a serious problem. There are people on it who don't necessary need it, and even those who do need it abuse it by purchasing items that it wasn't meant to be used for. Worse still is the fact that so many who do enroll in welfare see no reason to leave it. They live comfortable lives on the taxpayers' dime, and are perfectly happy to go on doing so until they die. Something must be done, and if that something is to make the lives of those on the program so uncomfortable that they feel forced to get a job, then it's worth it.

One little thing before I go. I realize a system like this could easily be abused by those in power. They could look at it and say "well if we've already got these folk being monitored, why not everyone else?". To them I say, it's because those of us not on the system are the ones who actually work for a living, and provide our own income. We are responsible for our own lives, and don't need the government to dictate what we can and cannot buy. But for those who think the welfare system is and should be the ticket to an easy life, they need to be made aware that they are sorely mistaken, and that abuse of a system meant to help those truly in need will not be tolerated.

Do I expect anyone in government will ever do anything like this? No. They're too worried about losing office to care about losing the nation.