UK: Middle-Class Families Face Losing Child Benefit

Inquiring minds are looking at not-so-Great Britain right now where liberal socialist spending to help the masses has gotten out of control. The world is on the downside of the spending hump. Money has dried up and these socialist governmments are now cutting off the very people they said just had to be helped:

Up to two million parents could lose their child benefit payments under the ‘biggest reform of the welfare system in 70 years’.

Plans are being drawn up to scrap the benefit for children over 16 as part of root-and-branch reforms to save £2billion a year. The benefit is currently paid until the child is 18.

Middle-class families could lose their child benefit altogether if the Chancellor, George Osbourne, decides to means-test the payments.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, today said the current range of dozens of benefits would be replaced by a single ‘Universal Credit’ after sealing a deal with Mr Osbourne.

Mr Duncan Smith said it was ‘bonkers’ that people on sizeable incomes were receiving benefits.

‘Under the last government, the whole benefit net rose up the income scale dramatically, where you had people on over £50,000 who were eligible for some form of benefit. I think that is completely bonkers,’ he said.

The two men had clashed repeatedly over how to fund the changes, with the heavy up-front costs causing alarm in the Treasury as the coalition struggled to slash budgets.

However, a compromise has been reached to stagger implementation of the reforms over two parliaments.

The Government has described the proposals as the biggest reform of the welfare system in 70 years.

Formally announcing the reforms as the Tory conference started in Birmingham, Mr Duncan Smith said they represented ‘the dawn of 21st-century welfare’.

‘To those that have been marginalised and abandoned to a life on benefits by Labour I say: we will get you back into work and in control of your life,’ he insisted.

Somehow the newly found traditional attitudes would feel a little more empowering if they weren’t suddenly realized upon a zero-balanced national treasury.