Ask any budget expert in Washington to explain the ballooning deficit and debt, and Social Security and Medicare will be high on the list of causes. That’s wrong. The real driver, the elephant in the room, is means-tested social-welfare spending—Medicaid, food stamps, refundable tax credits, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, federal housing subsidies and almost 100 other programs whose eligibility is limited to those below an income threshold.

True, Social Security and Medicare are a drain on general revenue and will become big fiscal problems if not reformed. But they aren’t the major source of our current fiscal crisis, because both are financed in large part by dedicated payroll taxes. Since its inception, Social Security has produced cash surpluses 60% of the time. In 2023 Social Security payroll taxes funded 88.9% of benefits. The cost of Social Security’s Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance program, net of payroll tax collections, was only $88.1 billion. Medicare payroll taxes and premiums funded 49.7% of Medicare expenditures, producing a net cost of $509 billion.

Means-tested social-welfare spending totaled $1.6 trillion in 2023. Welfare spending now absorbs an astonishing 72.6% of unobligated general revenue (total revenue net of Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes and premiums and mandatory interest on the public debt) and is larger than the claims against unobligated general revenue by Social Security (4.1%), Medicare (23.5%) and defense (37.2%) combined.

Since funding for the War on Poverty ramped up in 1967, welfare payments received by the average work-age household in the bottom quintile of income recipients has risen from $7,352 in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars to $64,700 in 2022, the last year with available household income data. This 780% increase was 9.2 times the rise in income earned by the average American household.

Years after the adoption of the reforms, the number of program beneficiaries had fallen dramatically, the labor-force participation rate of never-married mothers had increased, and child poverty had declined. State-imposed work requirements for food-stamp eligibility in Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri and Florida have thus far also been successful.

Demand for reform would be even stronger if the public understood how generous social-welfare benefits are. In reporting household income, the Census Bureau doesn’t count 88% of transfer payments made to households that are defined as being poor. The census doesn’t count refundable tax credits (for which the beneficiary receives a check from the Treasury), food-stamp debit cards, free medical care through Medicaid, or benefits from about 100 other federal transfer payments as income to welfare recipients. When those benefits are counted as income, 80% of those who are today counted as being poor are no longer poor, and almost half have incomes equivalent to American middle-income earners.

A mandatory welfare work requirement for able-bodied adults receiving welfare benefits, a requirement that the Census Bureau count all transfer payments as income, and a mandate that all federal agencies use the same income measure when determining eligibility for welfare would be major steps toward righting the nation’s finances.

Requiring all able-bodied Americans to work as a condition for receiving welfare would do more than reduce the deficit. It would bring people back into the economy, the source of prosperity and economic independence. A job is the best nutrition, housing, healthcare, education, child-care and general welfare program. That welfare reform isn’t a major issue in the November elections is a missed opportunity to improve the well-being of low-income families and the overall economic health of the nation.

Mr. Gramm, a former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Arrington, a Texas Republican, is chairman of the House Budget Committee. John Early and Mike Solon contributed to this article.

The mindless drivel that is daytime “self-help” TV often leaves people with the impression that their parents are to blame for many of their problems. I suspect it’s a lot more complicated than that, and, by the way, the vapid banality of daytime TV is NOT the place to go looking for help.

The truth is simple: You are responsible for your actions. You’ll be hard-pressed to hear that on daytime TV, but the fact is that you are not responsible for the actions of your parents. Parents can shape some of your thinking, but I cringe when people say, “When I’m faced with a problem, I tell myself I’m stupid. I can’t help it.” This “self-talk” had to start somewhere, and the unpleasant fact is that it most likely began with a parent.

And it works both ways. Some emerge from childhood with a sense that “I’m special, I’m great.” That’s fine, but young people with this attitude are sometimes convinced that things should come easier than they do. They’re surprised when it doesn’t work out that way. They now have to cope with the real world, in spite of the emotional cheering from their parents.

