Posted 4/27/2011 09:52:00 PM by Douglas

Welcome to the welfare empire. Here's your great society LBJ, thanks a lot. Poverty is over, yay!

The best estimate of the cost of the 185 federal means tested welfare programs for 2010 for the federal government alone is nearly $700 billion, up a third since 2008, according to the Heritage Foundation. Counting state spending, total welfare spending for 2010 reached nearly $900 billion, up nearly one-fourth since 2008 (24.3%).

Yet, by 2008, Robert Rector of Heritage reports that total welfare spending already amounted to $16,800 per person in poverty, 4 times as much as the Census Bureau estimated was necessary to bring all of the poor up to the poverty level, eliminating all poverty in America. That would be $50,400 per poor family of three. Indeed, Charles Murray wrote a whole book, In Our Hands, A Plan to Replace America’s Welfare State explaining that we already spend far more than enough to completely eliminate all poverty in America.

So if we're giving away more money than it would cost to flat out buy everyone out of poverty, what's the problem? Why didn't it work? Don't answer that. But here's what kinda surprised me:

Then there is federal housing assistance, totaling $77 billion in 2010. Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA), among others.

What? Is there anyone that's not getting some kind of government assistance?