Consider that public benefits recipients are, have been, and/or are prospectively tax payers, and many have worked for considerable periods of time before having children or becoming eligible for earned income credit, and have, accordingly, paid taxes for those un-qualifying years with little to no returns. Consider the very sensible practice in France of higher education and health insurance being actually available to every citizen without cost, while private health insurance may be purchased for supplemental coverage or benefits. The notion, thus, that public health insurance and four years, at the least, of higher education should be available to everyone without cost is not at all far-fetched.

Consider that Pell Grants and programs like Job Corps are investments that fortify our national and the global economy once recipients acquire those jobs that they’ve been educated/trained for. This is the reason that an education should be readily accessible to everyone, and without necessity to acquire burdensome student loans. Higher education qualifies its recipients for higher paying jobs that would secure more revenues for the government, and would subsequently alleviate burdens on the government to provide public services to individuals who’d no longer have need of them. In lieu of student loans, why not make getting home loans as easy.

Recipients of public benefits, like TANF or Families First, most definitely should not be required to re-pay received monetary benefits nowadays, when they are required to work what would be the equivalent of a full-time job for them (unless they’re attending school or working part-time jobs that would supplement activity requirements) and while disbursed benefits are generally several times below minimum wage, or within the range of minimum wage, when combined with benefits like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance and Medicaid, considering the cost of a health insurance premium for an individual and dependents, where applicable).

A non-custodial parent should be required to pay child support as a personal responsibility, and because it alleviates burden on the government to pay public benefits for children qualifying or who’d otherwise qualify; the non-custodial parent should otherwise only be required to pay the government any unpaid taxes that they may owe, which would cover their share of public benefits that a custodial parent may have received (paying both income taxes, which fund public benefits, and re-paying benefits received by the payee and/or their child(ren) is double paying). The non-custodial parent should have the option of paying any back taxes incrementally or in affordable installments that would, preferably, be automatically deducted from their pay, juxtapose reasonable child support payments; they should additionally be privileged to tax incentives, like Earned Income Credit, for the percentage of support paid for each child. If a non-custodial and custodial parent equally support their child or children, they could equally share the Earned Income Credit. No parent should be penalized, tax-wise (by double payment of taxes, as with payment of general income taxes and refund and/or child support reduction), or by any other means, especially not for receipt of public benefits with additional “volunteer”/work requirements. In instances where this has occurred it is the government that would be demonstrably in arrears.