Now we can parse the language.  You say welfare benefits, I have always thought benefits were something good like a company car or keeping frequent flier miles.  I would not and do not call welfare a benefit or entitlement rather it is a payment.  Kind of like the money mobsters elicit in a protection racket.  Or it is one pole in the tent of payments that are the modern version of Roman bread and circuses to keep the mob in line.  Welfare and medicaid are quiet money paid to the non-productive members of society to let everybody else get on with being productive.  Of course, if the liberals and Obama have their way we will all be dependent on the pacifier of government largesse before too much longer.