The Silhouettes said it best in 1958…get a job. Now its time the Katrina evacuees still feeding at the public trough learn that lesson as well. According to USA Today “Thousands of hurricane evacuees in Georgia will have to start [gasp] paying their own hotel bills or leave after missing a deadline to register for additional federal funds.” By most estimates the state of Georgia has thousands of Katrina evacuees (second only to Texas) and many of these refugees remain hold up in hotel rooms in major cities from Atlanta to Savannah. These evacuees have been living in these hotels courtesy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency since last summer when the hurricane struck.

Already FEMA has kowtowed to poverty “advocates” when they planned to cut off hotel aid at the end of the year. Given the outcry, it would come as no surprise if FEMA again buckled under the pressure. The fact of the matter is, these people, while their conditions may sadden us, have been given every opportunity to make a new start. Those who remain clinging to FEMA handouts should “get a job.” There are a plethora of available jobs across this country for those who are willing to work and willing to exert the requisite hard work needed to accomplish something in their lives.

The government cannot afford to dole out dollar after dollar for the idle and sedentary. In a nation with such vast opportunities as ours, there can be no excuse for such laziness. This development highlights the failure of entitlement programs as a whole to combat poverty. Rather than freeing people from the clutches of poverty, handouts simply create a dependent class, who rely on the state for basic necessities, they do not develop productive skills, they do not become independent they become sedentary and reliant upon entitlement programs that exacerbate their condition.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-02-01-fema-ga_x.htm