Washington, DC - Thanks to tax reform, deregulation and America’s can-do spirit, our economy is strong. Unemployment is at its lowest level since 2000, wages are rising, and businesses are bringing jobs back to the United States. Despite these tremendous economic gains, we have yet to unlock America’s full potential.
While America is now experiencing record low unemployment, our country still struggles from nearly record-high welfare enrollment.
Too many Americans remain on the sidelines of our economy. Today, a record 28 million able-bodied adults receive Medicaid, a 400 percent increase since 2000. More than 43 percent of all households receiving federal housing assistance are headed by an able-bodied adult. And in 2016, more than 16 million able-bodied adults received food stamps.
Our social safety net exists to protect low-income families from poverty and hardship, and to help people get back on their feet. Despite all the good intentions, our nation’s welfare system continues to encourage a culture of dependency rather than self-sufficiency.
Thanks to tax reform, deregulation and America’s can-do spirit, our economy is strong. Unemployment is at its lowest level since 2000, wages are rising, and businesses are bringing jobs back to the United States. Despite these tremendous economic gains, we have yet to unlock America’s full potential.
While America is now experiencing record low unemployment, our country still struggles from nearly record-high welfare enrollment.
Too many Americans remain on the sidelines of our economy. Today, a record 28 million able-bodied adults receive Medicaid, a 400 percent increase since 2000. More than 43 percent of all households receiving federal housing assistance are headed by an able-bodied adult. And in 2016, more than 16 million able-bodied adults received food stamps.
Our social safety net exists to protect low-income families from poverty and hardship, and to help people get back on their feet. Despite all the good intentions, our nation’s welfare system continues to encourage a culture of dependency rather than self-sufficiency.
As a child growing up with a single mother in Detroit, I witnessed the corrosive effect of welfare dependency on my extended family and many of our neighbors. Luckily for me, my mother understood that the power of education could free us from this dependency. Working multiple jobs, she refused to be bound by government programs that locked us into our lot in life.
Although my mother grew up in poverty and attained very little formal education, she believed that any path to success is built upon the books she encouraged me and my brother to read and the work ethic she instilled in me.
