Obama vs. God on Work and Welfare by Jan LaRue over at American Thinker
President Obama produced political tremors last week when he said in Roanoke that individual success comes from government so we need to give back by paying higher taxes. Combined with his executive order allowing states to opt out of requiring work for welfare, it's a 10 on the Richter scale.
Contrary to Obama's spinners, he wasn't taken out of context. If it was a gaffe, he got stuck on stupid by repeating, "look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own." His only "gaffe" was revealing his inner socialist.
The day before Obama's "you didn't build it" speech, he instructed Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to allow the states to exempt welfare recipients from work requirements under the bipartisan 1996 welfare reform act, "Temporary Assistance for Needy Families" (TANF), signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton. The exemption is clearly a violation of TANF and other federal statutes. Obama's order is one more of his several infringements of congressional authority.
Obama hasn't explained why, since government "built" the welfare system, he's exempting recipients from giving back by working. It makes sense if his goal is fundamentally transforming the United States into a welfare state. It would explain why Obama's Department of Agriculture is pushing more people to sign up for food stamps, which are now handed out to more than 46 million people, a 50 percent increase since 2008.
Here's a better idea: In addition to enforcing work requirements on those who are able, condition welfare and unemployment benefits on "paying it forward." As soon as recipients are gainfully employed, require them to begin repaying benefits based on their income level. This won't work, of course, unless the benefits end at some point.
Obama tries to justify his progressive agenda with Scripture, such as when he misapplied "my brother's keeper" to support wealth redistribution. He doesn't have a prayer aligning his welfare-without-work order with the Apostle Paul's admonition: "If anyone isn't willing to work, he should not eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
Paul, unlike Obama, is consistent with Moses, who required the needy to work for their welfare: "When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap all the way to the edge of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the foreign resident; I am Yahweh your God" (Leviticus 23:22).
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/07/obama_vs_god_on_work_and_welfare.html#ixzz21MQWCCGa
