Make America Work Again: There’s Dignity and Honor in Work; Is Work for Welfare ‘Wacko’?: Biden Trashes a Modest GOP Reform He’s Voted for in the Past

Make America Work Again:

There’s dignity and honor in work.

I was raised to value a good day’s work and to have pride in what you bring to the table. To be skilled at a craft was an honorable way to make a living whether you were a dishwasher or a surgeon. Work gave each of us a greater self-worth, purpose, and pride.

My father was the youngest master plumber in Montana’s history, and he came from three generations of men who valued and mastered their trade. I still feel pride when an old timer stops me in the street to tell me about the time my dad or grandad helped repair their home.

But now, well outside the global pandemic, our workforce has shrunk to levels not seen since the 1970s, far lower than during the Great Recession of 2008-2009. More than a third of men are out of the work force – the lowest in recorded history – thanks in part to the massive regulatory and welfare state created under COVID and the public health emergency.

Not a day goes by in Montana that you don’t walk down Main St and see a restaurant or shop with a handwritten sign that says “closed today due to staff shortage” or have to wait four months for a vehicle repair. That is not the sign of a strong economy. It’s the sign of a struggling workforce.

Requiring able-bodied adults who do not have children to work 20 hours a week if they receive government benefits is prudent and hits at our core American value of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps. Plus, it saves taxpayer dollars and grows the economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Medicaid work requirement for childless adults ages 18 to 64 could save the federal fisc nearly $170 billion over 10 years.”

You’ll see the president taking victory laps because unemployment is low; well, it’s low because under his policies people are being paid not to work. People are being incentivized with lax unemployment benefits and other welfare to stay at home and not contribute to our community and economy. —>READ MORE HERE

Is Work for Welfare ‘Wacko’?

Biden trashes a modest GOP reform he’s voted for in the past.

Is President Biden taking rhetorical cues from Donald Trump? It sure sounds like it after he attacked modest fiscal reforms in a House Republican debt-ceiling bill this week as “wacko notions.” This is the Trump method of using a label to smear something without even trying to make an actual argument.

House Republicans on Wednesday released their Limit, Save, Grow Act to increase the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion. In return they want Mr. Biden to accept a slower rate of growth in federal spending with annual caps. The spending declines would amount to about $4 trillion out of more than $60 trillion in estimated spending over a decade. If this is wacko, Washington is insane, but then you already knew that.

Democrats are especially upset, or at least they pretend to be, by a GOP proposal to require that able-bodied adults work in exchange for welfare such as food stamps and Medicaid. Mr. Biden accused Republicans of “cutting benefits for folks” that “they don’t seem to care much about.”

Mr. Biden is disguising the truth in demagoguery. Voters may think food stamps and Medicaid are temporary backstops for Americans who fall on tough times, but that is no longer true. Both programs have become large and permanent entitlements reminiscent of the European dole.

Some 40 million Americans are enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more than 10% of the U.S. population, at a cost of $100 billion a year. Medicaid enrollment has soared to north of 85 million, driven in large part by ObamaCare’s expansion to prime-age men above the poverty line. —>READ MORE HERE

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