As we approach young adulthood, we are able to examine our parents’ (and our own) beliefs and attitudes to the extent that they could be mistaken. The sooner a young adult starts this process, the better. They can stand back and ask questions like, “What do I think of my family? How did they train me to think about myself and the world? Where do I agree — and disagree — with them?” It’s called introspection, and it’s essential.

Is it your fault that you might hold mistaken beliefs encouraged by your parents? No. Is it your fault that you never looked closely at these beliefs and questioned them? Yes! You’re never too old to introspect.

We’re fortunate to live in a society of constant innovation. The same attitude applies to our lives. Don’t be afraid to try new things. Don’t let yourself coast along on stale assumptions that may be just plain wrong. I know that sounds like common sense, but when somebody feels stuck, they often assume that change is not an option. I see this happen as people get older, and it’s a shame.

Of course, not all change is automatically good. But to routinely rule out major life changes until you’re miserable is not a reasonable solution. Beware of what I like to call “silent premises” that reveal themselves as the automatic self-talk I mentioned earlier. They can lurk back there in your mind, and many of them can be dead wrong.

One example of a particularly insidious silent premise is the underlying belief that, “I’m such a klutz! I can’t figure anything out.” If you can’t figure something out, then move on and try the next best thing. Look a little closer, perhaps, or ask somebody. People often ask me about the central purpose of cognitive therapy. I see it as encouraging people to develop a more positive, “can do” attitude about real, everyday things by believing that there’s a solution for every problem.

Sadly, a lot of emotional damage is done to children in their early years. Much of this damage is unintentional, but many of us emerge from childhood with less confidence in our ability to solve problems than we deserve to have. There’s no purpose in dwelling on who did the damage; what’s done is done. It’s more important to concentrate on the business of restoring that confidence.

Look at the natural happiness, optimism and easy resilience of a young child. This is their natural state. Unhappily, it takes an adult to undo it. But we CAN put it back. It all boils down to attitude. We can’t choose our parents or our childhoods, but we can choose our adult outlooks and beliefs.

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Leftists like to rule, but also to be ruled. First with Joe, and now with Kamala, we have unspeakably bad candidates. These very candidates were rejected overwhelmingly by leftists themselves, back when they still voted in primaries. Yet now, they regard Kamala as a deity. Clearly, it doesn’t matter who rules them. It doesn’t matter if the puppet ruling them is a demented goon or a high priced whore.

Leftists are willfully gullible. They loathe the rational mind and all its byproducts. Terrorists of the spirit, leftists trudge on a perpetual rampage against living in the material world. Yet, in the end, they have no idea what they want. Their quest to rule others reveals their inability to rule themselves. Which is why they eschew freedom, capitalism, (real) scientific knowledge and all else that makes life on earth worthwhile and possible.

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I will give this to ABC News: No pretense. They are ALL IN for the Party. They might not BE state-run media; but they act EXACTLY like state-run media in a totalitarian country. Except they don’t have the excuse of fear of imprisonment. It’s the most sickening display I have ever witnessed.

These wretched, pseudosophisticated “journalistic” morons willingly act as shills for a regime that aims to be the most controlling, toxic and destructive force in the history of nations.

Puppet Commie Kamala’s strategy for the debate in a nutshell: Pretend she has never said or done all the things she has always said and done. Say the opposite. Call you a liar if you point to her prior statements and actions — such as an executive order demanding gun confiscation, as just one example.

Count on enough people being gullible and inattentive enough to buy it.

If America actually falls for it, then America frankly deserves to die.

Hopefully Puppet Commie Kamala will not win, because it’s truly over, if she does.

“America Decides,” says state media ABC News. Really? What if the entrenched, corrupt criminals counting the votes in Uniparty Atlanta, Phoenix and Philadelphia decide something different from what most Americans want? Will you report on any of that, ABC News?

Commie Kamala: Health care is not a right. The minute you make a product or service a right, you enslave the people who are to provide it. That’s why Communism and socialism always fail, and are always morally wrong.

Last night, President Trump debated both ABC state media and Commie Kamala. Kamala could have left the stage. ABC News state media did her job for her. All she had to do was smirk and look perpetually surprised. She is intellectually hollow and lethally superficial. Trump still held his own and won, again and again. He is nearly 80 and was shot just 6 weeks ago. I have never seen energy and determination like this, not in our present era. This man is one for the ages.

