BIDEN’S NOT-SO-DISCRETE UNDOING OF AMERICA

Unemployment defined, sort of:  If you do not have a job but are looking for one you are unemployed. Makes sense, I got it.  But you are not unemployed if you do not have a job and are not looking for a job. Surely there is one too many “nots” in that sentence.  Nope, that’s our government at work. 

Take a walk down just about any commercial street in America and you will see numerous HELP WANTED signs in the windows.  There are currently (round numbers because no one knows the real ones) about 11 million jobs that need to be filled.  And there are about 7 million able-bodied men ages 25-54 who are not only not working, they are affirmatively not looking for jobs.  

THE REAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:  It seems that every time the so-called unemployment rate goes down a tenth of a percent our president is quick to call a press conference, point out the new rate and inform us how great the entire economy is doing.  There are problems with relying too heavily on the national unemployment rate as a meaningful indicator of the state of the economy and its workforce. One, the rate does not account for those who are under-employed.

Two, as pointed out earlier, those who have given up actively seeking a job are not counted.

Three, self-employed Individuals who recently lost clients are not counted as unemployed.

Four, also the rate does not specify whether workers are part-time or full-time employees. 

The unemployment rate we are fed and use is always factually incorrect.  As of 11 January, the government’s latest report showed the jobless rate dropped to 3.5% from the December, 2022 rate of 3.6%. 

Unemployment rates are computed two different ways by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The U-3 measure is what is commonly referred to as the official unemployment rate (3.6% December, 2022); whereas the U-6 rate also accounts for those marginally attached to the labor force, those employed part time and those discouraged from looking for a job (6.4% December, 2022).

Politicians use the U-3 numbers simply because they are less scary even though they are wrong and misleading. When a president tells us what the unemployment rate is, double it and you will be close to the correct answer.

WHAT DO ALL THE ABOVE NUMBERS TELL US? The potential total U.S. civilian labor force December 2022 was 165 million men and women who could work. At the same time the participation rate was about 62%.  That’s about 102 million Americans working and 63 million not working.  Obviously in many cases the head of household has a sufficient income and the spouse stays home.

A recent study by Nicholas Eberstadt, American Enterprise Institute, sums up the problem this way: “We’ve now got this incredible peacetime labor shortage and we also have a drop in the number of people in the workforce. The unemployment rate is at an enviable 3.5 percent, businesses still have 10 million unfilled positions, and yet the labor force participation rate languishes at a miserable 62.3 percent, more than a percentage point lower than before the pandemic. In 2022 for every 25–54-year-old guy who is out of work and looking for a job, there were four guys neither working nor looking for work. What this trend creates is slower economic growth, wider income and wealth gaps, more dependence on government welfare programs, more pressure on fragile families, less social mobility, less involvement in society, and a lot more despair.”

So, what are individuals and families doing for income?  The answer leads us directly to a discussion on welfare.

WELFARE: The primary purpose of government welfare programs should always be to act as a safety net for the truly needy. But that objective has long since been pushed aside by the, currently active, 85 “entitlement” programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, social services, training, and targeted aid to low-income families. The federal government spent $1.1 trillion on welfare in 2021, not counting COVID-19-related costs. Additionally state and local governments spent about $744 billion, for a total of $1.8 trillion.

Of course, most of this funding is directed at low-income families.  One sure way to get into the low-income category and become a standing member of the welfare state is to not have a job and not look for one.

WELFARE REFORM:  It is interesting to look at the views of our presidents over the past 40 years:

RONALD REAGAN eloquently put it: “Welfare needs a purpose: to provide for the needy, of course, but more than that, to salvage these, our fellow citizens, to make them self-sustaining and, as quickly as possible, independent of welfare.”

