That's pretty horrible, right? I agree, we should do something about that.
Now, there's about 52,000,000 people on welfare. The cost to maintain them is 1,700,000,000,000.
52MM is about 17% of the population, or just about 1/6 people get means tested assistance.
Here's the thing, it would cost ~3,000,000,000,000 to give every man, woman, and child (regardless of their means) $1000 USD per month.
We're already spending 1.7 trillion which is 56% of what it would cost to give everyone a basic income that is greater than they already get with welfare benefits. On top of that, 48% of that 1.7 trillion is currently spent on overhead and administration, including pension payments for the government employees, building upkeep, enforcement, and more.
So, we can eliminate all those expenses and just cut a check for $1,000 and only need 1.3 trillion more dollars - which we can come up with by eliminating social security, removing benefits for non-citizens (you like that idea, don't you), and throwing the F-35 into the dustbin of history. Even better, if we scrap the who,e F-35 budget, we'd have money left over to pay down or debts.
Long term? Sure, raise the rates on long-term capital gains tax from 15 to 20% and remove government funded pensions. That shoud just about cover it, though we can do even better by removing our military from foreign soil, passing the torch on the wars we're involved in, and scaling our military back to the size needed for a defense force. If we do that, we can fund a full eight years of college, medical care, and increase the Section 8 budget more than twentyfold.
And, we can pay off our debts inside of 20 years. Slightly less, about 18.8 years - with interest included.
What do you think? It sure solves that welfare problem, now doesn't it?