Welfare State: One In Six Americans Getting Federal Aid

There's a decent chance you're getting unemployment or welfare or whatever right now, and if you're not, just look around! With 17% of Americans surviving with the help of government "anti-poverty programs," any random collection of six people is going to include at least one lucky enough to get some help from the feds. We don't know if this include kids' lunch programs and SCHIP and HeadStart and other such handouts for lazy children. But the message is clear: America is just barely hanging on thanks to the money shoveled upon it by the Semi-Socialist New Deal Government.

Here are some illuminating statistics tossed together by USA Todayfor an infographic:  

• 40 million Americans get food stamps today, nearly double the pre-recession number.

• 50 million are on Medicaid, the federal health-care system for the poor -- a 17% jump since 2007. Obama's health care plan will add 16 million to the Medicaid rolls starting in 2014.

• 10 million are still receiving unemployment checks, while many millions more have either run out their jobless benefits or didn't qualify because they were day laborers or otherwise "self employed" before the recession.

• 4.4 million are on federal welfare, up 18% since the Great Recession began.

We're assuming there's a lot of overlap here with the Medicaid and food stamps, because otherwise one inthreeAmericans are subsisting only with the help of the government ... and if you include disability, Social Security, Medicare, government-backed student loans and other direct forms of financial assistance or health care from Washington, it's hard to imagine less than half of all Americans aren't on the government teat.

And it'simpossibleto imagine less than 90% of the Glenn Beck Picnickers on the government dole. [ USA Today ]