Jeff Sessions: More Americans Are Collecting Disability Than Finding Jobs

Take a look at these two charts, courtesy of the Weekly Standard’s Daniel Halper:

This is an alarming trend. The United States, increasingly, is becoming a nation where more and more Americans are collecting government checks than finding jobs. And, considering only 1 percent of Social Security disability recipients ever return to the workforce (according to Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions), this disturbing tendency will have significant and perhaps sweeping implications. These numbers also come on the heels of The One’s decision last week -- as Guy explained yesterday -- to unilaterally dismantle then-President Clinton’s historic (and successful!) welfare reforms of the 1990s. This, in effect, takes a giant ax to the legislation’s work requirements, creating a disincentive for welfare recipients to seek "real" employment opportunities, and thus fostering more government dependency. Sadly, too, more Americans are on food stamps than ever before (about 45 million), and Congress seems woefully unable – or unwilling -- to work across party lines and solve the nation's fiscal challenges.

This is a crucial time for our country -- after all, this year's presidential contest could be the most important election of our lifetime -- and we need a chief executive who espouses policies that will reignite the entrepreneurial spirit of the Americans people, thereby creating economic opportunity in this country for the tens of millions of Americans who are unemployed, underemployed or have stopped looking for work. Indeed, there are stark differences between the two candidates running for president this year -- not the least of which is President Obama’s jarring conviction that entrepreneurial success in America derives not from hardworking individuals, but from government institutions. This is a philosophy we simply cannot afford for another four years.