Tim Giago Quotes

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

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.

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.

Safety nets for the poor and disadvantaged are a must for any compassionate nation, but encouraging folks to go on the dole when not absolutely necessary is disgraceful.

I don't believe in welfare.

In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.

A system that was originally designed to support the poorest in society is now trapping them in the very condition it was supposed to alleviate.

Last year in the United States alone over $98 billion was distributed in unearned government transfer payments and other aid to millions of men and women who most often did nothing for what they received. This character-weakening government dole is repeated in almost every nation of the world. We encourage Latter-day Saints everywhere to remain free of government assistance. Work for what you receive.

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.

In the past, the public assistance programs have been too much concerned with the mere dispatching of monthly checks. … it is high time that some concerted effort be made to get people off the rolls who can sustain themselves.

The chaos of poverty feeds on itself.

Poverty is not just a sad accident, but it's also a result of the fact that some people make a lot of money off low-income families and directly contribute to their poverty.

Too often, while well-intentioned, our poverty programs fail the poor. They fail them by keeping them in cycles of dependency.

If Americans are reluctant to go on the dole that's because they have a healthy work ethic.

Speaking as a black person, welfare is the worst thing that's ever happened to us.

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

Too many Mainers are dependent on government handouts. Government dependency has not - and never will - create prosperity.

I believe welfare makes you lazy and unproductive.

We often have an exaggerated sense of what nonprofits and governments are doing to help the poor, but the really inspiring thing is how much the poor are doing to help themselves.

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

There was never a war on poverty. Maybe there was a skirmish on poverty.

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

Riches run after the rich, and poverty runs after the poor.

You don't have to be impoverished to understand poverty.