Dear Future President,

I am a 17 year old student living in Fresno, California and the issue I would like to address is about the broken Welfare system in the United States.

The idea of Welfare is not a bad one, in fact it is necessary. Welfare provides assistance to individuals and families through programs such as health care, food stamps, unemployment compensation, housing assistance and child care assistance. According to the 2015 census, you have just described about 45 million people in the United States alone. With the ever growing population of the world, that number will only increase. This program is intended for those who truly need the help and support. The problem however, is that the integrity of this program is not being maintained.

You see it all the time, the “poor” in line at our local shopping market paying for lobsters, or filet mignon with their EBT card. Using their welfare cards at strip clubs and buying alcohol at liquor stores. The list of welfare fraud goes on and on. People get welfare so that they don’t ever have to work or be productive members of society and this passes on to their children, creating generations of welfare recipients. This is a serious abuse of the taxes Americans pay to fund this program that is meant to help those who rely on this help to survive.

There needs to be a better way to distinguish between those who truly need the support and those who intend on using it as an income. I personally know families, single parent families, who wouldn’t be able to afford to feed their children if they didn’t have welfare. Once they get back on their feet and finally are able to make enough money, they don’t have to rely on it anymore and that is the way it should be utilized. This is an extremely beneficial program and it’s horrible that selfish people are easily able to take advantage of it, and take the money that could be used to help the truly needy survive.

The welfare program is broken and many Americans rely on it to survive. I think it is clear how strongly I feel about this issue and it needs to be more than just addressed. It needs to be fixed. Thank you for taking your time to read my letter and I appreciate your support in advance.

Respectfully,

Kirsten S.