The lieutenant governor of South Carolina is taking heat for comparing people on government assistance to "stray animals" and saying the government should stop "feeding" welfare recipients who do not meet certain requirements because "they breed."

Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, a Republican, was arguing for fundamental changes to welfare to break the "cycle of dependency" at a town hall meeting in Fountain Inn, S.C., on Friday, when he said:

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. ...

"They will reproduce," Bauer said, "especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."

The remarks set off a firestorm in the Palmetto State. "Everyone should be offended at the comparison of our school children to stray animals," House Democratic Leader Harry Ott said in a statement released over the weekend. "Mr. Bauer should immediately apologize to the people of South Carolina for these remarks."

Bruce Ransom, a political science professor at Clemson University's Strom Thurmond Institute, called the comments "shocking" and said they do a disservice to the thousands of welfare recipients who are in dire need of government help.

"There are many people who legitimately need that assistance," Ransom told FoxNews.com. "He's not only saying that they (welfare recipients) are dependent, but that they're undeserving."

While Bauer raised a "legitimate argument," Ransom said, "he didn't need to compare those individuals to stray animals."

"The way he framed his points was terrible," he said.

In an interview with FoxNews.com, Bauer, a second-term lieutenant governor who is running to succeed Gov. Mark Sanford in November, said he didn't intend to offend anyone. But he acknowledged he could have found better words to convey his meaning.

"The metaphor I used was well-intended," he said, "Will I use it again? No. Do I wish I had used a better one? You betcha I do."

Bauer has called for welfare recipients to receive mandatory drug tests and to attend parent-teacher conferences if they have children in school. Parents whose children benefit from subsidized school lunches should stop receiving government assistance if they fail to attend such meetings, he says.

The lieutenant governor said he intended in his remarks to stress the need to "break cycles of dependency." He said he was approached afterward by a black minister who asked him to he deliver the same speech at his church.

"He said 'you are right on the money,'" Bauer told FoxNews.com. "This was a diverse crowd and nobody there had a problem with the message.

"We've got to really look at every dollar we're spending. A hand-out is basically relief without any demand for change," he said.

Bauer also addressed public criticism of his remarks in a posting on his Facebook page Saturday.

"At a forum this week, I spoke out in favor of finding ways to break the government's cycle of handouts and dependency," Bauer wrote. "I believe government is 'breeding a culture of dependency' which has grown out of control, and frankly, amounts to little more than socialism, paid for by hard-working, tax-paying families."

"I feel strongly that we can and should help our neighbors who are truly needy," he added, "However, there's a big difference between being truly needy and truly lazy."

Bauer wrote that he will continue to push for such requirements even if they are perceived as "politically incorrect" by the media.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that roughly 15 percent of South Carolinians live below the poverty line. As of October 2009, about 20,648 South Carolina families were listed as welfare recipients -- totaling $3,979,701 in government assistance, according to the South Carolina's Department of Social Services. That figure is an increase from 2008, when 16,382 were listed as receiving cash assistance from the government.

The Associated Press reported that Bauer, who comes from working-class roots and who grew up in a single-parent household, benefited from subsidized school lunches himself.


The mans got a point.

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Shoot fast & live long
Warren

What he says is true. The gov caused this whole welfare mess and we get to pay for it. Money is not the only way we pay, we pay in higher crime, low education levels and probably a 100 other ways also.

Of course some people need help maybe thoughout their entire lives, but most on welfare are just lazy, stupid or plain just don't any other way of life. Must be very sad to go through life being a welfare dependent.

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Mike
USMCR 84-87, USAF 87-07

This is an insult to stray animals everywhere...

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Thirty characters. Exactly...

The man is obviously a nutcase.......

Brian~

"A hand-out is basically relief without any demand for change"

Bingo. And if we don't demand change, we'll never see it. Similar comments are being made about Haiti. We can feed them, but if no one changes the government situation, we'll have to do it all over again after the next disaster.

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Insert short witty words here

I'm from SC and I think he's right on target. He might have figured out a better way to say it but then no one would have listened. The only ones who are insulted are the ones who wouldn't pass the drug test.

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bigcat

He merely said publicly what many of us have said privately for years.
Yes, he did insult stray animals. My personal cat population has jumped from 1 to 6. The new arrivals are all friendly, affectionate, cuddly, and well behaved. And when I do take them to the vet they won't be screaming and hollering that I'm violating their civil rights.

I heard a story recently where these welfare type bought a lot of botteled water with their food stamps, poured the water out near the store, went back in with the empty bottels to get a rebate on the bottels!

"Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime." I believe this is originally attributed to Lao Tzu, and it just comes to mind during these discussions...

I've got great empathy for those that are truly in need, and despise those that game the system at my expense. It should be government's job to guard this distinction, rather than buying votes with my money.

My quick rant for the day...