Commie Kamala: You are strong only at one thing: The annihilation of America and its freedom.

Terrorists WILL flourish under Kamala. She is one of them, and takes care of them.

Israel has a right to defend itself…just not with military weapons. Right, Commie Kamala?

Commie Kamala: The “world leaders” telling you they hate Trump are global Communists, like yourself.

Good grief, Commie Kamala: If Trump rallies are so dull, why do thousands keep showing up? Where are your rallies, Kamala?

Commie Kamala: A country with unlimited abortion rights AND ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER RIGHTS is NOT a free country.

Commie Kamala outraged over criminalization of doctors on abortion. What about doctors opposing the vax mandate?

Earth to ABC and Commie Kamala: “My body, my choice” applies to EVERYTHING!

Tariffs will not bankrupt America, ABC. SPENDING INTO OBLIVION AND INFLATING THE CURRENCY WILL.

Unity? I have NOTHING in common with you or your kind, Kamala. Our differences are vast enough to fill a galaxy.

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Why Get Help?

I don’t want democracy.

Democracy means the majority rules over individual rights. Democracy means my idiot neighbor can vote away my right to free speech, to private property, to my income, my right to worship (or not worship) as I see fit, and my right to bear arms.

“Majority rule” (in a Constitutional republic, like the USA) presupposes that we may only vote into office people who will uphold our Bill of Rights. Nobody has a right to vote in a Communist, a fascist, a socialist, a Muslim totalitarian or anyone else who will obliterate my sovereign right over my own life, mind and destiny. Nearly everyone running for or holding national office today is an unlawful tyrant. Donald Trump stands as one of the very few exceptions.

If you don’t believe in freedom, it’s your prerogative to believe whatever you wish. If you do not wish to be free, that’s your problem. But you have no right to make your problem an excuse to legalize and legitimize my involuntary servitude. At some point, I simply will not take it anymore. Millions of us feel the same way. And our entirely justified anger is growing.

I am proud to be an enemy of democracy. Not because I oppose freedom, but because I grasp what freedom actually is. I wish more people did.

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Yes They Can. Yes, They Will.

We already have the precedent for gun confiscation. It was the Bush administration, during 2005 after Hurricane Katrina. The video shows it all. The guns were eventually returned, but only after people where throttled and injured in their homes by invading police forces. They were told it was a special exception — due to the emergency. Don’t you have even more of a need to protect yourself during an emergency like Katrina? Isn’t that the time when the 2nd Amendment is even MORE relevant than normal? It’s beyond madness.

Kamala has already warned us. She changes her positions day to day (though not on gun confiscation, yet.) When running in 2020, she said (it’s on the video) that we should have national gun confiscation, in the form of mandatory buybacks. This means you turn in your guns — all of them — and the government pays you something. If not, the police come to your home. She said she won’t wait for legislation and she’ll do it by executive order. The damage to America (even if the guns are later returned, which we know they won’t be) would be irreparable. It could start our second civil war.

So if you’re trying to show your friends how virtuous you are by voting for Kamala instead of voting for Trump, think about what you might be starting.

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How can so many voters LOVE Harris when they have NO idea what she stands for, no idea how she conducts herself, or what character she has or lacks? I realize the loathing that some feel toward Donald Trump is so deep-rooted that they will vote for anyone but Trump. In the case of Hollywood leftists, they loathe Trump, but also anyone who’s not a Communist totalitarian, like themselves. So why don’t they just admit it? “I will vote for a rock in my yard, or the remains of roadkill in the street. Just so it’s not a Republican, not a conservative and not Trump.” Instead, they pretend to believe Kamala is the Second Coming when they’ve barely heard her utter one coherent thought. These fools are not just mindless idiots; they’re DISHONEST mindless idiots.

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If Trump is anything other than massively ahead (even with rigged polls) then something must be deeply wrong with this country.

