Oct 2, 2013 3 min read

In regard to the Sept. 25 editorial from on the proposed federal cuts to SNAP, let’s make one thing completely clear – nobody is seeking to deny food to another human being for any reason.

However, completely missing from this editorial, and many, many other stories from other news outlets, is the amount of fraud and waste that is perpetrated by welfare recipients. A former school chum now living in Raleigh, N.C. recently told me that locals in his neck of the woods are getting tattoos with those debit cards, despite the fact that the cards aren’t supposed to cover non-food items. I’ve also heard of people buying lap dances, booze and porn DVDs with them, as well. This is not to suggest that every household is engaged in fraud. However, there are oodles of welfare fraud cases that are documented on websites all over the Internet.

One of the strongest arguments against the federal government running welfare programs is that the federal government is way too large and incapable of running things efficiently. Some of the older readers of this paper will likely recall that what we call welfare was actually run at the county level in the days before Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Washington County had its own DPA – Department of Public Assistance. It was located in Arden. In those days, you had to go in person to apply for assistance. You were likely to have to look at a neighbor, a friend, or acquaintance to get that assistance. It was much harder to pull the wool over someone’s eyes. My aunt used to work in the local DPA office and they checked out people a great deal more stringently than the federal government does today.

Also missing from the editorial was any mention of the fact that current monetary policy will soon cause a major economic disaster from gross overspending. Nobody reading this newspaper at the moment would dare spend many times over their annual income. Our government is printing money at a dizzying rate every month and will soon be reaping the fallout of such reckless practice. Despite what Paul Krugman writes in his columns that appear in this paper on a weekly basis, the American economy isn’t driven by government spending, but spending from the private sector – everyday folks like you and me.

Perhaps the real answer is getting any semblance of government out of charitable pursuits. There are enough private entities, like churches and related organizations, to take up the slack in every neighborhood. Nowhere in our Constitution does it say anything about charitable welfare. The phrase is “promote the general welfare,” which is a completely different concept. Government, in a free and orderly society, was never meant to become a charitable outlet. Gary MacDougal wrote in a column last year in The New York Times that “America spends around $21,700 for each American in poverty, or nearly $87,000 for a family of four. That’s almost four times the $23,050 per year federal poverty line for that family.”

I think you’ll agree that this kind of largess would eliminate poverty in short order, if the money spent were actually going to those in need. Obviously, it’s not and hasn’t been. The problem is government itself. There is too much bloat, inefficiency, redundancy and spending on itself.

John A. Quayle

North Franklin Twownship