7.1 million people live in federal housing. That's about 2.3% of the population. Around 40-50 million recieve some form of food stamps or welfare, state or Fed, counting unemployment. That's about 13-15% of the population.
It appears that those numbers must be totals rather than per-household numbers.
If they all recieved $10,000 each in assistance, every man/woman/child, the total cost would be 500 Billion dollars. Our current Fed budget is well over 3 trillion you know.
In 2010, we spent about 2 Trillion in domestic non-military spending. Bit of a disconnect there isn't there? Where did the other 1.5 TRILLION go?
Well, check out the US budget. A lot of it goes to Social Security and Medicare and other senior programs...,. I don't remember the exact figure but I think it's over 800 billion.
Federal Retirement is another chunk. Pork and waste are a large chunk.
My point is that it isn't just the poor, at least not the crack-ho and welfare-mama poor that this young lady's letter seems to mainly address.
A lot of it is programs for senior citizens. Some involve Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and loans for firstime home buyers.
The point I'm making is there's a LOT of cleaning up to do, a lot of corruption and waste to root out, in MANY areas of spending... including military-industrial waste and corruption.
Just forcing austerity on one segment of the "poor" isn't going to magically restore balance to the budget.