Bill O'Reilly Quotes

I don't believe in welfare.

I’m really not concerned about the very poor. They have a safety net.

Too often, while well-intentioned, our poverty programs fail the poor. They fail them by keeping them in cycles of dependency.

The original purpose of the welfare state was to lift people into self-sufficiency, not to create a permanent underclass dependent on taxpayers.

There was no welfare state, and people had to rely mainly on the Poor Law - that was all the state provided. It was very degrading, very humiliating. And there was a means test for receiving poor relief.

If they think they have issues with the president not doing enough for the poor now, wait and see what happens if the opposition takes office. Then they would really need a poverty tour.

I never knew an instance of the English parliament's undertaking to relieve the poor, by a distribution of bread in time of scarcity.... I think, that according to the principles of their government, they would only vote a sum of money, and address the King to employ it for the best.

The states, just like the Federal government, just can’t let the poor die.

We don’t want to turn this [social] safety net into a hammock that ends up lulling people in their lives into dependency and complacency.

Even in the United States, 'you have a sort of welfare state, even if you don't want to admit it -- you don't allow people to die on the street.

I have to address the economic conditions of everybody, including, and perhaps first, those who are poor.

Is our national goal to place as many people on welfare, food stamp support, as we can possibly put on that program? Is that our goal? Is that a moral vision for the United States of America, just to see how many people we can place in a situation where they're dependent on the federal government for their food?

Means-tested benefits have one incredible feature in that they impose huge poverty traps.

The matter of social security and these grants is to help to address the levels of poverty in the country.

A safety net for the poor indeed requires some level of income redistribution.

You see, the poverty program for the last five years have been buy-off programs.

We've got to take care of the poor.

So I really would like to see both parties respond to the poor with greater commitment. But I've got to tell you, the Democrats, I feel, are doing a better job in that respect than Republicans are.

Anyone who doesn't think the welfare-industrial complex is trying to increase dependency isn't paying attention.

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about 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.

The issues that matter to me are the social safety nets for people, health care, middle-class concerns. We need to take care of the middle class and the poor in our country.

In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

I was once a welfare recipient and am very aware of the successes and failures of this critical safety net. There are those that would have us believe that those receiving TANF benefits are lazy, shiftless, freeloaders who are just sitting around thinking of another way to suckle from the government teat.

Do we really want a society in which the stigma of going on the dole has been erased?

Our child benefit goes directly to the families who need it the most.