1. Welfare recipients: The overwhelming majority of people who receive aid from welfare programs do not receive it for more than a few months at a time. Less than 20% of recipients from one year are still on welfare the following year. Almost everyone wants to be working and earning a living, it is only a small percentage of the population that is cheating the system. A significant portion of people in this category are people that are mentally ill. Are these people to blame for their own illness? (No). Is the government to blame for kicking these people out of mental institutions and onto the streets where they commit crimes and strain our services? (Yes).

Another significant chunk is addicted to drugs. And while you can clearly blame these people for the initial decision to take a drug, how many people in history have chosen to become addicted to a drug? While it is debatable whether these people are to blame for their addiction, there is no question that the government is to blame for failing to provide treatment for addicts and for things like the failed invasion of Afghanistan, which helped created the largest poppy crop in history.

A third large group of permanent welfare recipients (or long-term recipients) are divorced women with children. Many of these women took the advice that many conservatives give them -- get married and become stay-at-home mothers. But when nearly half of all marriages end in divorce (many of them rightly so), what happens to the man and woman afterward? The man, on average, has a significant increase in his financial status. He loses the cost of taking care of a full family and has no negative impact on his career. Women, on the other hand, lose the primary income they had. And since many of them had spent years cleaning house and raising children (both valid and honorable jobs, by the way), they weren't spending time obtaining education and experience in the workforce. So when they are forced, all of a sudden, to go find a job, they don't have the skills, education or experience to get a good, high-paying job. And the generally end up with custody of any children, including primary responsibility, in most cases, of paying for most of the bills related to the children. This translate to a situation where welfare is not only an attractive option, for many it is the only option. Sure, there is some blame to be laid on the woman who chooses her husband poorly, but the bigger blame is on a system that pushes women to make that choice. In particular, a lot of the blame on this one can be laid at the feet of conservatives who push marriage like it is the solution to all problems, which it isn't.

2. Children: A large proportion of the recipients of welfare programs are children. There is no valid argument that children are being irresponsible by receiving government assistance. Similarly, there is no valid argument suggesting that a child should pay the penalty for the mistakes or problems of their parents.

3. No real problem: If we take the above categories out of the equation, we're left with a really, really small percentage of the population that is cheating or defrauding the system. Sure, there are some people that totally lack personaly responsibility and are living off the government. But they are a lot less than 1% of the population and less than 1% of the budget, so they really aren't a significant societal problem. Conservatives like to attack this group because they are defenseless and are an easy target, but they aren't something that causes any real damage to society.

4. Double standard: Conservatives are all about attacking poor people for lacking in personal responsibility, but they rarely, if ever, attack other groups for lacking in responsibility. They generally oppose government investigations of people accused of corporate crime or ethical lapses in elected office (unless they are Republicans). They have no problem giving drug users stiffer prison sentences than multi-million dollar embezzlers. The standard for conservatives is clear -- people who come from conservative groups don't have to have personal responsibility, but people coming from liberal groups do.

5. The real cost of welfare: The programs we are talking about are really, really inexpensive. All welfare programs for the poor add up to less than $200 billion. Out of a budget of $2.7 trillion, we're talking a relatively small percentage. Welfare programs for the middle and upper classes, though, add up to nearly a trillion dollars. If we eliminated every welfare program for the poor, you would not, in any way, notice the difference in your taxes, even if all of the money was refunded.

6. Everybody gets help: Nobody is successful in America without the help of the government. Schools, roads, national defense, police, fire fighters, clean air, clean water, safe food, minimum wage, etc., etc., -- everyone gets help along the way from the government. Furthermore, almost everyone recieves help along the way from others, too -- family, friends, legacy enrollments, family inheritance, etc. But some in society don't have as much in the way of help from these other areas. In order to make sure that there really is equality of opportunity in America -- something conservatives champion -- it is necessary, then, for the government to step in and help these people.

