Socialism has been a part of our government structure since FDR who was the first president to introduce social programs in the nineteen hundreds. Let’s take a look back into his history and see some of the social programs instituted by him and other past presidents.
In the first New Deal, FDR introduced the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) which allowed the government to buy up surplus food and at the same time tax the food processing companies only to have the money given back to the farmers, which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. This act was later revised and approved. FDR gave us Social Security in the second New Deal which was the first modern welfare system to protect the elderly, unemployed and children. It actually was a safety net that worked for some time until our robber baron politicians decided to raid it to fill budget gaps.
In the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson who was the proponent and champion of the “Great Society” program brought us Medicare which became part of the Social Security program. The only problem is that Johnson not knowing how to get the money to fund this new program raided the Social Security retirement fund to fund his new Medicare program. He also took substantial sums to help finance the Viet Nam War. He was not alone in draining funds from what were supposed to be a “Lock Box” for Social Security retirement benefits. Other Presidents were complicit in raiding Social Security to finance various projects and wars; President Reagan in 1980 and President Bush in 2000. So if you want to know how well socialistic programs work one only has to take a look at Social Security.
According to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, since the Johnson Administration, almost $15 trillion has been spent on welfare, with poverty rates being about the same as during the Johnson Administration. Most of the Great Society program was designed to fight LBJ’s War on Poverty, the total cost of which has been the sum of $22 trillion in current dollars, as reckoned by the Heritage Foundation. Social programs may have a limited benefit to the recipients but what it does is increase the size of government far beyond that which our forefathers ever envisioned. With the inclusion of Medicaid, the overall spending on welfare totaled $732 billion in fiscal year 2016 and $729 billion in 2017. This represents 19% of the spending in the entire federal government.
All of these programs Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, Chip, and many others were supposed to help people but most of them did nothing but increase the national debt and cause higher taxes for everyone. Socialists programs don’t work because they are run by the government and are inefficient and wasteful. The Government controls the purse strings and along with that we find more corruption in social programs than any others. When the government runs social programs it makes sure it directs whatever it can to take care of the people who pay for their campaigns. It is no different with the Medicaid Expansion Referendum passed last year in a very expensive campaign funded by the very people who will most benefit from this horribly expensive and ineffective program the medical community and organizations like AARP. They sold this program as the best thing since sliced bread but what it will eventually turn out to be is a lot of burnt toast with the taxpayers footing a bill that will eventually bust our budget.
My concern about socialism in America is not so much for the politicians like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Burnie Sanders but for the gullible people who elect these politicians to office under the belief that they will get something for nothing. The fallacy of socialism is that politicians will promise you one thing and deliver something very different. One only has to read the propaganda from the fake media who lie to support these politicians and their dumb and wasteful programs. Problem is once they have control the people have little or no recourse but to succumb to the governments will if they want to eat, have a roof over their heads and get medical care.
America was founded on freedom in everything we do but once you allow the government to take control of your life the party is over and so is your freedom. So when you hear the government tell you something is free, beware about what it will eventually cost you in the end. A perfect example is Obamacare. You can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan and the cost will be $2,500 less and we all know how that turned out. Remember nothing is for free including our freedom as it was paid for by the thousands who have paid the ultimate price defending it. Everything has a cost.
“We Get the Government We Deserve”