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NRA Life Member

[QUOTE=roundgunner;1279385]

The Associated Press reported that Bauer, who comes from working-class roots and who grew up in a single-parent household, benefited from subsidized school lunches himself.


And their point is?
he believes there are times that folks need assistance, but he climbed out of the pit and ended the cycle he was in.

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Memory of Randy Freas-Rimfired

"If you build a man a fire, he'll be warm for the night.
If you set a man on fire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life".

"Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.".......Lao Tzu


"Never, EVER teach a man to fish, keep him dependent on you for his fish, and he'll keep re-electing you".....Liberal Progressives.



It's simple economics, you subsidize the behavior you want to encourage. By rewarding people on welfare for continuing to make bad choices in life, your ensuring they keep doing it.

Here in New Jersey some years ago there was a stink when a retired judge was recalled to help another court with a backlog of small claims.
One involved a welfare queen suing a check cashing service, somehow her status as an unwed mother feeding at the public trough came up, the judge told her she was using her children as "meal tickets". In an excellent column entitled "The Lesson the Educators Didn't learn" George Will noted that the high rate of illegitimacy produced " a continually renewed cohort of unruly adolescent males" and in a front page news analysis in the Fall of 1993 the Sunday New York Times noted that the high rate of illegitimacy was a much greater factor in the crime problem than the availability of guns.
Also there's a big difference when you live in a single parent/single mother household and you see your mother getting up to go to work and then come home and prepare dinner as opposed to see her lying in bed when you're getting ready for school, and your siblings all have different fathers.

That Blackhawk,
Is as good a post as I've read today.
I thank the gentleman!

Indeed.

Politically incorrect? Absolutely. But it drives the point home even more.

This is also amazingly true.

People need to understand that handouts aren't doing them a favor. They're just lowering the quality of life for EVERYONE. They're costing those of us that work more money, and causing crime rates to increase and government expenditures to go up even more.

I can't believe how heartless you people are! By "you people" I'm referring to S&W forum posters and not any race or religion just to be clear.
I have the perfect solution to welfare. It involves jobs and free daycare for your 10 kids. It involves vacant land and a huge pile of cinder blocks. The job is (while your kids are being fed and cared for in a government regulated facility) to move the cinder blocks from point A to point B. After you're done and aks what's next you're told to move them from point B back to point A. After 2 days of this B.S they would rather work a "menial" job at a store or restaraunt paying the same for 1/2 the work.
If that doesn't work put the kids in foster care and send the parents to a South Pacific island with a few chickens a box of vegetable seeds and a hoe (the digging kind) and let them work or die.

The man is a hypocrite. He grew up on free and reduced lunches.

His mouth gets him in trouble often. He is immature enough to have not learned to think before he speaks. At this stage he'll likely never learn.

SOMETIMES.... you can almost see human traits in them

Wouldn't the fact that he didn't STAY on them, and raise his children on them, imply he's less of a hypocrite, and more a person who knows what he is talking about?

Bear Claw Chris Lappe "Wouldn't the fact that he didn't STAY on them, and raise his children on them, imply he's less of a hypocrite, and more a person who knows what he is talking about?"

+1 Mr. Bear Claw He broke the cycle.

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bigcat

I thought all school lunches were subsidized.

NO, it all means zilch until he proves he's an actual citizen. -2

One would assume the man that ate subsidized lunches as a kid did not have a choice. He was a kid and did as he was told, I would imagine that his family at least paid some taxes to offset those costs as opposed to the ungrateful expensive pets we have kept for decades.

I about got sick a few weeks back when on a show called street court where a judge actually goes on site to rule on cases was doing a show where a welfare for life woman was whining that because a deal fell through on a section 8 housing deal that she "had to" live in a place too small for her and her grand kids to live "proper"

"the closets aren't big enough" and he doesn't have enough room" "it ain't right" and the "yard is too small" whine whine etc

all I could think of is if ya don't like it get a job and EARN what ya want...

Here in California I see generations of welfare breeders. The more they breed, the more money they get. Usually it starts when they're teenagers. The male offspring grow up to cause crime, and the female offspring become welfare breeders themselves. The cycle never stops.

If you ask a welfare who the father is, and the response is usually "I don't know". DO NOT under any circumstances named a child "I Don't Know". The poor kid will find himself the father of thousands of kids on welfare.

My solution is similar. Put the young children of welfare recipients in a facility run by qualified supervisors, staffed by some of the welfare recipients. The other welfare recipients need to be out doing things like road cleaning, any of the other things that need to be done by the state that could be done by untrained welfare recipients.

On payday pass the wiz quiz.

That would weed out the people who really need help from the ones indescribable in this forum.

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Shoot fast & live long
Warren

He's already started apologizing.

They'll hound him out of office.

That's what liberals do.

