One big word worth learning is “schadenfreude.”

Schadenfreude is “pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune.”

Nothing better captures the perverse pleasure that Democrats are deriving from the pain inflicted on our country caused by the government shutdown.

Democrats precipitated this shutdown to force Republicans to back off efforts to turn around our suicidal growth of government spending and debt.

House Republicans passed a continuing resolution ready for the president’s signature to fund the government, but Democrats said no.

They refuse to get rid of $450 billion over 10 years in Obamacare premium subsidies that were enacted as temporary assistance during COVID-19.

Now, the more Americans squirm in discomfort from the shutdown, the more the Democrats love it. They want Republicans to cave.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food assistance to almost 42 million Americans, is now forced to suspend payments, which will be partially covered with emergency funding.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told the press, “Republicans are willing to starve hungry children in this country and take away SNAP benefits.”

Just several days prior, Jeffries endorsed Zohran Mamdani, the declared democratic socialist running as a Democrat for mayor of New York City.

SNAP is another government program going back to the 1960s in which inefficient government largesse was sold as compassion.

In 1970, there were 6 million Americans receiving the benefit. Today it is nearly 42 million.

SNAP spending just six years ago was $63.5 billion. Today it is nearly $100 billion.

Per the American Enterprise Institute, “Less than half of able-bodied working-age SNAP recipients work, and many recipients receive benefits for years.”

According to AEI, SNAP is “one of more than 80 means-tested safety-net programs in the U.S. designed to alleviate hardship among low-income households.”

In 2023, spending on these programs, per former Sen. Phil Gramm, now a senior fellow at AEI, totaled $1.6 trillion, consuming “72.6% of unobligated general revenue.”

Gramm compared that with defense spending which fell to 37.2% of unobligated revenue in 2023 from 68% in 1967.

Welfare payments, per Gramm, going to “average work-age” households in the lowest fifth of income recipients, have increased inflation-adjusted, 780% since 1967.

And “the portion of prime work-age persons” in the bottom fifth who work has fallen from 68% to 36%.

Clearly, the country’s cultural and social problems and our fiscal problems go hand in hand.

Various proposals have been put forth for reforming SNAP. These include moving federal funds to states as bloc grants and giving states move responsibility in their management and disbursement. This was key to the successful welfare reform of 1996 that created Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

But most critical is reform of the underlying welfare culture that has so destructively rooted into our country. Making government largesse more efficient is critical. But we must rebuild a culture in which individuals, in all income classes, feel personally responsible for their lives.

Some 16 years ago, Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill at the Brookings Institution published their research pointing to the “success sequence.” Per Haskins, for those who followed these rules — finish high school, get a full-time job, get married before having children — about 2% wound up in poverty and 75% wound up in the middle class.

We launched a program at CURE, the institute I founded in Washington, D.C., to publicize the “success sequence” in targeted low-income neighborhoods around the country. We bought billboard space that advertised the “success sequence” for getting out of poverty.

In two major cities where we posted the billboards, Minneapolis and Philadelphia, Black Lives Matter went to the billboard company and insisted they take it down — which they did.

Know that the country’s left, today represented by the Democratic Party, hate the idea of personal responsibility, which is the cornerstone of personal freedom.

Democrats are taking us to cultural and fiscal bankruptcy. This is what Republicans want to change.

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