Health Care
Jonathan Small | September 23, 2016
Free Market Friday: The dole spoils the soul
Jonathan Small
Should we add more able-bodied adults to the welfare rolls?
Oklahoma lawmakers have wisely rejected the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. Unfortunately, this push to expand medical welfare will return in 2017.
Thousands of kids and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities are already stacked up in a very long line waiting for Medicaid services. Medicaid expansion would push them to the back of the line while creating a new entitlement for up to 628,000 able-bodied adults.
These newly eligible recipients would be men and women in their prime working years. Most have no dependent children. Most have no disabilities keeping them from gainful employment. We should not offer them a welfare benefit that may discourage employment.
“When any man or woman goes on a dole something happens to them mentally, and the quicker they are taken off the dole the better it is for them the rest of their lives,” Franklin D. Roosevelt wisely observed. He understood what the dole – is that word even permissible anymore? – does to a person’s “self-respect, their self-reliance and courage and determination.”
Jonathan Small
President
Jonathan Small, C.P.A., serves as President and joined the staff in December of 2010. Previously, Jonathan served as a budget analyst for the Oklahoma Office of State Finance, as a fiscal policy analyst and research analyst for the Oklahoma House of Representatives, and as director of government affairs for the Oklahoma Insurance Department. Small’s work includes co-authoring “Economics 101” with Dr. Arthur Laffer and Dr. Wayne Winegarden, and his policy expertise has been referenced by The Oklahoman, the Tulsa World, National Review, the L.A. Times, The Hill, the Wall Street Journal and the Huffington Post. His weekly column “Free Market Friday” is published by the Journal Record and syndicated in 27 markets. A recipient of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s prestigious Private Sector Member of the Year award, Small is nationally recognized for his work to promote free markets, limited government and innovative public policy reforms. Jonathan holds a B.A. in Accounting from the University of Central Oklahoma and is a Certified Public Accountant.