Iain Duncan Smith Quotes

I believe welfare makes you lazy and unproductive.

Anyone who doesn't think the welfare-industrial complex is trying to increase dependency isn't paying attention.

Now if you are condemned to life on welfare, I'm not so sure that being in a bigger welfare village is that much better than being in a smaller welfare village.

Giving a poor person money keeps them poor.

Thanks to welfare's Catch-22, families receiving benefits cannot save for the future.

I was once a welfare recipient and am very aware of the successes and failures of this critical safety net. There are those that would have us believe that those receiving TANF benefits are lazy, shiftless, freeloaders who are just sitting around thinking of another way to suckle from the government teat.

We have spent trillions of dollars on welfare, where we put people in bondage so they can't be all that they're capable of being.

We think there are better solutions to fighting poverty because we see what the War on Poverty has produced. It produced tens of trillions of dollars in spending. It has been a 51-year exercise, and yet the poverty rates in America today are not much better than when we started the War on Poverty.

Labour parades compassion for the poor, but it practised casual cruelty by consigning millions to benefits. Yet there's nothing compassionate about being trapped on benefits, being robbed of the dignity of work, and shut out from the choices that brings.

For women who turn to welfare, Big Brother becomes Husband.

If someone believes that living on benefits is a lifestyle choice, then we need to make them think again.

Contrary to what President Obama said in his inaugural address, going on Medicare and food stamps does not strengthen us. Just ask people who are fourth-generation welfare recipients.

The government's War on Poverty has transformed poverty from a short-term misfortune into a career choice.

On the one hand we have got to ask, are there some areas of universal benefits that are no longer affordable? But on the other hand let us look at the issue of dependency where we have trapped people in poverty through the extent of welfare that they have.

The thing I've learned most about poverty is how expensive it is to be poor. It's super easy to pay rent every month if you earn enough to pay rent and have a decent job. It's super hard to pay rent if you need a coupon from the state and then need to go find an apartment that will accept that coupon and only that coupon.

Do we really want a society in which the stigma of going on the dole has been erased?

I was on food stamps until I was 18 and became an adult.

The War on Poverty did not work because it was a war on shame … a war on the family and a war on God.

Poverty breeds a lack of self reliance.

We are told, over and over: "Get off welfare. Cut the umbilical cord to the Government." But when we try and pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, we're slapped back down.

A third of all the children born today will be on welfare.

What is this War on Poverty? Money is going to people in Chicago who are against me.

We don’t want to turn this [social] safety net into a hammock that ends up lulling people in their lives into dependency and complacency.

There are people with no high school education who are poor. but there are also university graduates on food bank lines. There are people who are poor because they have made bad choices, gotten addicted to drugs, burned bridges with friends and family — and then there are people who have never taken a drug in their lives, who have huge social networks, and who still can’t make ends meet.

Most Americans get that there is a need for a safety net in our country, and we support that safety net.