BILL CLINTON’S 1992 presidential campaign placed welfare reform at its center, claiming that his proposal would, “End welfare as we have come to know it.” Four years later, with a Republican-dominated Congress, (this was a time when members of opposing political parties could still have a civil discussion on major issues) Clinton delivered on his campaign promise by signing The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. The law gave states control of welfare with federal block grants and state matching funds. He created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF). TANF added work requirements for aid, shrinking the number of adults who could qualify for benefits. This legislation also created caps for how long and how much aid a person could receive, as well as instituting harsher punishments for recipients who did not comply with the requirements.

With its emphasis on work, time limits, and sanctions against states that did not place a large fraction of its caseload in work programs and against individuals who refused to meet state work requirements, TANF was a historic reversal of the previous entitlement welfare program and by 2005, the national caseload declined about 60 percent. 

OBAMA/BIDEN administration effectively gutted TANF in 2012 by releasing a policy directive that allowed states to waive work requirements; the heart and soul of TANF.

Why destroy welfare work requirements which had successfully become the heart of welfare support? It is not difficult to understand when one considers two things about Obama. During his first presidential campaign, October 2008, he explained in a private conversation with “Joe the plumber” that his intent was to, “spread the wealth.”  That is just one piece of his desire to, his words, “fundamentally transform” America. By vastly expanding the welfare state he spread a great deal of wealth from hard-working middle-class taxpayers into the hands of lazy Americans who felt entitled to their monthly government check while doing nothing in return.

TRUMP campaigned on creating an economy in which Americans would move from welfare to work. The totality of his efforts was a combination of the TAMF caseload reduced by 900,000 individuals, the number on Social Security Disability Insurance down by about 400,000 and Medicaid and Children’s’ Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and the Department of Agriculture reported that 7.7 million individuals came off the food stamp rolls as the Trump economy took off. 

PRESIDENT BIDEN, is doing all he can to expand the number of people receiving welfare and there are lots of ways to make it happen.  The current count is 34 housing programs run by seven Cabinet departments; 23 programs providing food or food assistance; 13 health care programs; and 15 cash or general-assistance programs.

There were about 90.6 million people enrolled in Medicaid as of August 2022, about 28 percent of the U.S. population. That’s an increase of 19.3 million under the Biden administration. The recent $1.7 trillion Omnibus bill will end some expanded Medicaid enrollment so the Democrats are now scrambling to get those individuals into The Affordable Care Act.

Biden’s most egregious initiative is the push to continue and expand the refundable Child Tax Credit. Biden’s American Rescue Plan increased the Child Tax Credit to $3,000 per child age 6-17 and $3,600 for children under age six.  In addition, it increased the income levels to $112,500 for singles and $150,000 for married couples. He wants to make this a permanent piece of the welfare state.

As of December 2022, there were over 49,000 U.S. households with at least one child below the age of 18 and there are about 104 million households with income below $150,000. Given those figures, it is possible Biden’s Child Tax Credit initiative is the largest vote-buying proposal ever by a sitting president.  Disgusting.

Wait a damned minute; are we saying Biden wants to give couples making $149,999 a year $7,200 for a couple of kids under age 6?  Yes, that is apparently his new definition of low income.

There’s more, but you get the point; Biden has relentlessly, and often successfully, tried to grow and expand the welfare state.

There is, however, one part of the Biden welfare system we have not heard much about; fraud. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Serices, “The 2022 Medicaid improper payment rate was 15.62%, or $80.57 billion.”

In addition, “For the Children’s Health Insurance Program for low-income children, the 2022 improper payment rate was 26.75%, or $4.30 billion.”

As for the Earned Income Tax Credit, 28% of those payments are improper.

But a recent reveal of unemployment payments may be the granddaddy fraud of them all. Last week the Department of Labor stated that of the $669 billion payouts under various pandemic unemployment programs from April 2020 through September 2021, at least $60 billion is “unaccounted for” and assumed to have been paid out to fraudsters. What is equally interesting is that the U.S. Government Accounting Office pointed out that, “The department (Labor) has yet to develop an antifraud strategy based on leading practices from GAO’s Fraud Risk Framework as required by law.”

The GAO continued, “Without an antifraud strategy, DOL is not able to ensure that it is addressing the most significant fraud risks facing the system.”

