Tough times, tough decisions

I tend to agree, during tough economic times when families are struggling to meet their own needs, it's hard to be compassionate. It's also hard when there are people out there obviously gaming the system, taking advantage of government programs.

Democrats, in particular, speak often about a "hand up" and in many cases, a government hand up is just that. When I was working my way through college, my state's version of the EITC was a godsend. I would never occur to me though to take advantage of that for the rest of my life.

Maybe politicians need to be better at enforcing the short term nature of certain programs, rather than creating programs and simply letting them grow.