Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) was once a struggling parent, trying to make ends meet. And when she was given the chance to improve her status with a significant raise, she did what any welfare-addicted person would do: She turned it down so she wouldn't lose her government benefits. From The New Republic:

In her written statement, Moore challenged the premise of the hearing, describing it as “predicated on a series of false assumptions about our social-safety net.” She went on:

I can tell you that I didn’t sit down after a long day of work to calculate the “marginal tax rate” of government benefits to determine my choices. I think that the panelists here today — who make it sound like low-income women get home every night and pore over a spreadsheet to figure out how much they’ll be taxed on the next dollar they earn, or their next dollar in benefits — need a bit of a reality check.

But her oral testimony sent an entirely different message. She drew from her own compelling personal experience as a young mother on welfare to illustrate why we need to turn our welfare state upside down and start over.

“I once had a job,” Moore acknowledged, “and begged my supervisor not to give me a 50-cents-an-hour raise lest I lose Title 20 day care.” The same work disincentive arose when she contemplated the health coverage she received through Medicaid. “I would want to work if in fact I didn’t risk losing Medicaid.”

In essence, she argued that people do not do exactly what she then testified that she did.