Issue Position: Welfare, Poverty and Crime

Issue Position

The war on poverty is lost. It is time to change battle tactics. Since LBJ brought us The Great Society and declared war on poverty in 1964, we have spent $23T waging that war on poverty, $17T of that we borrowed. When will we learn that the destruction of the American family is the collateral damage of the war on poverty? We have removed the pride that is derived from hard work and replaced it with the cynicism of entitlement that comes from an ungrateful dependent class. Recipients of welfare know that the people who have been forced to provide it are mostly opposed to their dependency. This has created a point of contention between the productive class and the dependent class. It is dividing our country instead of making it stronger. I will vote to restore the movement off of welfare to work. Because the cycle of poverty has proven to be the inarguable predictor of criminal behavior, I will vote to mandate drug testing of welfare recipients, forcing offenders off of the welfare dole. For those who end up in our penal system, I will vote to classify nonviolent offenders that serve long prison terms as able bodied prison-WORKERS who can work for the public good, receive pay incentives and help pay their own way through incarceration and rehabilitation. Prison can be a restorative time for some and not a planning session for recidivism. Our goal should be to educate, train and restore working prisoners back into society.

Ultimately, our goal should be to pair every able bodied man and woman that wants a job with those businesses and industries in need of labor. All other citizens that wish to freeload, on the "dole", can then try living without the generosity of the American taxpayer. The Apostle Paul wrote, "if a man doesn't work, he should not eat." The integrity and self-worth that comes from a hard day's work is being lost to a large segment of the American population. An American renaissance started by the expansion of our domestic energy sector and the reawakening of the American manufacturing sector can return those values to every state in our nation.

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