7. Learning to be poor: Nobody aspires to be poor. Few people start out rich and become poor. Poverty breeds poverty. If you grow up in a poor household, you are unlikely to gain the knowledge needed to advance in soceity the same way people who grow up middle class or above. If someone is poor and doesn't know how to get out of poverty, how can they possibly teach skills and knowledge they don't have to their children? And if you grow up poor and your parents don't teach you the skills needed to advance in society, how can you be blamed for that fact? I've worked with poor people and I've been poor and there are a few things that are nearly universal amongst the poor. Most poor people have low levels of education. They don't have the skills needed to make it through school. They don't have the basic skills needed to get even a basic job and keep it. They don't have interpersonal skills or many of the things that people refer to as "common sense." Many of them are illiterate or read significantly below adult level. It's not that they can't get these things, they certainly can, it's that they don't automatically have them and they don't automatically know how to obtain them. In fact, many people at the bottom of the ladder don't know that they even need these skills. If there is a guy in Georgia giving out a million dollars to every person who comes and asks him for it and you never hear about the guy, then you'll never get your free million dollars. And even if you do hear about him, if you don't have any way to get to Georgia, you still won't get the money.

8. Morality: We have two million American prisoners in this country. They all have food, shelter, clothing, and other basic needs met no matter what they do. We have thousands of enemies of our country in custody, from the lowliest terrorist all the way up to Saddam Hussein -- they all have food, shelter, clothing and other basic needs met no matter what they do. I don't know too many conservatives who have a problem with this concept. But the very same people have a big problem if we make sure that our own law-abiding citizens have food, shelter, clothing and other basic needs met. We don't currently do this for all of our poorest citizens and that is 100% the fault of conservatives who are the people that block such programs. So what these people are saying is that Saddam Hussein deserves more from our government than does a poor child who has dumb or lazy or mentally ill parents. That's immoral by any standard.

9. Punishment fitting the crime: The worst part of all this, as far as I'm concerned, is the idea that conservatives want to punish people for committing a perceived crime with a punishment that is way out of proportion to the supposed offense. Let's say that someone is lazy. Let's say that they won't work no matter what you do to them. Conservatives would basically advocate a passive death penalty for such a person. They say no government benefits. No guaranteed food. No guaranteed shelter. No guaranteed clothing. No guaranteed health care, even in the worst-case scenarios. Well what happens to human beings who are without food, shelter, clothing and basic medical care? They die. Hunger and homelessness are not valid punishments for the violation of any law in the United States. So why is it that conservatives argue that we should punish lazy people with hunger and homelessness. And that's giving them the benefit of the doubt that poor people actually are lazy (something I don't believe is true except in a few extreme cases). We should not allow a form of punishment for something that is legal -- there is no law against laziness -- that is harsher than the penalty for things that are legal. You could get drunk and drive and kill someone and not be forced to be hungry and homeless. It's the same concept as the people who argue that we should be able to shoot looters in times of disaster or crisis. It isn't legal to shoot people for theft in normal times, why would it be legal when times are tough? Besides, there are no arguments that we should be able to shoot price gougers during times of crises and they are committing the exact same crime. They aren't doing it out of deprivation or need, though, they're doing it out of pure greed. Similarly, we don't punish lazy rich people, do we? When's the last time you saw one of Sam Walton's kids doing something useful for society? But they are certainly amongst the richest people in the world -- through no effort of their own. We reward rich, lazy people. We force poor, lazy people to live in homeless shelters and eat out of trash cans.

Now I'm certainly a firm believer in personal responsibility. I started out as one of these extremely poor people and made my way up the ladder with the help of welfare programs and financial aid. Was it easy? Hell no. It was incredibly difficult and I had to fight every step of the way against not only money and social expectations, but against my own learned instincts and lack of knowledge about how to make my way in the world. Would I have made it without help from a lot of people along the way? Absolutley not. Well, there are a lot of people who don't get the help I got. Do they choose to be poor, uneducated and on welfare. Absolutely no way, but they don't know how to make it on their own and if they don't get the help, it is extremely difficult to make it.

Solution: There really isn't a solution for welfare reform. It isn't really an issue that needs a solution. The programs we have work. We could certainly increase funding and increase requirements for education and job training. We could also remove the impediments to getting off welfare -- a ridiculously low minimum wage, a lack of universal health care, barriers to education and subsidized child care -- that would make welfare unnecessary, which should be the goal. We are a long way from that goal, though, and are moving in the wrong direction. The divided nature of our economy also hurts -- this is a great economy if you are rich, but not so great if you are poor or even middle class. A return to the Clinton-styled economy would help everyone and help lessen the need for welfare and, at the same time, help more people take personal responsibility.