Public Assistance Programs Quotes

The fundamental fact in the lives of the poor in most parts of America is that the wages of common labor are far below the benefits of AFDC, Medicaid, food stamps, public housing, public defenders, leisure time and all the other goods and services of the welfare state.

Modern economics and the welfare state borrowed heavily on the future.

By adopting programs to distribute substantial amounts of income, a nation guarantees that its government will become more powerful and invasive in other ways.

Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it.

Forty states have sued tobacco companies over the costs of health care for residents on Medicaid and public assistance.

I think if you look at Medicare and Medicaid, the premise was that government needs to provide some assistance to people who aren't able to take care of themselves. I think we all share that goal, Republicans and Democrats. I don't think anybody's gonna go back now and say, Let's abolish, or reduce, Medicare and Medicaid. But as we confront the challenges and the responsibilities of our time - from here on - how do we serve more people or different people who are in need of financial assistance? Just forever having the government expand to address all of that seems unwise.

In some instances even certain social services that normally were supplied, or pre-empted by the state. Take the United States, the [Ronald] Reagan administration is withdrawing assistance, all kinds of welfare programs, and if people don't improvise their own resources to cope with problems of the ageing, problems of the sick, problems of the young, problems of the poor, problems of tenant rights, who will?

The welfare state is an assault on families.

Yeah, remember, under the Bush administration, welfare — I mean, excuse me, poverty among African Americans and among single unmarried women, poverty was at the lowest rate ever in the history of this country. So Obama’s policies are not working, Bush polices worked! For long a time as a matter of fact.

Even before ObamaCare, the government took care of the bottom 5 or 10 percent of the public who were on Medicaid.

In the past, the public assistance programs have been too much concerned with the mere dispatching of monthly checks. … it is high time that some concerted effort be made to get people off the rolls who can sustain themselves.

The same government that requires a taxpaying citizen to document every statement on his tax return decrees that questioning a welfare applicant demeans and humiliates him.

Studies show that people that are on welfare are higher users of drugs than people not on welfare.

The welfare state shields people from the consequences of their own mistakes, allowing irresponsibility to continue and to flourish among ever wider circles of people.

It's the nature of government, to build enduring institutions, structures that stay long after their purpose is over. If you pay people to help the poor, you have people who won't be paid if there aren't any poor, so they'll be sure to find some.

In order to advance the public weal efforts should be made to afford work to every able-bodied citizen on terms that will secure his existence… Any person unable to support himself or his dependants shall, where no other person is responsible for his or their maintenance, be entitled to receive public assistance …

Bush has legitimized a huge expansion of the welfare state, liberalizing immigration, and using force for democratization abroad. All the next Democratic president has to do to finish Bush's hard work is to raise taxes to pay for it all.