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Posted on Facebook by Allen Miller: Re: Israel needs no new laws to justify terminating terrorists. It does need courage, however. FTA:
No, terrorists are not protected by the Geneva Conventions, which are intended to protect individuals during armed conflicts. The Geneva Conventions consider terrorists to be “unlawful combatants” and do not apply to them.

Members of the Gvura Forum converged on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem on Monday to protest against a general strike called by the Histadrut labor federation following the Israel Defense Forces’ recovery over the weekend of six hostage bodies from the Gaza Strip.

“We call on the prime minister not to give up to [Hamas terror chief Yahya] Sinwar and instead to keep up military pressure to achieve total victory,” Yehoshua Shani, a member of the forum whose son, IDF Capt. Ori Shani, was killed in action at Kissufim on Oct. 7, told the Jewish News Syndicate.  

“Our heart is with the families of the hostages who were killed by Hamas and not the government of Israel, which needs to do everything possible to bring the hostages back while at the same time destroying Hamas and ending terror,” Shani continued.

Captives Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23; Eden Yerushalmi, 24; Almog Sarusi, 25; Alexander Lobanov, 32; Carmel Gat, 40; and Master Sgt. Ori Danino, 25, whose bodies were recovered from a Rafah tunnel in southern Gaza overnight Saturday, were shot multiple times at close range shortly before their discovery.

Israelis reacted with anger, and many blamed the Netanyahu government for Hamas’ refusal to accept a U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal, one that Jerusalem has accepted.

An estimated 30,000 people protested in Tel Aviv on Sunday, demanding the government secure the hostages.

The Histadrut, representing roughly 800,000 Israeli trade unionists, declared a 24-hour general strike starting at 6 a.m. Monday. Ben Gurion International Airport halted departures, initially from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Hospitals moved to reduce operations. Ports offloaded only expendable items and medical supplies.

The Tel Aviv Labor Court subsequently ordered the strike to end at 2:30 p.m., with the court’s president calling the economic shutdown “political.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir stopped by the rally on Monday, stating, “We are using our power in the government to prevent a reckless deal. With Hamas you need to speak only between gunsights.”

On Sunday, Netanyahu said he was “outraged to the depths” of his soul by the murder of the six hostages and blamed Hamas for blocking a cease-fire agreement.

“Our efforts to free our hostages are continuing constantly. Since December, Hamas has refused to hold genuine negotiations,” he said.

“Three months ago, on May 27, Israel agreed to a hostage-release deal with full backing from the United States. Hamas refused. Even after the United States updated the deal framework on Aug. 16, we agreed, and Hamas again refused.”

“Whoever murders hostages does not want a deal,” continued Netanyahu. “For our part, we will not relent. The government of Israel is committed, and I am personally committed, to continue striving toward a deal that will return all of our hostages and ensure our security and our existence.”

While the Hostage and Missing Families Forum has accused Netanyahu of abandoning the captives, the Tikva Forum on Sunday called on the government to end months of indirect negotiations with Hamas. 

“Hamas has actually started to kill people directly to raise the pressure on the government to enter a deal on its conditions,” Shimon Or, the uncle of captive Avinatan Or and a member of the Tikva Forum, told JNS.

“We knew that Hamas was a murderous terror organization, but they are now killing during negotiations. This represents a change in their strategy,” he continued.

“Hamas anticipated that instead of blaming the killers, the Israeli people would put the responsibility on the government, which actually wants to bring back the hostages,” he added. 

Regarding the Israeli Security Cabinet vote last week in support of Netanyahu’s stance of maintaining an IDF presence in the Philadelphi Corridor on Gaza’s border with Egypt, Or stressed that such a position will save lives. 

“Keeping troops in the corridor ensures that Hamas will not rearm in Gaza, and so there will not be another Oct. 7,” he said. “The government didn’t go to war for nothing; we went to war keep the whole country safe.”

“There cannot be a situation where the government gives up clauses in any deal that are essential to keeping the Israeli people and the country safe once the hostages are back,” he continued. 

“We are demanding from Prime Minister Netanyahu that he stop negotiating and makes sure Hamas knows that it will no longer exist,” Or said.