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VIVERE MILITARE EST

Regarding "subsidized lunches", in the 1950s and the start of the TV age, many TV channels had noontime kids' programs on TV. Larry Harmon, who took over and popularized "Bozo" (he did not create the character) got the idea of syndicating it so that when the kiddies came home for lunch they could watch a locally oriented program and see local
kids on the tube. Never did that myself-even when I lived within walking distance of the school I stayed at school to play with the other kids. Also I recall in my youth the practice now called "brown bagging"-your mother packed you a lunch, you took it to school, put it in your desk (and hoped another kid didn't steal it) until lunchtime. Or you brought your lunchbox
(and hoped your thermos liner didn't break-more than once I heard the dreaded sloshing sound of a shattered glass liner.), traded lunch with your pals, when your mother asked "How was lunch?" you said "Fine".
Hot meals were more of a wintertime thing and even back then they were part of the curriculum, teach the kiddies about proper nutrition.
Back then Breakfast was something you had at home and talked about school-nowadays it seems to be the other way around.

Man, it's tempting to suggest steralization, but I won't.

Easy answer.

Let's cut out welfare, WIC and school lunches cold turkey, and let the private sector benevolent organizations take over.

The feller went about it the wrong way...he should have showed how much taxes come out of a working individual's income to support the programs he doesn't like.

Liberals use concocted emotion and to make sheeple perceive reality. The only successful comeback is real hard and fast numbers that are pictured in what he can understand.

That there boy is on the right track, he just didn't have a game plan. No plan equals a plan to fail.

He isn't a salesman, is he?

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Lost it all in a boat accident

If you feed "stray animals" you can count on them returning for a handout until you draw the line. There are so many entitlement programs how do you start? I was in Chicago Tuesday, and worked all day at a grocery store on the south side. In this neighborhood crime/drugs/entitlement prgrms. are the norm. Grocery stores in these areas are in the end of the month doldrums. No food stamps left. About 20 people were standing in the 2 check out lanes (9 lane store) that were open. A service guy working on the roof of the building knocked out the phone lines to the LINK (Illinois food stamps) system, and the Lottery machine. I noticed the store opened a 3rd lane for cash. No one used it. After about 2 hrs. the store started calling in LINK card numbers using cell phones. Some people had waited it out, standing in line the whole time, waiting for the food stamp line to get repaired.

If you brought this topic up 2 years ago on this forum you would have gotten either no or very PC responses. I'm hoping people are finally waking up.

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SOS USA

Seems many in line with food stamps seem to have had money for thousands of dollars of tatoos.

And the parking lot is full of cars I'll never afford.

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SOS USA

Come on, don't hold back, tell us how you really feel. (within reason of course)

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Lynnie, Professional Pest

The president said discretionary spending must be curtailed. This is supposedly the definition of such spending as it applies to our government.

DISCRETIONARY SPENDING refers to spending set by annual appropriation levels made by decision of Congress. This spending is optional, and in contrast to entitlement programs for which funding is mandatory.

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SOS USA

I have to disagree with that. From what I've seen so far, this whole group is pretty straight up about their opinions. Which I think is a good thing.

Black conservative author Ken Hamblin refers to them as "brood mares."

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Georgia On My Mind

How about democracy for the fine residents of the United States. Less representative democracy and more direct democracy...try this on for size:

Pretty much everyone has access to a computer and the internet (go to a local public library - they are there, I swear). Come tax time you can choose what programs that you want to fund with YOUR tax dollars...you don't like-you don't pay...enough people are unhappy with the program and don't pay...the program dies...Not like it would ever happen, but think if it did...how would our Nation change?

Of course there need to be some things that are set...maybe National Defense (Stops at OUR borders) Foreign wars are optional...

You hold your vote in your tax dollars....what do you think?

I know a whole buncha stuff that I sure would never give a penny to (eg- Michelle O'Bama's personal staff - to the tune of over $1 Million in salaries alone)

...just a bit of FAR Right thinking...

If you brought this up two years ago this thread would be in flames. PC didn't flow to well here in the past. Opinions were to the bone. Just the way I like em.
DW

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"NUTS"

Obama thinks he,s robin hood. Anybody read that about davy crockett and horatio bunce? Bunce rebuked crockett about voteing to give money that wasnt his to give. Mover Mike Davy Crockett and Public Money I heard obama say last night that he was going to have the goverment pay off a persons student loans if they got a job with the goverment! What a deal! So just how is the private business sector suppose to compete with that enticement?
And just who is the money comeing from to pay someone elses student loans? Probley people that couldnt afford to go to college themselves! I can understand indivigal people like obama and his fellow crooks. What I cant understand is how us as a population vote, belive his **** and let them continue!
I havent heard or else missed hearing limbough or hannity noticeing that part of his speech. I couldnt be the only one!
This is like haveing a devilish kid drive a bus off a cliff and all the passengers sitting there in a trance and letting him do it!

Who? I'm not talking about Obama, but Bauer.

November 2010 can't come soon enough.