The challenging state of government welfare entitlement programs may make the best recruitment tools yet for young people who are either detached from politics or completely sold to the Democrats. Take Social Security, for example.

Social Security is a trust fund whereby the current generation of workers pays the retired generation, with the promise and expectation that they, too, shall receive pay upon retirement. It is simple at the core, but the stark reality is, paying off early investors with funds taken from later investors is defined as a Ponzi scheme. Its sort of what Bernie Madoff was doing, until the money ran out. So, Bill Frezza over at RealClearMarkets recently asked:

Why do kids put up with this? Last time I checked they were old enough to vote. An entire generation is being systematically robbed by their parents with nary a peep. Why aren’t they marching in the streets like we did? When they do show up at the polls like sheep ready to be shorn, they pull the lever for kumbaya politicians promising to stick them with the bill for an ever-expanding menu of unfunded middle class entitlements.

And that’s the biggest reason why Social Security is going bankrupt, and much sooner than people think. The “trust fund” has run out of trust because it is raided on a daily basis to pay for hundreds of other entitlement programs that have nothing to do with retirement but would end if it weren’t for Social Security.

At any rate, Frezza concludes the kids aren’t marching because their baby-boomer parents failed to raise Gen-X to maturity, and their kids are basically unaware of the impending disaster being thrown upon them by their parents. Perhaps. But perhaps their parents also failed to instill a sense of social outrage to match an ability to think clearly. (Just who was matching and protesting in the 60s, anyway?)

Taking over where the parents left off, Democrats are extremely successful in recruiting young people as party servants. Go to any polling place on election day, and one is bound to find teens holding Democrat campaign signs nearby. Republicans have failed to attract youth members, and that’s partly why the party rolls are declining precipitiously. So, what makes the Democrats so appealing to the youth? There are two reasons.

First, there is an active outreach to welcome young people and engage them in party activities. Young people are recruited for social engagements, and those who choose to be active participants are rewarded with accolades, recognition, and responsibility.

Second, the Democrats appeal to youthful idealism. They successfully invoke community, activitism, group participation, and social justice. As a political entity, they promise to help people and make the world a better place, which is attractive to young people in their late teens and early 20s, who themselves are starting to live independently but feel a need for external help and a place to belong.

Naturally, the Democrat propaganda is just that: they lure young people into their machine with idealism just long enough to have some sort of investment in the system: a political career in the nitty-gritty powerhouse, or just clinging to the hope that a better world is just around the corner if only Democrats win the next election and finally make all those promises come true.

For Republicans to even think about success in the 21st century, they had better take a cue from the Democrats and appeal directly to a class of voters who are alive now and (we hope) will have a longer and fuller life than the previous generations.

There is no reason Republicans cannot seize the mantle of youthful idealism and social justice, and perhaps the best way to do it is to appeal to simple logic. Ask a (very) young person to consider the following:

• What if the government has a social program that helps poor people?
• What if that program relies on tax money to keep it active, so it continues to help the needy?
• Now, what if the government spends so much money on other things, there’s not enough left to help the poor?
• What if the government tries to raise taxes to get more money, but it makes businesses close and the unemployed workers become poor?
• What happens when these people and others like them need help from that program?
• How much longer before you and your friends will be asking for help from that program, but its been closed because there’s no more money in it?

Ultimately, you’re asking young people to wonder what good a comprehensive socialized system will do anyone when it fails.

Like social security will.

The philosophical difference between Republicans and Democrats should not be whether the government should be helping people, but rather how those people are being helped. For the Democrats, a top-down command-authority is clearly their solution for society’s woes. Thomas More’s Isle of Utopia was a dictatorship, after all.

Republicans should rather encourage youth to employ their unique individualism to solving communal problems, to recognize the individual as the source of community strength, and that “people power” is actually practiced and embraced by the party of Lincoln, the same who freed the slaves on the basis of equality and liberty.

For Republicans to end the Democrat domination of the young voter, clear principles will not just need to be advertised, they will need to be highlighted, promoted, and most importantly, put into practice!

A particularly brutal piece of legislation has been passed. H.R. 3221 is called The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), but it neither aids students nor does it remotely suggest fiscal responsibility. Naturally, Rep. Rosa DeLauro is the loudest champion of this intrusive and ultimately abusive bill, and its passage was by a strict party-line vote.

According to the Congresswoman, H.R.3221 “reforms the system of federal student loans to save taxpayers $87 billion – and invests $77 billion of those savings back into education, particularly by increasing funding for the Pell Grant program and creating an Early Leaning Challenge Fund to increase high-quality early childhood education and development for low-income children.”

Ordinarily, people cannot contradict themselves after only two words, but Rep. DeLauro does. Taxpayers CANNOT save $87 billion and spend $77 billion of the same money at the same time. They can’t even save $10 billion of what’s left over.

That’s because We the People will be on the hook for an additional $50 billion, and any student who applies for a taxpayer-subsidized government-controlled loan will have to perform community service (yes, much like convicted criminals currently have to).

