Tag Archives: Welfare

News

Obama administration believes that traditional marriage is unconstitutional

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From CNS News.

Excerpt:

The Justice Department has announced that it will no longer defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) because the president and Attorney General Eric Holder now believe the law is unconstitutional.

“After careful consideration, including review of a recommendation from me, the President of the United States has made the determination that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”), 1 U.S.C. § 7, as applied to same-sex couples who are legally married under state law, violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment,” Holder wrote in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) Wednesday.

Section 3 of DOMA is the portion of the law that defines marriage as between one man and one woman. Obama and Holder now support the claims of the law’s opponents that the traditional definition of marriage violates the Constitution.

Holder explained that he and Obama felt that the government could not defend the traditional definition of marriage as a rational distinction in federal court, saying that any morality-based defense of DOMA would amount to “animus” and “stereotype-based thinking” that the Constitution prohibits.

“The [legislative] record contains numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships – precisely the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus the Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against,” Holder wrote.

In other words, because Congress enacted DOMA for moral reasons, the Obama administration will not defend it, because it thinks those moral reasons amount to “animus” towards homosexuals.

Holder said that Obama had decided that the traditional definition of marriage could not be defended from charges that it is not discriminatory, given what Holder said was a “history” of anti-homosexual discrimination.

“After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the President has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a heightened standard of scrutiny,” Holder said.

“The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional,” he added.

Congress, as the author of DOMA, can still defend the law in federal court.

It’s so strange to me that so many of the people who voted for Obama aspire to marriage and claim to love children. But they support the Democrat party that undermines marriage in so many ways. From subsidies for single mothers, to no-fault divorce, to opposition to shared-parenting laws, to supporting recreational pre-marital sex, to supporting same-sex marriage… Obama and the Democrats are opposed to traditional marriage. They do not believe in a lifelong commitment of one man and one woman, and a stable environment in which to raise children. They believe in feminism. They believe in big government. They believe in easy no-fault divorce. They believe in single motherhood and sole custody of children for the mother. They believe in sex education. They believe in subsidized abortion. They believe in normalizing the homosexual lifestyle (with the higher rates of promiscuity and domestic violence it entails). They believe in making people feel better about living in selfish, risky and costly ways.

Why do these people who vote Democrat expect children to grow up with a mother and a father? Why do they expect men to commit to marriage? After you have undermined every reason for men to choose to marry and become fathers, you don’t then turn around and expect people to marry, do you?

If you are a democrat, then don’t expect that you will be married. If you are a Democrat, then don’t expect to grow up with a father and a mother. If you are a Democrat, then don’t expect your parents to stay married. If life is about recreation and selfishness and having someone else pay for your risky, irresponsible behavior – this is the Democrat platform – then don’t expect to marry. Marriage isn’t free, and it doesn’t happen without the right conditions. If you are a Democrat, you destroyed marriage. Everything the Democrats stand for is anti-marriage. Democrats are anti-marriage. If you vote Democrat, then you are anti-marriage. You are causing the decline of marriage. And you are hurting children who need a mother and father.

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News

Democrat lawmakers flee state to avoid voting on spending cuts

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Video from Gateway Pundit.

Story from the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

Democratic lawmakers fled the state in an effort to torpedo a closely watched vote on what would be the nation’s first major overhaul of union laws in years, as government workers flooded the statehouse for a third day seeking to block passage of the bill.

Surrounded by thousands of tightly packed protesters, including teachers who had been encouraged by union leaders to show up in force, state senators gathered around 11 a.m. to vote on Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to limit collective-bargaining rights for most state employees.

The governor’s proposal, part of a bill aimed at overcoming a $137 million deficit in the current budget and a projected $3.6 billion hole in the next two years, would allow collective bargaining on wages, but not pensions and health care. Workers would be required to pay more for both.

But a roll call revealed that the 14 Senate Democrats were absent, leaving the chamber short of the 20 votes needed to conduct business.

[…]Late Thursday, Gov. Walker, who could hear chanting every time he opened his office door, blasted the Democrats’ move as a “stunt” and urged them to return to vote on what he called as a “bold political move but a modest, modest proposal” that would preserve benefits for public employees that remained “better than what most people are getting across the state.”

The extraordinary scene was being followed in statehouses across the country, as a test case of both union clout and the political will of newly elected legislators. Wisconsin was at the front edge of voter discontent in 2010, with voters agitated about public spending electing Gov. Walker to succeed Democrat Jim Doyle and handing both houses of the legislature to the GOP.

[…]If the governor’s efforts succeed, other states are expected to try to follow, as governors grapple with deepening deficits. Many new governors in both parties have blamed the states’ fiscal crisis in part on what they say are overly generous benefits and pension obligations granted over many years to organized government workers.

Proposals similar to Gov. Walker’s have been made in New Jersey and Ohio. In Columbus, Ohio, thousands gathered Thursday to protest a Republican proposal that would eliminate collective-bargaining rights for many of that state’s 400,000 public-sector workers.

