I have to agree that the children themselves - at least the very young ones - are innocent and shouldn't have to suffer. But .. who is responsible for their suffering, really? Me? You? Or the parents who produced them lacking the ability to take care of them?

Everybody go ahead and toss out the stories of the family whose breadwinner lost his job, the mother whose husband unexpectedly left her, and so on and so on. Yep, such cases do exist and those people probably do deserve a little help.

However, they are NOT by any stretch the majority. Several times (and one of them was just last year) I have done tax preparation for a local nonprofit, and I have it right out of their own mouths!

"My daughter is the breadwinner of the family. She has babies and I report them to DHS because she doesn't have a job and can't take care of them. They they put them in the system and I apply to foster them. As the grandparent I have first rights, and the whole family lives off of what I get for fostering my grandchildren." (paraphrased)

Does anyone out there really NOT see this as a deliberate scam? Why are you and I supporting this entire family with our tax dollars? Where are the fathers? Why shouldn't the mother have to get a job, since grandmother is getting paid to take care of her kids?

And trust me, this is just one example. Out of maybe 300 people whose taxes I did last year, at least 40 or more of those families were in some fashion getting paid to take care of their own kids, or their children's kids. These people are deliberately using their children in order to take advantage of public assistance programs, and we continue to reward them because, after all, the children are innocent and we have to take care of them.

Do I have a solution? Yes, but few will agree with it. Ultimately it is the parents who put the children in these situations, and it is the parents who are responsible if the children are not taken care of. The system is BROKE, people, and somehow it needs to be fixed, rebooted, trashed and started over .. something.

No, I don't want the "poor innocent children" to suffer either, but I am flat sick and tired of people using the human instinct to protect children, and morality, to get over on people who actually work for a living and pay taxes.

I am sorry, but it is NOT my responsibility to care for every child of irresponsible and/or dishonest parents, or even unfortunate parents, who exists in the world (or even in America), especially since I myself have never had a child and never will. I've spent my whole life paying for other peoples' kids through various and sundry taxes and will probably continue to have to do so as long as I live unless I survive TEOTWAWKI, but I don't have to like it and I don't even really care if you label me a monster for not supporting it. I don't. This country was founded on personal responsibility and IMO it's the only cure for the steep downhill track we're on. Let people take care of their own kids, and if they can't they shouldn't have had them. And, if you must rescue them, at least take them away from the people who are really to blame and stop rewarding people for being parasites by taking advantage of our compassion for the sweet innocent little children they deliberately had so they could live off of them.