The Tea Party Makes A Point

Yesterday I saw one of those "Click like if you think. . . ." pictures on my FB news feed.

The picture said that people on welfare shouldn't be able to buy beer, cigarettes, cable TV or tattoos. I can't find it now, so I give you this instead:

The one I saw did not mention food stamps, so I left that out of my comments. 

Here is a great response to this particular image. 

At first glance, this doesn't seem like a bad idea. If you need welfare, you probably shouldn't be spending your days drinking, smoking and watching Real Housewives marathons. That actually kind of sounds like a good vacation, but I digress. I assume the thinking is that if taxpayers are "giving" you money, you should be responsible with it.

Like Congress is. Ahem.

Of course, taxpayers also pay the salaries of cops, firefighters and public school teachers. Not to mention all those bureaucrats at the DMV. Should we tell them how to spend their money? We don't want them to have to get second jobs just so they can pay for expensive jewelry, do we? We want them 100% focused on their most important jobs, right? They don't need fancy jewelry or expensive vacations or those other luxuries.

And what about people on unemployment? Would they have to spend their money according to Tea Party rules as well? How about people on disability? What about people on social security? What about if you get a tax refund?

If you think the tax code is complicated, just imagine the "what you can spend your government money on" code.

And who would make this code . .would it be the government? The same government that the Tea Party wants to limit? Making extra codes and laws doesn't sound very "limited" to me. Maybe the Tea Party doesn't understand what "limited" means?

Even if you create this code just for people on welfare, you're still talking about a lot of extra laws to cover just 4.1% of the population. Also? It's .7% of the budget. Notice the decimal point - welfare is less than 1% of the budget. We could eliminate it entirely - thereby destroying a lot of people's lives - and it would not even come close to helping us balance the budget.

Thank you, Tea Party, for pointing out how completely ignorant you are.