A Culture Of Dependency Of Welfare In The United States

Today in America there is a big debate on the current state of welfare programs and its recipients. Some think we should do away with welfare all together and let everyone fend for themselves; while others believe that they are helpful for struggling families. Then there are the ones in the middle, like me. I believe that the current state of America’s welfare programs are causing their recipients to become too dependent and it should require you to be employed in some form to receive a check each month. In Matthew Spalding’s “Why the U.S. Has a Culture of Dependency”, he claims that “The problem is that Washington is building a culture of dependency, with ever-more people relying on an ever-growing federal government to give them cash or benefits.”(par 3) Spalding’s theory of dependency of welfare recipients is extremely useful because it sheds light on the difficult problem of loss of skills that results from welfare. There are many abusers that are paying doctors to declare them disabled, so that they can get a check each month. By all means, I am not saying that every person you meet on welfare is abusing the system. Although it is a small …show more content…
Of the 67.9 million recipients of welfare, 10.2 million are receiving unemployment insurance. (Statistic Brain) This number doesn’t even include all unemployed recipients of welfare, just the ones receiving insurance. According to a recent report from the Cato Institute, the federal government spends $668 million dollars annually on 126 different welfare programs, while spending from state and local governments push that number up to around $1 trillion annually. If we were able to require more from the recipients and make it harder to get on welfare, then we can ultimately have more working people, less citizens in poverty, and more money in the state and federal governments’