Editorials

Parents should be responsible for their own children's daycare

Hernando Today
Published: January 15, 2011

The issue: County government paying $20,000 annually for daycare of children of parents who work.

Our opinion: It's not the taxpayers' responsibility.

It seemed like a fair question: Why should the county pay $20,000 toward daycare costs for children of parents who work?

We don't have a clue.

The taxpayers pay for free schooling, free transportation to and from school and from sports practices, a free breakfast, a free lunch as well as before-school daycare and after-school daycare.

Then there are food stamps, low-income housing, free healthcare and a $3,500 earned-income tax credit even if no taxes are paid.

Hardworking taxpayers are taking care of other people's children from cradle to grave.

It's got to stop.

How will this generation or the next ever understand that the decisions they make in life are the responsibility of the individual, not the taxpayers? What is the incentive to rise above their current circumstances, to become all that they can be?

It's sickening how government is holding so many people back because we are spoon-feeding so many who've been brought up thinking it's someone else's responsibility to take care of them, that it's someone else's responsibility to work hard and become successful.

These types of government programs are killing the American dream for so many, resigning them to a life of handouts and low self-esteem. This is supposed to be a free country, where you are free to succeed and free to fail.

On Tuesday, county commissioners voted 3-2 to give $20,000 again this year to the Early Learning Coalition of Pasco and Hernando Counties Inc. The money is supposed to only pay for daycare of children of working parents.

We'd like to see the proof. We'd also like to see their income levels, because only low-income earners should be approved.

We understand that in these tough economic times, a lot of parents have lost jobs and have had to take just about anything they can find at a huge deficit to their former income. We think those parents deserve a break, and should be given time to get back on their feet.

However, it should have a strict limit, just as all other forms of public assistance. The government would be better off to create jobs for those down on their luck instead of simply giving them handouts.

By the way, where are all those jobs?

If the government hadn't turned into a babysitting service for so many Americans, the extended family would still exist, where grandparents, parents and siblings counted on one another to make it thorough life - not the government.

Bigger government taking care of us is ruining the American dream.