Michael Snyder, Contributor

Activist Post

There are more Americans dependent on the federal government than ever before in U.S. history. According to the Survey of Income and Program Participation conducted by the U.S. Census, well over 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government. Many are enrolled in more than one. That is about a third of the entire population of the country. Sadly, that figure does not even include Social Security or Medicare.

Today the federal government runs almost 80 different “means-tested welfare programs”, and almost all of those programs have experienced substantial growth in recent years.

Yes, we will always need a “safety net” for those that cannot take care of themselves, but it is absolutely ridiculous that the federal government is financially supporting one-third of all Americans. How much farther do things really need to go before we finally admit that we have become a socialist nation? At the rate we are going, it will not be too long before half the nation is on welfare. Unfortunately, we will likely never get to that point because the gigantic debt that we are currently running up will probably destroy our financial system before that ever happens. It is really hard to believe how rapidly some of these federal welfare programs have grown. For example, the number of Americans on food stamps has grown from about 17 million in 2000 to 31.9 million when Barack Obama took office to 46.4 million today. The federal government spent a staggering 71.8 billion dollars on the food stamp program in 2011. That sure is a lot of money to spend on food. And I thought that my grocery bills were high. Medicaid is also growing like crazy. The number of Americans on Medicaid grew from 34 million in 2000 to 54 million in 2011. Once upon a time, Medicaid was supposed to help the poorest of the poor get medical care. In fact, back in 1965 only about one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. But now about one-sixth of the entire country is on Medicaid. Will we all eventually be on Medicaid? As I mentioned recently, It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls. And we all know that projections like that are usually way too low. Other federal welfare programs are exploding in size as well. For example, federal housing assistance increased by a whopping 42 percent between 2006 and 2010. The chart posted below was produced by Senate Budget Committee Republican staff. As you can see, the number of Americans on welfare just continues to grow and grow and grow….

This article first appeared here at the American Dream. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here.