[…]Gov. Walker first introduced his “budget repair” bill just a week ago, setting off the firestorm that has swept the Capitol. Besides limiting collective-bargaining right for most workers—excepting police, firefighters and others involved in public safety—it would require government workers, who currently contribute little or nothing to their pensions, to contribute 5.8% of their pay to pensions, and pay at least 12.6% of health-care premiums, up from an average of 6%.

In exchange, Gov. Walker has pledged no layoffs or furloughs for the state’s 170,000 public employees. He has said 5,500 state jobs and 5,000 local jobs would be saved under his plan, which would save $30 million in the current budget and $300 million in the two-year budget that begins July 1.

The lawmakers are required by law to report to their posts to vote on all legislation, which is why the police were dispatched to locate them.

Here’s what the fuss is about:

Public Sector Benefits
Public Sector Benefits

And Gov. Walker is not the only one trying to stop the massive transfers of wealth from the productive private sector to non-productive public sector.

Excerpt:

Lawmakers around the country are looking at new ways to prevent budget disasters by changing the rules for overburdened state employee pension funds. But they are meeting stiff resistance from public employee unions.

Two Arizona state lawmakers this week, including the speaker of the House, introduced their plan to salvage the state’s budget by significantly changing the public retirement system.

Following the lead of Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., a pair of New Jersey assemblymen on Monday put forth their legislative solution to make solvent a fund that’s $54 billion in the red.

Also on Monday, in his first budget address as governor, Florida’s Rick Scott announced his effort to “stabilize and secure” government employee pensions.

The moves are part of a larger battle over pension reform between conservative budget hawks and government worker unions.

The national debt is currently over 14 trillion, and scheduled to be at 26 trillion by 2021.

Michelle Malkin has a breakdown of teacher salaries and benefits here.

News

155,000 illegal immigrants receiving welfare benefits in the socialist UK

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From the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Verum Serum)

Excerpt:

Tens of thousands of workers with no right to be in Britain have been claiming benefits thanks to an extraordinary loophole in the law.

Ministers have discovered that Labour allowed 155,000 illegal immigrants to qualify for sickness benefits and maternity pay. Government sources put the cost to the public purse at ‘tens of millions of pounds’.

They say the shambles is a damning indictment of how Labour lost control of both the benefits and immigration systems with taxpayers left to foot the bill. Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith will outlaw the practice in welfare reform legislation expected to be unveiled this week.

Ministers believe most of those abusing the system came to work in Britain for a limited period and overstayed their visa. Others managed to get a job without a work permit.

At present, someone could be illegally in the UK and able to claim Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), paid to those too sick to work, as well as statutory payments such as maternity or paternity pay and sick pay.

Astonishingly, the Work and Pensions Department has not in the past asked to see work permits when assessing claims for ESA.

Employers, meanwhile, have not been asked to show proof that workers are in Britain legally when processing claims for maternity or paternity pay or sick pay.

[…]Hundreds of thousands of National Insurance numbers were handed out under Labour to illegal workers as, alarmingly, there was no requirement on JobCentre staff to check whether a person was in the country legally.

[…]However, the European Commission has warned ministers that the rules may infringe the human rights of EU citizens and are ‘not compatible’ with EU law. It has started legal proceedings against Britain to have restrictions on welfare claims by incomers scrapped.

[…]The scale of the welfare challenge facing Britain is laid bare today in figures which show at least 330,000 children – around one in 30 – are growing up with a parent claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance.

The Labour Party is the UK-based equivalent of the Democrat party here, and Democrats also advocate for similar welfare programs for illegal aliens. Here, illegal immigrants get free health care (from emergency rooms, that cannot turn anyone away), free schooling in public schools, and free birthright citizenship. And they get to work without paying any income taxes. It’s a mess. This is being paid for by everyone else who plays by the rules. And all this doesn’t even include the crime problems.

Now consider this article from the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Verum Serum)

Excerpt:

Ministers today faced calls for an inquiry into claims that their open-door immigration policy was designed to make Britain more multicultural and allow Labour to portray the Tories as racists.

A former Labour adviser alleged that the Government opened up Britain’s borders in part to try to humiliate Right-wing opponents of immigration…

The Daily Mail reported on Saturday the controversial claims by Andrew Neather, who worked for Tony Blair and Jack Straw.

He said Labour’s relaxation of immigration controls in 2000 was a deliberate attempt to engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country and plug gaps in the jobs market.

He said the ‘major shift’ in immigration policy was inspired by a 2001 policy paper from the Performance and Innovation Unit, a Downing Street think-tank based in the Cabinet Office…

Ministers were reluctant to discuss the move publicly for fear that it would alienate Labour’s core working-class vote, Mr Neather said. But they hoped it would allow them to paint the Conservatives as xenophobic and out of touch.

‘I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date,’ Mr Neather added.

That’s right. This mess was intentionally created.