Government Dependence Is Back With A Vengeance

Conn Carroll / October 28, 2010

Rasmussen Reports released poll results yesterday showing that 23% of Americans say they receive some form of cash benefits from the government. This is remarkably close to the truth. As The Heritage Foundation’s 2010 Index of Dependence on Government documents, 21% of the total U.S. population (64.3 million people) receive some level of assistance from dependence-creating federal programs.

Contrast that with the United States in 1962, before President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Pverty, when only 11.7% of the population (21.7 million people) were dependent on the government. Once federal programs are created they almost always grow. As the chart to the right shows, only after welfare reform in the 1990s did the percentage of Americans dependent on the government fall. But now its coming back. The Heritage Foundation’s Director of Center for Data Analysis Bill Beach writes: (more…)