Bob Smith on Welfare & Poverty Republican Sr Senator (NH; retired 2002)

Churches have the right to provide welfare services

A: Churches do not have to be "allowed" by government to provide more welfare. That is their right. No government funding for church provided welfare however.

Preserve welfare as temporary safety net

Welfare reform promotes families

Apartment vouchers for homeless; more charity deductions

Sen. Smith supports the following principles regarding the poor and homeless:
• Increase funding of homeless shelters and low income housing projects.
• Provide homeless families with apartment vouchers they can use to supplement the cost of an apartment.
• Increase the income tax deduction on individual contributions made to charities that help the poor and homeless

Funds for hiring homeless; more enterprise zones

Sen. Smith supports the following principles regarding the unemployed and homeless:
• Provide tax incentives for hiring and training homeless people.
• Increase funding of programs that help alcoholics and drug addicts recover and find steady work.
• Implement enterprise zones in communities with high unemployment.

Voted YES on welfare block grants.

Voted NO on eliminating block grants for food stamps.

Voted YES on allowing state welfare waivers.

Voted YES on welfare overhaul.

Strict limits on federal "General Welfare" clause.

10-4 pledge: 10 affirmations; 10 promises; 2010 elections; the 10th amendment pledge

As a public office holder, or a candidate for public office, I affirm that:
• A government without limits is a tyranny.
• The Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that which has been delegated by the people to the federal government in the Constitution, and also that which is necessary and proper to advancing those powers specifically enumerated in the Constitution of the United States. The rest is to be handled by the state governments, or by the people themselves, as they determine.
• In order for a federally-exercised power to be "necessary and proper" it must be a) something that, without which, would make the enumerated power impossible to exercise, and b) a lesser power than that which has been enumerated
• The "Interstate Commerce Clause" in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, does not permit Congress to regulate matters that merely affect commerce among the States. It only permits Congress to regulate trade among the States.
• The phrase, "general Welfare," in Article I, Section 8 does not authorize Congress to enact any laws it claims are in the "general Welfare" of the United States. The phrase sets forth the requirement that all laws passed by Congress in Pursuance of the enumerated powers of the Constitution shall also be in the general Welfare of the United States.
• The federal government is not authorized to tax the People to raise monies for unconstitutional purposes. Likewise, the federal government is not authorized to condition funding to State or local governments on compliance with mandates which require them to do what the federal government is not authorized to do directly.