Poverty Sucks, and so do Republican Politicians

A friend posted on FaceBook about how upset she was that #45 was cutting the funding for Meals on Wheels.  She noted how the much-vaunted poor elderly voting bloc had gone his way and yet he was doing his damnedest to kill off his base with all the cuts he was proposing.  I had this comment:

"The poor ye will always have with ye". If having them is inevitable, there is no point in spending taxpayer money on them. It's a waste of precious resources. 

Being poor is the result of bad choices they made, obviously (think iPhones over health insurance as one example). Why should the rest of us be forced to subsidize their lazy or thriftless asses? 

Plus, if they were actually good Christians, God would favor them with prosperity, so there again proves that their penury stems from personal issues. They truly must not be worthy. 

And lastly, government is for defense and security. It should not be in the business of charity. Anyone genuinely deserving of assistance need only reach out to their community support system and their friends, family, and church will step in and provide. The fact that those entities aren't helping and the person has to turn to the government for assistance, once more just reinforces the fact that they must not be a valued person of good character. 

Last but not least, any conservative politician whose family ever got help clearly deserved it as opposed to all those others who only sucked off the government teat due to a personal failing. Besides, the politician remembers feeling demeaned and diminished by the experience and why would they ever want anyone else to suffer that same way? Eliminating those programs is therefore a kindness!

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These are but a few of the conservative thoughts I have heard over the years about the issue of poverty and the role of government in providing programs for social safety nets. 
Considering the track record of the last few millennia, I prefer a more enlightened method of dealing with poverty, personally.

/And it's a sad fact of life that the poor are notorious for voting against their best interests.  I don't remember the source, but someone once suggested that the reason they do is that they consider themselves to be only "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" or something similar.  

I want a government safety net.  I want fewer poor people in our country, but I also want those who end up needing help to be able to access it easily.  I also want an attitude and expectation that those who can work, will, up to a point.

I don't think our system is perfect and I've personally seen the flaws from inside and out...but I still believe it is a proper role of government to provide for the common welfare of its citizens.  We can and must do better.