by Brigid Bishop

Created on: January 21, 2009

If I were ever privileged enough to have a conversation with the President of the United States, now, or at any time in the future, my suggestion would be to institute Welfare Reform.

I won't go into all of the reasons why this is such a hot topic for me, but I will state how I think the President could make the United States Welfare Program more functional.

First of all, make it a requirement that any and all welfare recipients, (with the exception of the elderly and disabled), either be in school full time or be assigned to community service projects on a full time basis. What about the children you ask? Easy. Part of the community service program would be a free day care center staffed by, you guessed it, welfare recipients!

Community service is a twenty four hour a day, seven day a week need. Community service staff, welfare recipients, that is, could be used to deliver meals to the elderly, clean litter from our highways, parks and communities, remove graffiti from neighborhoods, babysit each other's children on a twenty-four hour schedule, provide labor for organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, staff animal shelters, assist in nursing homes and senior citizen centers, transport the elderly and disabled to doctor appointments, be assigned as teacher's aids in overcrowded public schools, staff disaster relief efforts, repair our roads and bridges, the list goes on and on and on.

Receipt of their welfare check would be directly dependent upon their consistent performance and appearance at their scheduled assignments.

Nothing turns my stomach more than to be behind a welfare mother in a grocery store and watch her pull her food stamps out of her leather wallet sporting a fresh set of acyclic nails.

Treat all welfare recipients as government employees, after all, they are on the federal payroll, give them work to do!

In the case where a welfare recipient is attending school full time, community service should be assigned on a part time basis until the student either leaves the welfare program or completes their education. Once the education is completed, again, their community service should be full time until they successfully exit the welfare rolls.

In this manner our communities would improve tremendously and our working welfare community would be contributing to making our country a better place to live. Failure to comply would mean immediate cessation of benefits and those that are truly abusing the welfare system would be quickly weeded out.

Just as is

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