According to Neal McClusky at CATO@Liberty, the CBO reports that this thing will cost an additional $50 billion. The CBO identified a net cost to taxpayers of about $600 million a year. Then it estimated SAFRA would cost an additional $33 billion after accounting for lending risk. Now, CBO estimates the cost of expanding Pell grants could be almost $11 billion greater than estimated. If you add all of those things together, the cost of SAFRA has flipped from a promised $10 billion savings to a $50 billion loss.

Meanwhile, all of the subsidies that the government hands out as Pell grants will be prohibited from going to private lenders. Only government lenders will handle Pell Grants, meaning the private student loan industry is finished. (This sounds a bit like that “government competition in health insurance”)

The reason for this is because provisions of the GIVE Act and Rep. DeLauro’s own Summer of Service Act demand students and young people for a civilian “volunteer” corps. H.R. 3221 fulfills the body count. Of course, volunteering in GIVE-speak will mean “serve or don’t go to college” for many young adults.

Finally, many opponents of H.R. 3221 denounce a $500 million grant to the Department of Education in order to design a national curriculum. Its being called unconstitutional, since providing education is the domain of the states, not the federal government

The collision of government-managed student loans, compulsory community service, a national curriculum, and national pre-school is a shocking intrusion into the lives of our young people. And, Rep. Rosa DeLauro on the wrong side of the issue again.

UPDATE: 03/19/2010 3:33PM. SAFRA has been attached as Division III of H.R.4872, the Health care reconciliation bill. But Title VI, the Defund ACORN Act, has been left off the bill.The sex-slavery activists at ACORN will continue to receive public funding to advise criminals on how to import, enslave, exploit, and sexually abuse vulnerable women and children.

Proving herself to be a veritable locomotive for the Democrat ideologues, Rep. DeLauro reintroduced a suite of bills into the House in order to bring the National Public Service Act of 1990 into line with President Obama’s vision of community organizing on a continental scale. (She introduced versions of these in 2007 but they died in committee.) DeLauro’s bills, H.R. 1151 through 1154, are summarized quite neatly by bethechange.org:

The Encore Service Act (HR1151) will take advantage of all older Americans have to offer communities by providing stipends and educational scholarships to citizens 55 years of age and older who volunteer their time and dedicate their knowledge to help communities in need.

The Semester of Service Act (HR1152) will give students in their junior or senior year of high school the opportunity to spend a semester participating in community service-learning for academic credit.

The Summer of Service Act (HR1153) will create a competitive grant program that enables states and localities to offer students making the transition from middle to high school an opportunity to participate in a structured community service program over the summer months.

The ACTION Act (HR1154) will not only help many young people realize their dreams of going to college, but will also allow them to afford it by updating the AmeriCorps Education Award to reflect 15 years of college tuition increases.

These bills are bereft of details save the command and funding structure, which has gotten many established community services and nonprofits excited about the federal money coming their way. Likely, the final rules will make many nonprofits rue the day they accept Federal funds and turn themselves over to government oversight.

Frankly, a government coercing its citizens into service as a graduation requirement, or exchanging service for college credit, or even cash payments is not volunteerism at all. At worst, its a draft. At best, it makes millions of more people government employees, which is hardly different.

Meanwhile, Rep. McCarthy’s H.R. 1388, the GIVE Act, came up for a vote. GIVE stands for the unwieldy “Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education” but, like Rep. DeLauro’s bills, “volunteerism” means payment for service to a Democrat Party objective.

Hidden in the GIVE Act is a statute defining who is forbidden from participating in the national service organization (meaning, anyone who runs a nonprofit who accepts government money):

SEC. 1304. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS. (a) Prohibited Activities- A participant in an approved national service position under this subtitle may not engage in the following activities:

(7) Engaging in religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of religious proselytization.

That’s right. To run a Federally-funded national service organization, you may not attend a church service, or lend a hand to help build a new church, or even get caught passing out a church pamphlet. According to Rep. Rosa DeLauro and the Democrat majority, only non-religious state servants are capable of volunteering, teaching our youth community values, helping the needy, and making America a better place for all.

Rep. DeLauro voted YES to the ill-named GIVE Act, which discriminates against church-goers, and forces Americans to “Volunteer” for Democrat Party causes.

“I am very interested in the younger voters. They are the future of this district and this state,” said ItsHaky. “I go after the youth vote as much as possible.”

The 49 year-old Republican candidate is running for the third congressional district of Connecticut in the United States House or Representatives. His counterpart is Democratic incumbent, DeLauro, who is running for a tenth consecutive term.

For ItsHaky, grabbing the youth vote is more than just getting votes, its about changing the very fabric of Connecticut.

“My main concern is the brain drain, with young people who come here to acquire higher education and not able to be attracted to stay here,” said ItsHaky. “I want to reverse that by finding more jobs in Connecticut and more affordable housing.”