Roscoe Bartlett: “the Bible says it is more blessed to give than to receive, and the government has largely usurped the role of…”

“the Bible says it is more blessed to give than to receive, and the government has largely usurped the role of philanthropist. Several years ago in our church, our kids did not go trick or treat. They would go out before and they would leave a bag; then they would go pick it up and the ladies would help them make food baskets to give to poor families on Thanksgiving. So one of our ladies called the local welfare people and said, We would like the names of some poor families that need food so that we can give them some food. And the welfare worker was indignant. What do you mean poor families that need food? What do you think we are here for? There are not any poor families that need food. Of course that is not true. There are some who fall through the cracks. But this was just evidence of how broad the role of the Federal Government has gotten. When I look back at those Eisenhower years, $100 billion budget, 62 percent of that budget, 16 percent of GDP, went for defense. Today it is 15 percent of our Federal budget and less than 3 percent of GDP that goes for defense. Now relatively we are spending only one-fifth as much on defense today, but we are spending 20 times as much as that Eisenhower budget in our total government. And the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith) is right. Here in this Congress we vote on only about one-third of all the money that is spent. The rest is called entitlements.”