Meanwhile, a  watchdog agency is reporting the loss may be, “substantially higher.”

Notwithstanding this incredible loss, we should not be too quick to criticize. After all our president has told us he appointed, “the most diverse cabinet in history.” Are we to believe diverse outbids talented and qualified?  

Have we heard the Biden administration complaining about massive welfare fraud and abuse? Nope. If your objective is to get as many people as possible on welfare, why get upset if a few thousands or millions of ineligibles are fraudulently taking advantage of the program. More people on welfare is part of the success, not a failure. 

There is one more point to be made about work requirements for welfare before we get to some conclusions:

Technically, the federal food stamp program had a modest work requirement for able-bodied adults without dependents. They were limited to three months of food stamps unless they are working part time or participating in job training or community service.

However, in 2009, the Obama/Biden administration suspended the work requirement for two years.  However, after two years most states were able to continue bypassing the work requirement by using work waivers. But in 2014, Maine chose to stop waiving the work requirement for food stamps and within three months the caseload of able-bodied adults without dependents dropped by 80%.

How can we ensure that welfare acts as a safety net for the truly needy and not as a handout to able-bodied adults who can work?  Work requirements serve as a gatekeeper to ensure that those truly in need receive welfare assistance. Ninety percent of Americans agree that able-bodied adults receiving welfare assistance should be required to work or prepare for work.

CONCLUSIONS: I began this essay with a discussion of unemployment.  But I hope you can understand how that subject morphed into welfare.  They are inexorably linked.

Conclusion one: In this country every president and Congress should first of all strive to grow an economy to the point where welfare is necessary only as a safety net for those incapable of caring for themselves. We should measure welfare’s success by how many people leave the welfare programs, not by how many are added. Welfare-to-work programs are essential.

Conclusion two: Welfare programs that are regulated and administered by multiple separate government departments and agencies are bound to end up with fraud, waste and abuse.

Conclusion three: We must ponder why Obama and now Biden are so hell-bent on creating a massive welfare state.  Several points on this question.

Let’s not forget about Obama’s obsession with wealth transfer and transformation of America; the former leads to the latter.

Also, looking back in time, the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives continuously from January 1955 until 1995.  Given that legacy, it has become the Democrat’s dream to regain that kind of power and control. Since losing control in 1995, they have moved toward developing various bases of support called “identity groups.”

Identity politics is defined as, “A political approach wherein people of a particular race, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation social background, social class or other identifying factors develop political agendas that are based upon these identities. Identity politics is deeply connected with the idea that some groups are oppressed.”

Biden has opened the borders; the number of illegal immigrants residing in the U.S. numbers in the tens of millions and they continue coming at an average of over 8,000 apprehended per day during December 2022. Plus, about 600,000 got-aways in FY 2022, that were observed but not apprehended. Plus, an unknown number of got aways that were not sighted or apprehended. Notwithstanding that many of the got-away population consists of criminals, gang members, terrorists, human traffickers and drug traffickers, Biden and the Democrats in Congress look for every opportunity to slip a provision into their multi-thousand-page legislation calling for “amnesty for all” thereby creating an enormous and perhaps overwhelming identity group.

Additionally, Biden’s welfare state in general and in particular the seven million or so able Americans who are “not unemployed, not working and not looking for a job” and are living on your tax dollars comprise a substantial loyal Democrat voting bloc.

Conclusion four:  Able-bodied Americans who refuse to work are a sad commentary compared to the will-power and work-ethic that set this country apart and made it the most admired nation in the world. 

BOTTOM LINE: A Gallop pole of over 1,000 Republicans and Democrats released 30 January tells us that lack of leadership by President Biden and the Congress is, “The most important problem facing this country today.”  What Biden is doing to, not for, America will not end well.

Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of VISION TO EXECUTION, a book for leaders, and a new book May 2022, FIX THE SYSTEMS, TRANSFORM AMERICA as well as the author of a blog WeThePeopleSpeaking.com