Should citizens who receive welfare (TANF) pay back what they receive?

For myself, I think of it as poverty insurance.  By analogy, I pay into my health insurance (which covers me in the case of an accident regardless of how much I've paid in (or will pay in the future)).  I pay into unemployment insurance so that it is available to me when I need it (whether I ever receive it or not).  Neither program requires me to "even out the payment" so that the benefits I individually receive must equal what I pay in.  So my opinion is no, when people pay taxes (and part of receiving TANF is the obligation to look for work where they will, at some point, pay taxes) covers a benefit for us all in society, regardless of whether we specifically will use the benefit or not.  By extended analogy, my taxes pay for schools that I will not use, parks I will not visit and police & firemen I hope never to call.  Because we have done so poorly at caring for the poor privately (through charitable donations, etc.) it falls to government to provide this service.

I've been part of a family who received TANF payments for years. Truth to your elephant friend's position: People on welfare can end up being dependent, and end in a vicious cycle of where the dependency pushes them farther and farther from the productive workforce. There is some validity in thinking TANF does perpetuate poverty. Fallacy : Everyone wants to feel valued and contribute to society in a meaningful way. The absence of a social safety net will increase crime, homelessness, and also perpetuate poverty. For a nation as rich as ours there is no reason for people to go hungry, even at the poverty level. The solution is to continue to drive private / public partnership to incentivize employers to take on the burden of employing long standing TANF / WIC recipients by offering significant tax breaks for employing those who are receiving those benefits. Maybe the longer on government benefits, the greater the tax break? Lots of success and bi-partisan agreement on this, but like many great pragmatic approaches get gummed up in our government process. http://www.clasp.org/issues/in_focus?type=temporary_assistance&id=0039 Good news on the 10% your elephant friends are suggesting. If these people make gap into full time gainful employment, they will pay it back through taxes collected by the system... At a much greater percent than 10% unfortunately, but that is for another post!

Right.  "Four out of 5 U.S. adults [80%!] struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/28/poverty-unemployment-rates_n_3666594.html)   46,609,000 Americans rely upon food stamps. (http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/SNAPsummary.htm)   By July of 2013, the ratio of job applicants to jobs is 3.5:1  (http://www.labor.ny.gov/stats/job-seekers-per-opening.shtm   How, precisely, do you expect these people to pay back their social welfare without encumbering with debt which shall further cripple them??

It's a terrible idea. When people get off TANF, they are likely to be making a very low wage, often minimum wage.  By definition these are people with children, and it's very hard to support children on a low-wage job.  You're proposing that you can skim 10% off the top of that below-poverty-line wage for years without doing desperate harm to people, especially children, who will be struggling to get by already.  That has all sorts of ripple effects, from the need to rely on other forms of public and private assistance to survive, to health, housing, nutrition, and other critical aspects of life.  Children growing up in extreme poverty fare very, very poorly on every possible measure in ways that make it likely they will also end up very poor.  It makes no sense from a societal viewpoint to penalize people for having needed aid.