Stephen Moore Quotes

I don't believe in welfare.

Today we are ending welfare as we know it.

I’m really not concerned about the very poor. They have a safety net.

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.

I understand welfare because I lived it. I understand the difference between a want and a need. The Republican Party promised to bring welfare change. We must deliver on this promise.

And I have a plan to do even better, to end welfare as we know it

Compassion is good but politicians have turned compassion into the welfare state.

The issue I highlight in the book is welfare reform.

The fundamental flaw in Social Security and Medicare is that they violate the 'welfare principle' in economics. The welfare principle forms the fundamental basis of all charitable work in churches and other private organizations: assist those who need help, and equally important, don't assist individuals who can take care of themselves.

Welfare is hated by those who administer it, mistrusted by those who pay for it and held in contempt by those who receive it.

Americans oppose public intervention or regulation if it helps others, but favor it if it helps them — take social security, disaster relief, public works projects, for example.

What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. In so far as they fail, they receive the money; in so far as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away.

Even in the United States, 'you have a sort of welfare state, even if you don't want to admit it -- you don't allow people to die on the street.

Is our national goal to place as many people on welfare, food stamp support, as we can possibly put on that program? Is that our goal? Is that a moral vision for the United States of America, just to see how many people we can place in a situation where they're dependent on the federal government for their food?

I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I'll fix it.

We shouldn't turn the safety net into a hammock. It should actually be a safety net.

And he said that 47%-that's pretty high-47% of Americans are basically welfare bums who are mooching off the government. And then he said, 'My job is not to worry about those people.' You know, where do people get this stuff that Mitt Romney is a heartless, calculating c**ksucker?

I have been very outspoken in my opposition to cuts in what I would call the means-tested entitlement programs: Medicaid, food stamps, and all of that. I feel very, very strongly that those cuts as proposed are unjust, but I am not prepared to label Ronald Reagan a "sinner."It seems to me that when you invoke the adjective "moral" you must be careful to distinguish what it is you mean by that.

You know where nice people end up? On welfare.

It's not the job of government to help the poor. The church is the mechanism that God put on earth to help the poor.

The United States has more people living in poverty than at almost any time in the modern history of our country. I believe that in a democratic, civilized society none of our people should be hungry or living in desperation. We need to expand Social Security, not cut it. We need to increase funding for nutrition programs, not cut them.

I'm a part of the GOP and let me tell you what my stance is. My stance is that, we the people have the responsibility to take care of the indigent in our society. It's not the government's job. You can read the Constitution all you want, it never says that it is the government's job and I think where we've gotten confused.

To remedy the frequent distresses of the common people, the poor laws of England have been instituted; but it is to be feared that though they may have alleviated a little the intensity of individual misfortune, they have spread the general evil over a much larger surface.

What Clinton severed with his welfare reform was the obligation of the federal government to step in when the states failed and to monitor these programs.

Welfare makes you dependent upon someone to take care of you.