Welfare state spending is a major cause of our debt, and it is also morally costly because it chases fathers out of homes

This extraordinary change [the fact that having children has become increasingly detached from marriage] is the primary reason that government budgets, both federal and state, are so bloated

writes Phyllis Schlafly as the author of Feminist Fantasies comments on a report showing how illegitimate births for all Americans have risen from 26 percent in 1990 to 41 percent today "and could be headed higher."

Without fathers to provide for these millions of children, their mothers turn to "big brother government."

The economist Robert J. Samuelson recently concluded that, "the welfare state is winning the budget war." The bipartisan budget deal, which slashed our military budget but kept welfare-state handouts mostly off limits, turned out to be "a triumph of the welfare state over the Pentagon."

…Now, half of Americans depend, in whole or in part, on government handouts for their living expenses, paid by the other half who pay income taxes.

…In Ronald Reagan's famous caveat, when you subsidize something you get more of it. So the subsidies to women who have no husbands in the house, have promoted more and more children growing up without fathers.

…We can now see clearly that giving cash and benefits to single moms, beginning with Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, destroyed families by making fathers unnecessary and created a barrier to the women receiving free money.

This common-sense analysis was confirmed by British commentator Melanie Phillips, who described the current London riots as the result of "the promotion of lone parenthood;" "the willed removal" of fathers from the family unit by the welfare state; and the "ultra-feminist wreckers" of the traditional family with a male breadwinner. She calls for removing "the incentives to girls and women to have babies outside marriage" and for dismantling "the concept of entitlement" from the welfare state.

…Welfare state spending is a major cause of our debt, and it is also morally costly because it chases fathers out of homes. The Heritage Foundation's figures don't even count the social and fiscal costs of drugs, sex, suicide, school dropouts, runaways and crime that come mostly from female-headed households.

Also, welfare spending is a failure; it doesn't advance us toward any constructive goal, such as helping recipients get on their feet economically. It merely increases dependence on government handouts and votes for leftwing politicians.

The Obama strategists know their political bread is buttered on the side of creating more and more women dependent on government.