Shock: In spite of record-setting Obama deficit spending on welfare, poverty meter hasn't moved a bit

Turns out that the old socialist progressive adage that candidate Obama expressed to Joe the Plumber -- you know, "when you spread the wealth around it's good for everybody" -- is just as wrongheaded as everything else the SCOAMF has tried.

Despite an unprecedented increase in federal anti-poverty spending, the national poverty rate has not declined, the study finds.

“[S]ince President Obama took office [in January 2009], federal welfare spending has increased by 41 percent, more than $193 billion per year,” the study says.

Federal welfare spending in fiscal year 2011 totaled $668 billion, spread out over 126 programs, while the poverty rate that remains high at 15.1 percent, roughly where it was in 1965, when President Johnson declared a federal War on Poverty.

In 1966, the first year after Johnson declared war on poverty, the national poverty rate was 14.7 percent, according to Census Bureau figures. Over time, the poverty rate has fluctuated in a narrow range between 11 and 15 percent, only falling into the 11 percent range for a few years in the late 1970’s.

...In fiscal year 2008, anti-poverty spending was $475 billion. In fiscal year 2009, when Obama took office, it had risen to $590 billion.

“But the dramat­ically larger increase also suggests that part of the program’s growth is due to conscious policy choices by this administration to ease eligibility rules and expand caseloads,” the Cato report says. “For example, income limits for eligibility have risen twice as fast as inflation since 2007 and are now roughly 10 percent higher than they were when Obama took office.”

The study concludes with some salient and rational points -- which make them certain to be ignored by the party of failed ideologies.

All [of] this spending has not bought an ap­preciable reduction in poverty... [T]he poverty rate has remained relatively constant since 1965, despite rising welfare spending...

...It would make sense therefore to shift our anti-poverty efforts from government programs that simply provide money or goods and services to those who are living in poverty to efforts to create the condi­tions and incentives that will make it eas­ier for people to escape poverty.

But Democrats apparently believe that borrowing 40 cents of every dollar to spend on failed program after failed program is good governance.

But November is coming.