I'm Tired of the Welfare Discussion

"People can't stay on the government dole forever."

Agreed. But everyone who says this thinks that's possible now. People look at me in stunned disbelief when I say it's not. (It's not, under federal law. We'll get to that shortly.) The response usually goes, "then why is it still an issue of public debate?" The obvious answer, I think, is that politicians gain support from beating that dead horse. And a dead horse it is. The proof is easy enough to find. Two minutes of internet searching lead me to the actual text of the current national welfare law, which has been in place since 1996. Provisions of this law include the requirement that recipients must acquire some kind of employment within two years of starting on assistance, even if said employment doesn't cover all expenses, and a lifetime limit of five years on benefits paid from the Federal budget.

Yet everyone I argue about this with seems to know someone or have heard about some someone who plans to live on the government for the rest of their life. Here-say is notoriously unreliable, so I can safely ignore the later. (While researching this, I found a study from 2003 suggesting that 37% of all welfare recipients and three quarters of Spanish speaking recipients don't know there are lifetime caps. That doesn't surprise me, and I expect the numbers are still high thirteen years later. If there's any truth to the hear-say, this is why.)

Is it possible to live a lifetime on state benefits? Last year I wrote two posts called "You Can't Get There from Here" about my frustration with finding certain kinds of information online. I could write part III on this question. I've so far been unable to find a source that I'd feel comfortable citing in a real debate. (There wouldn't be one primary source on this. There would be fifty primary sources. If I had a spare week, I could look for them.) Ehow.com has a list broken down by time limits. I present them with the caveat that I don't know accurate they are. If Ehow's information is correct, only four states have no lifetime limits. The other 46 have limits with exceptions.