Socialism through Welfarism

Here is what Barry Goldwater wrote in 1960 in The Conscience of a Conservative: The effect of Welfarism on freedom will be felt later on--after its beneficiaries have become its victims, after dependence on government has turned into bondage and it is too late to unlock the jail."

Well, we're feeling it all right. When Goldwater wrote this some fifty years ago the entire budget for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (which included Social Security) was around $15 billion. Welfare program expenditures ranked second to national defense in overall allocations.

Fast forward to today. President Obama's 2010 budget calls for the following: $721.5 billion for Social Security, $457.1 billion for Medicare, $284.5 billion for Medicaid and $194.3 billion for unemployment claims just to name a few of the entitlements. And defense? Trailing the sum total of the quartet by a cool (approximately) $937 billion at $719 billion. In other words the president's 2010 budget called for $1.65 TRILLION in those four entitlements alone which is more than double the amount planned for defense. Add in income security benefits (a fancy name for welfare) at $363 billion and we have close to $2.1 TRILLION allocated to entitlement programs, dwarfing defense three to one and consuming the lion's share of the budget, our economy and our future.