Examining the Growth of the Welfare State, Part II
House Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services
2025-05-07
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Source: Congress.gov
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Well, one more time, we're about to begin a very interesting hearing on the Subcommittee on Healthcare and Financial Services. And we're going to have a lot of people here, but there are other hearings going on as well today. I got two other hearings today. But what are we here? Four minutes late. We'll wait one more minute and then we'll start because I think that's a good idea. And easy going. This hearing on the Subcommittee on Healthcare and Financial Services will come to order. Welcome, everyone. Without objection, I may declare a recess at any time. I recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening statement. For the people in the room today, I'll point out there are a lot of other hearings going on, so a lot of the congressmen are gonna be jumping in and out, which I don't like, but that's what we've got. Okay. At our last hearing, we talked about some of the disincentives that happened because of our welfare program. And the fact is the federal welfare system, I don't think they're talking about food stamps, low-income housing, Medicaid, Pell Grants, everything, is filled with horrible incentives and disincentives. It certainly discourages marriage, and I know there's a kind of a Marxist-y 60s sort of thing that kind of makes fun of the old-fashioned leave it to be or family. We have a program that discourages marriage and hard work, and at the same time, encouraging dependency.
It costs taxpayers more than a trillion dollars annually while failing to lift people out of poverty. Today's hearing, and this is kind of the second one we're taking up this topic, will provide an opportunity to hear from three witnesses who are experts in federal rental assistance programs. Dr. Ben Carson, the former secretary of HUD, Good friend of mine. These programs are textbook examples of good intentions gone awry. I don't know they're even good intentions. I can't see how you could put programs like this out there not knowing what had happened. For example, Section 8 housing vouchers and public housing programs contain marriage penalties, making it foolish to get married. In many cases, individuals risk losing the Section 8 voucher if they marry somebody with a even average income, and their combined threshold brings them out of eligibility for those programs. As we discussed in part one, marriage and a strong family unit are the well-established way to get people out of poverty, and not just out of poverty. We know that You're going to be raising children, less likely to commit crime, more likely to do well at school, less likely to have drug problems, less likely to have depression, anxiety, other disorders. Yet our current welfare system, including housing assistance payments, discourages marriage. It's not hard to find people who say, I can't work more, I can't get married, or I'll lose my benefits. Due partially to these penalties, the number of children born to unmarried women has skyrocketed. In 1960, 5% of the children were born to unmarried women, 5%. We're now at 40%. And of course, it's not coincidence that things began to shoot up after Lyndon Johnson in the 60s declared war on marriage.
Like marriage, the current system discourages rental assistant recipients from seeking employment, higher wages, or overtime if the increased income pushes them out of eligibility. We are fostering a cycle of dependency and government assistance. The average Section 8 tenant spends 10 years on the program and the average public housing tenant 12 years. Welfare also benefits the middle man and administrative state more than the low income Americans it purports to be for. Section 42 low income housing tax programs give the developers tax incentives to build affordable housing for low and moderate income people. Yet the program's complicated design mostly benefits developers, law firms, accounting firms, and state bureaucrats. I don't know who thought that thing up, but man, that's a mess. Middlemen and administrators can take advantage of Section 8 in public housing as well. The Milwaukee Housing Authority reported in January that its leadership misused $2.8 million federal dollars intended for the tenants to pay its staff. The problem had apparently been ongoing since 2019, but wasn't caught for six years. Meanwhile, taxpayers are on the hook for more and more spending on these programs every year.
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