Biggest Moochers -- Debate On Welfare Reform Ignores Bureaucracy's Role

Reading the letters to the editor section March 26, I was struck by the Ohman cartoon depicting a couple of woeful looking welfare recipients and several fat cat corporate lobbyists in which the reader was asked to "Identify the biggest welfare moocher. . . ."

It strikes me there is a missing element here. Standing behind the pitiable welfare recipients there should have been a bloated bureaucracy trying to hide its self-interest in the debate while using the children and women as a front for its agenda.

Tens, hundreds and in some programs thousands of dollars are spent to administer each dollar awarded to a welfare recipient. The argument over welfare reform has been cleverly diverted away from those with the biggest interest in the current system - an entrenched bureaucracy - to the actual welfare recipients. The welfare recipients are as much the victims of the system as the taxpayer. They are not the real problem. Even those who cheat get peanuts in comparison to the bureaucrats. In most cases, the recipient receives a pathetic pittance compared to what has actually been budgeted for him or her. I have come to believe the American taxpayer's beef is - or should be - with the entrenched bureaucracy that has many billions of dollars and tens of thousands (or millions) of jobs at stake in maintaining the current system. They are not only ripping off the taxpayer, but the poor schmucks they have convinced to live in poverty with no hope of ever escaping to a better life. They have turned America from a land of hope into a land with a hereditary underclass of beggars. Gerald D. Cline Jr. Seattle