1) Excepting certain situations, give a broom and a shovel ( A metaphor for some useful work) to every able bodied welfare recipient and tell them their money will credited to their account at then end of the day and how much that will be depends on the quality of their work, and yes day care would be provided.
Although I agree in principle, the reality is that we'll pay anyway. We'll pay, because ostensibly the money goes to raise the recipients' children. If the mother refuses to work, it becomes very hard to punish her without punishing her children unless you want even more government involvement (removal of the children and placement into foster/adoption). And although it's not quite politically correct, I highly doubt you're going to get a lot of adoptive parents for poor black children of welfare queens and gang bangers from the ghetto (which is the stereotypical image of someone abusing the welfare system). The other option, of course, is pure government run housing and boarding facilities for the children of welfare queens. This will be a great expense and something tells me won't have the best results.
2) There would be a system put in place much like that of health savings accounts. A debit card would be issued which would limit the kinds of things which could be purchased. No money back or smokes or alcohol. No HDTVs. No premium cable. Nope.
Which is great and all, but where do we draw the line? What about internet? What about regular cable? I agree with you here, obviously, I just think you need to be careful. I don't like seeing money wasted, but I understand that things like cell phones, the History Channel, and the internet are important if you want to give the children equal opportunity, even though cell phones, cable, and the internet can be abused. Cell phones are questionable, so maybe just a pre-paid phone with a reasonable number of minutes.
3) Females of child bearing age get a Depo Provera shot, and IUD or some other practitioner administered contraception unless there is a good medical reason to not do so. We need to end the self perpetuating entitlement mentality.
This is my favorite solution. If we enact this, I'm really not even all that concerned about the other abuses as this puts a finite limit on their duration. However, this option is probably the least politically feasible. It will remove voters from one party and is a pretty powerful show of government force. Although I'm sure the people screaming about government death panels will have less issue if they feel the person being medicated is deserving of it, it does smell a little bit of hypocrisy. At some point, almost all of us received some subsidy from the government. I'm also not sure how the very religious will take it.
Like I said, this is my favorite solution when examining the problem purely from an objective standpoint. Although it still suffers a little bit of the problem from #1 (if the mother says no, we'd likely still pay), it is quite a bit easier to show up with a check and a shot than it is to make the mother work.
4) Education is mandatory and performance tied to total compensation.
I don't think anyone has a problem with education, but this has the problem that #1 has. If the mother refuses to go to school, we're still stuck. We either take the money away from the mother and her children and do nothing (which is not all that feasible) or we take both the money and children away.
5) Medicaid is completely redone. No "Sorry, you went over 50 bucks so you have to pay the 10K for you medicine out of your own pockets. There needs to be a mechanism that identifies the types of needs out there, and takes a more flexible approach. Kicking someone who is going to school to have a productive live, but has been set back because of health needs shouldn't be thrown to the wolves because his stipend suddenly goes up by a small amount. That's the kind of person we want to encourage. If the only practical option to stay alive is to drop out of school, what's the value of that?
No argument from me that healthcare on all levels needs reform.
6) Once a person is up to speed as far as work skills and education there needs to be a substantial investment in job placement. "Here's a diploma, now get lost" doesn't pay the bills.
Although I greatly agree with this, I'm still stuck as to what to do if the person can't legitimately find a job. If the person truly does want to work, is it palatable for the government to employ them directly? Is there less of a problem with "welfare" if the person is doing something productive for the state?
The first priority is to get rid of those who don't support substantial reform.
I think that a lot of people want reform, they just don't know exactly what to do. There are already measures in place that are supposed to make a welfare recipient go to school or work/volunteer, but I'm not sure how effective they are. And they aren't effective because the reality is that we don't want the recipients' children to starve, so we still pay. We'd also like to at least give them some tools to allow them to be competitive with kids not growing up in the inner city. The only real solution is to get somewhat draconian in how we deal with people abusing the system. I personally like the sterilization idea, but frankly this is much closer to Nazi behavior than Medicare death consultations, and look how people were screaming about that.
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