And the more who go on the dole, the more the shrinking number of taxpayers have to support - and that means higher taxes.

The societal problems which have led to multi-generational families on welfare, or always in line for Toys for Tots while on a cellphone/IPOD, or sporting a $100 set of painted nails, or recently decorated with $1,000 worth of body art, are not going to be corrected by making welfare a "right."

We complain that unemployment is rising, but we still have over 10 million "undocumented" workers - and if you replaced them with the current US citizens who are unemployed, we'd have a ZERO unemployment rate.

The stock market is back at the same level as when the Dot.Com's tanked. It hasn't gotten worse than that, and the world survived without the US going $1Trillion+ further in debt.

Helping those who have found themselves in dire straights is an American tradition. Subsidizing families for generations only because the agencies which dispense the money need to keep a case-rate at a certain high to justify the jobs of the case workers and the agency itself seems what has happened. And what is to insure that when the "problems" have dissipated, that the government agencies and workers put in place to dispense this generation of funds will ever go away. Or will we have more give-aways in the future because we can't get rid of the give-away staff?