It’s been a particular hallmark of Obama’s presidenc,y and current Democratic trends in general, not merely to oppose the reform of the already and completely predictably spiraling welfare state, but to actively grow and expand it.

To paraphrase Churchill on the British Empire, Barack Obama did not become president of the United States to preside over the liquidation of the welfare state. On the contrary, he is dedicated to its expansion. He’s already created the largest new entitlement in half a century (Obamacare). And he has increased federal spending to an astronomical 24.4 percent of GDP (the postwar norm is about 20 percent), a level not seen since World War II.

Our total welfare spending has jumped astronomically since the start of Obama’s tenure, through methods both straightforward and stealthy, but one of the real kickers about all of this money passing through the hands of all of our ever-metastisizing bureaucracies is the not-fully-knowable amount undoubtedly being siphoned away through waste, fraud, and abuse. By a — er — happy accident, the state of Massachusetts alone has only recently discovered what could amount to thousands of fresh instances of welfare fraud and/or waste in their state, via the WFB:

Governor Deval Patrick is downplaying the Department of Transitional Assistance admission that it could not locate 19,000 people who have either been receiving welfare benefits or have applied for them, saying the number represents a “broader class of people than those who are actually on the rolls today.” …

At a news conference, the Governor kept referring to the number of people whose addresses could not be located as just “four percent” of the mailings. …

A spokesman for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services says 11,262 people were either already off the rolls or had never been approved for benefits. It also says 7,738 were returned with forwarding addresses. Still, Governor Patrick says people should continue to have confidence in the state’s ability to oversee welfare benefits.

And they’re certainly not the only ones with welfare-related troubles consuming resources — heartwarming, no?