Grant Shapps Quotes

I am angry about the mammoth, out-of-control social welfare entitlement programs from Washington, D.C., that were supposed to solve our problems. The obvious truth is these impractical, politically motivated programs have irreparably damaged the fabric of our black society and community.

I don't want to remember 2005 as a year that the government heaped unnecessary burdens upon American families. Stealing from the poor and middle class and giving to the rich, while increasing the deficit, is hardly responsible.

After years of piecemeal reform the current welfare system is complex and unfair.

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.

Bribing rich people to help poor people, rather than helping poor people directly, is a popular approach because the cost of tax breaks doesn't show up on the government books.

Working people of this country want economic security. The worst possible thing you can do for those families is bust the public finances, have some welfare system this country can't afford.

When economist William Beveridge dreamed up the postwar welfare state he wanted to fight five 'giant evils' - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. Fast forward 65 years and it seems the last New Labour government grew an Unfair State that fuelled - not fought - one of those evils: idleness.

Welfare's just one of the problems Labour failed to tackle when they were in government.

This administration is cutting the programs that our Nation and its citizens need most, while dissolving the safety nets created to protect the elderly and less fortunate in this wealthy Nation.

You cannot tackle Britain's debts without tackling the unreformed welfare system.

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

I am in favor of reducing all budget items. But the item I don't want to reduce is the pension expenditure because it affects the weakest part of society.

Social Security has not contributed to the deficit problem.

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 issue I highlight in the book is welfare reform.

We are afraid to face the hard questions. We are willing to tackle drugs, crime, and public education only if it doesn't cost us any new taxes.

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.

I've seen it with my own eyes: When government takes money from the poor and the middle class, everyone suffers.

The welfare system in the United States is vile.

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

We spend billions of pounds on welfare, yet millions are trapped on welfare. It's not worth their while going into work.

The worst thing we could do is impose time limits and then expect people to sink or swim once they move off welfare.

If we are going to get a single mother off welfare and make her work, we should certainly make the private corporations contribute to the effort by giving up the over $1 Trillion of corporate welfare.

Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city's disinherited.

I don't think they [Congress] ought to balance their budget on the backs of the poor.