Like Cuba policy, U.S. welfare policy failed

It has been a part of our country’s foreign policy, continued by ten presidents, not to have normal diplomatic or trading relations with Cuba’s brutal communist regime. On his own, President Obama now has decided not carry out this policy. He has toured America promoting his reason for this decision. It is his conclusion, that for over 50 years this policy has not worked and it is therefore time for a change.

Not long after America embarked on that policy towards Cuba, here at home President Lyndon Johnson declared awar on poverty. To fight this war he and Congress established a great welfare system. The first thing they did was to create an imposing bureaucracy to run it. They would take money from people’s paychecks to fund it. The bureaucracy would then give the rest of the money to people, it picked, for the purpose of elevating them from poverty.

Billions upon billions of dollars have been spent in this war on poverty and yet the results have been disappointing. Statistics show that the poverty rate in America hasn’t improved since 1964 when the government established this massive redistribution of its citizens’ property.

It is clear to see that for over 50 years this policy hasn’t worked. By his own logic, surely President Obama has concluded this by now. Do youthink he will be bold and say it is time for a change? Or will he promote the same failed policy of the past and lock it in for future generations? We have two more years to find out which it will be.

— William Schmutz, Oneida