I recently came upon a very cute poem.  It was prompted by a speech given by Harry Truman in St Paul on November 3, 1949.  President Truman’s speech sounds familiar, and was given before the federal government had acquired such a large role in our lives. That was 60 years, and many trillions of dollars of “welfare” spending ago:

We hold that our great natural resources should be protected and developed for the benefit of all our people, and not exploited for private greed.

We believe that old people and the disabled should have an assured income to keep them from being dependent on charity.

We believe that families should have protection against loss of income resulting from accident, illness, or unemployment.

We hold that our citizens should have decent housing at prices they can afford to pay.

(more of the speech can be found here: http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/welfareode.asp )

The poem goes like this:

Ode to the Welfare State

Father, must I go to work?
No, my lacky son.
We’re living now on Easy Street
On dough from Washington.

We’ve left it up to Uncle Sam,
So don’t get exercised.
Nobody has to give a damn-
We’ve all been subsidized.

But if Sam treats us all so well
And feeds us milk and honey,
Please daddy, tell what the hell
He’s going to use for money.

Don’t worry bub, there’s not a hitch
In this here noble plan-
He simply soaks the filthy rich
And helps the common man.

But father, won’t there come a time
When they run out of cash
And we have left them not a dime
When things will go to smash?

My faith in you is shrinking son,
You nosy little brat
You do too much damn thinking son,
To be a Democrat.