For those of you who don’t know what that means, Google it.  Now, remember earlier in the week when I went on a rant about America being in hospice?  This is statistic I’m about to share is exactly why we are currently on life-support, ready to keel over unless we get our butts in gear:

$1.03 trillion

For those of you who may be paying attention, that number seems eerily similar to our national deficit.  But that’s not what I’m referring to.  That $1.03 trillion is the amount of money that our government handed out as welfare in 2011 alone. 

Now before you get all huffy, let me make sure you understand this: This does not include Social Security or Medicare.  Those are not welfare programs, those are entitlement programs.  You are entitled to that money because you’ve paid into that system.  This $1.03 trillion on welfare spending went toward 83 different means tested federal welfare programs.  That figure represents a 32% increase in welfare spending since 2008.

The largest increase in welfare spending went to none other than food stamps – a 71% increase in spending since 2008.  I guess that’s what happens when your government uses taxpayer dollars to advertise food stamp participation.  Yet when Newt Gingrich referred to Obama as the “food stamp president,” that was raaaaaaacist. 

Spending on welfare “vastly outpaced spending on such federal expenditures as non-war defense ($540 billion), Social Security ($725 billion), Medicare ($480 billion), and departments such as Justice ($30.5 billion), Transportation ($77.3 billion) and Education ($65.486 billion).”

The Heritage Foundation has another way to try and put this kind of spending into perspective: “If converted to cash, means-tested welfare spending is more than five times the amount needed to eliminate all poverty in the United States.”

Keep in mind four things …

1. Obama’s economy has made more people eligible for welfare as incomes have dropped and jobs are scarce. 

2. Obama removed the work requirement for welfare … think about how that will affect the welfare doles.  Case in point: After the Obama Administration suspended the work requirement from the food stamp program in 2009, the number of people on food stamps doubled.

3. The more people who are on the government dole, the better it is for Democrats.  They enable you to become dependent on the government and then hold your check hostage in exchange for your vote.

4. Cloward-Piven Strategy.

So which candidate plans to do something about this growth in welfare spending that we can no longer afford?  According to the Heritage Foundation, “According to the President’s budget plans for fiscal year 2013, means-tested welfare will not decline as the recession ends, but will continue to grow rapidly for the next decade. Overall, President Obama plans to spend $12.7 trillion on means-tested welfare over the next decade.” 

Guess that pretty much answers that one.  Obama anticipates adding more people to the government dole.  How does he intend to pay for this?  Probably by taxing rich people!  But wait, I thought taxes from rich people were supposed to go toward deficit reduction?  Maybe Obama will use his “Washington math” to pay for welfare increases and decrease the deficit, all with the same money!