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Originally posted by neo96
reply to post by lee anoma
SS 50 million
Medicare 50 million
Medicaid 50 million
Welfare 47 million
They are all welfare programs
Not counting unemployment
So.
New lie: The government spends more on welfare than everything else!
Senate Republicans redefine "welfare" to make it sound very expensive
In the context of political discussions, “welfare” traditionally (as in pretty much always) refers specifically to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, the federal program that was created in 1996 to replace the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program — also known as “welfare” — that had existed since the New Deal. This is what people refer to when they say “welfare caseloads” and “welfare rolls,” and when conservatives accuse Obama of gutting “welfare reform” they are referring to TANF. The federal government spends $16.5 billion a year on TANF and, combined, the states spend another $10 billion.
Most of the federal budget is “defense” and war spending and Medicare, which should be common knowledge but that fact is regularly obscured by right-wingers who claim to be deficit hawks but refuse to cut defense spending and are scared of proposing real reductions to our programs for old people. This is how you get poll results where people think most of what the federal government spends money on is “foreign aid” and public broadcasting.
So this is obviously just an attempt to rebrand “everything else” as “welfare.” Salon.com