Republished with permission from Jewish News Syndicate

Read more: Gaza Hostage Families to Israeli Government: Destroy Hamas | Newsmax.com

CNN was the lucky winner of the first sit-down media interview with Vice President Kamala Harris since she was pushed to the top of the ticket nearly forty days ago and, well, it didn’t go great.

It was not a particularly long interview. Internet rumors suggested it would be about eighteen minutes in totality and that it had been pre-recorded, which implied edits. While the interview was a bit longer than that and Dana Bash confirmed nothing was cut, we still got only about sixteen minutes of speaking time from Kamala. This was made more obvious by CNN’s decision to stretch it like pizza dough to fit an hour-long broadcast.

They opened with a nearly five-minute teaser video that came across like an ad for the Harris campaign, with Bash calling the interview a “watershed moment” in the election. Throughout the hour they took several commercial breaks, teased unaired portions of the interview and aired other pre-packaged videos.

CNN should have demanded more time from Kamala and when they didn’t get it, they should have aired the interview in its entirety at one time so viewers could easily recognize how strict the campaign was on access to the candidate. A bolder network would have done so.

Dana Bash’s initial questioning of Kamala was not wholly offensive; she asked Kamala what she would do on day one as president, about the massive shifts in her policy positions since 2019, about the current state of the economy and voters’ feelings that it was better under Trump, why she hasn’t accomplished in the past three and a half years the things she says she wants to accomplish in the next four and if she stands by her positive assessment of President Joe Biden after his debate against Trump. She also asked Walz about his misrepresentation of his service record and his wife’s fertility treatments.

But there were so many missed opportunities for follow-ups. Kamala claimed she had changed her position on fracking between 2019 and 2020, that she had “made clear” on the vice presidential debate stage in 2020 where she stood on the issue. In reality, she shared Biden’s position during the debate, not her own. “Joe Biden will not end fracking. He has been very clear about that,” she said at the time.

Bash did not press her on how she managed to go from thinking illegal immigration should be decriminalized and that ICE is comparable to the KKK to thinking we should enforce our nation’s border laws. Bash did not point out that, when asked if Bidenomics was a success, Kamala did not specifically say that it was.

Her attempts to ask tough questions of Walz similarly fell flat. She reduced Walz’s misstatements about his military record to one moment when he said he carried weapons in war; he also, though, continues to claim the wrong rank and has been introduced by others numerous times without correction as a combat veteran. Bash let Walz off easy when he explained it away as being an emotional guy who sometimes used “bad grammar.” Walz claimed that people he has served with have vouched for him, but plenty of his fellow service-members also criticized him and called him out for abandoning their unit ahead of a deployment.

Finally, Bash decided to spend the last few minutes of her already short interview playing footsie. She brought up a clip of Tim Walz’s son, Gus — “a star was born” — cheering for him at the convention and asked the governor to react to it. She referred to an “iconic photo” of Kamala’s grandniece watching her speak at the convention and asked Kamala what it meant to her. It was essentially a journalistic apology to the candidates for any tough questions she had asked earlier.

Aesthetically, the interview was a complete mess. The shot location was drab and looked like an office board room. Kamala was tucked in the back of the shot with Bash in the foreground, which made Kamala look small and insignificant. When the camera zoomed into Kamala’s face, you could see Bash shuffling her papers just above the chyron. The lighting washed everyone out (and it didn’t help that the warm-toned Harris chose a slate gray suit). Kamala had a water cup sitting directly under her chair in the center of the shot.

After the interview, CNN did its typical analysis. They had two panels during the next hour of programming, both of which had four liberal commentators facing off against one conservative. If you include host Abby Phillip — which you should, since she called Harris a “homework doer,” despite past staffers telling Politico she unequivocally did not do her homework — it was six against one.

For the Harris campaign, this was certainly by design. Bash was a great choice to attempt to give the interview legitimacy as she has the veneer of objectivity and is coming off a good performance at the presidential debate. But they knew Bash would never truly hold Kamala accountable. That’s just not the way it goes between Democrats and CNN.

Amber Duke, The Spectator