Welfare 102

I had originally posted this under the "Welfare" thread in the philosophy forum, but upon reflection, I think its better classified under politics, so here's my re-post:

I think people often mistakenly blame the poor and the disabled for the abuses in our “welfare system,” or I guess I should say the con artists who pretend to fall into that catagory. One of the major flaw of the pay-as-you-go system is that it fails to require the government to use the funds exclusively for Social Security. There is no pool of cash sitting in Washington, waiting for workers when they retire. Most of the Social Security funds collected from workers are used immediately to pay the monthly stipends of retirees. The rest, which is known as the Social Security "surplus," is used by other government agencies to pay for over-budget programs. In return for the Social Security funds, the Treasury issues an IOU, which is a promise to pay back the money taken from Social Security. This practice will continue as long as Social Security collects a surplus. By 2003, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that the government will owe Social Security more than $1.3 trillion.

What was that $1.3 trillion used for? This is one of the other flaws in the system: Congress gets to do what it pleases with it. Some examples gleaned from the net:

Washington, D.C.) Representative Jim Gibbons (R-Nev.) earmarked $225,000 in the fiscal 2004 Consolidated Appropriations Act for a local municipal swimming pool. The spending bill, known as the Omnibus, combines seven of the 13 spending bills, totaling $820 billion.
Rep. Gibbons requested the money to help repair a 61-year-old public swimming pool a block from where he grew up in Sparks, Nevada. In the 1950s, he and some of his friends clogged the drain with tadpoles which caused the pool to temporarily shut down. Rep. Gibbons finally admitted responsibility for the incident, known as the “Polliwog Caper,” last year. If only every American had the opportunity to spend federal tax dollars to appease their guilt and atone for the sins of their childhood.

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) named Representative James T. Walsh (R-N.Y.) its Porker of the Month for February 2004 for spending taxpayer money to fund building renovations at his alma mater. Rep. Walsh used his power as chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs/Housing and Urban Development to secure a $4.5 million grant to renovate a building at St. Bonaventure University.
Chairman Walsh obtained the grant as part of the fiscal 2004 Consolidated Appropriations Act for the ongoing multi-stage renovation and expansion of St. Bonaventure’s science building, DeLaRoche Hall. With the amount of federal money Chairman Walsh has secured, the building will most likely soon carry his name.

In April (2003) , Department of Energy (DOE) Inspector General (IG) Gregory Friedman released a report stating that the management of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico was unable to account for 22 laptop computers purchased by the lab in 2002. This is in addition to the 30 laptops and laboratory equipment reported as lost or stolen in 2000 and 2001, totaling nearly $2.7 million.
Lab employees can be held liable if, because of willful misconduct or negligence, lab property becomes lost or stolen. However, the University of California (UC), which manages Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has acknowledged that none of the lab's 9,600 employees has been asked to pay for the missing computers.
Other than wasting taxpayer money, such negligence has negative implications for national security. Many computers at Los Alamos, the nation's premier nuclear weapons design lab, contain highly sensitive weapons information. Although the IG report did not cite any specific cases where classified data was actually lost or stolen, the report did say that the lab's inventory system "was not sufficient to assure strict accountability for classified laptop computers."

And we are worried about welfare Moms driving cadillacs! Sheeesh!

P.S. This does not mean that I have suddenly decided to go steady with Radar! We certainly do need some reforms, however.