Your Opinion: Welfare spending out of control

Dear Editor:

Welfare spending in our nation is completely out of control. During the 20 years prior to the start of the last recession means-tested welfare spending (welfare distributed on the basis of personal income) was the fastest growing component of government spending.

If converted to cash, the $918 billion of federal and state means-tested welfare spending in 2011, would raise every persons income to twice the federal poverty level.

So why are any people in the U.S. listed as being "in poverty"? Because government spins the data to make some feel guilty and to make others feel entitled to even more government forced income redistribution.

In 1998, the latest year for which I could find statistics broken down by race, the total means-tested welfare distributed by the federal and state governments was $384 billion. Of that, $212 billion went to Caucasians, an average of $1,022 per Caucasian resident; $69 billion went to Hispanics, an average of $2,210 per Hispanic resident; and $105 billion went to African-Americans, an average of $3,230 per African-American resident.

By 2011 state and federal means tested welfare had exploded to $918 billion.

If the 1998 percentages are still reasonably accurate, $505 billion of it went to Caucasians ($2,260/Caucasian), $257 billion of it went to African-Americans ($6,600/African-American), with the remaining $152 billion distributed to all other races

Don't think that there is any chance of getting welfare spending under control now that the recession has ended. Obama's 2013 budget request asks that it increase to $1.56 trillion by 2022, more than double what the feds handed out in 2011.

If others have data that sheds more, or different, light on this subject I urge them to offer it so that we all might become more aware of issues.