[classicman]

Here is another interesting take on the subject -

The current welfare/SS/unemployment/medicare/medicaid... make up 67% of the Federal governments total spending. If you take into consideration that the Fed receives about 3.5 trillion in tax revenues a year then 2.34 trillion dollars goes into social assistance programs. (2,340,000,000,000 dollars) if only lets say that on the low end 10% of the total is fraudulent or misused then that is 234 billion dollars that is being stolen from the countries tax payers. This alone would almost cover the national deficit. If the actual fraud rate was more like 20-30%, which it probably is, then we are looking at 468 - 702 billion being stolen each year as a result. So, if we were to decrease the # of fraudulent claims by 10-15% as a country we would effectively start eliminating our overall national debt, thus increasing the value of the dollar. But in our current situation the national debt continues to increase due mostly to social assistance programs. The fat could be cut in other areas and should be but the biggest chunk of the pie will have to come from social services or our children will have some serious problems in the future.

Source(s): Wikipedia/2007 Federal budget