Would you support increased taxes for those making > $250k/year in exchange for cleaning up welfare?

Sure. BUT...only as long as we clean up the CORPORATE WELFARE problem. We currently spend THREE TIMES on corporate welfare than we spend on social welfare.

IBM offered to give the US government software and support that would target welfare fraud, and projected that it cold save the US taxpayers as much as $1 Trillion. Obama turned down the offer.

So any such offer to trade welfare fraud savings in exchange for a tax increase is a joke because he has already demonstrated he has no interested in cutting welfare fraud. ObamaClause don't play that!

yes, but only if that "clean up" was extended to more than just welfare fraud. there is also unemployment fraud, and pork-spending fraud by our own congressional representatives. taxing one group for the sins of another is totally wrong. get to the heart of the problem, rectify it, and then we will all have a defined window where we all have to pay a little bit more in order to re-balance. not just the $250's and up. i as a middle class worker should have to ante up as well.

What reforms do you want to make to welfare?

I would only support getting rid of welfare if we also double the minimum wage.

There's a lot of people who actually work and are still poor.

Something has to be done for them. In the old days, unions would have agitated for better pay but Republicans hate unions.

So the only way to ensure that people get decent pay and health care is for the government to subsidize their pay and health care.

i would support cracking down on tax fraud and closing loopholes for everyone in exchange for doing the same for welfare.

What welfare fraud? You mean the imaginary welfare queen that conservatives believe exists.

Conservatives would like to eliminate all welfare and force the disabled to live off of occasional charity. Of course that would be a death sentence from the conservatives.

Hell if we clean up corporate welfare the money saved will make whatever we spend to help poor folks look like chump change.

I would, but its obvious that the majority are against it. The republican original plan for the fiscal cliff was essentially that , I think it was little higher than $250k though. But the senate refused to pass it.

Yes. Ending waste/abuse/fraud in other programs would be nice, as well. Too bad Congress is so insistent on getting their whistles wet. Never going to happen as a result.

The problem is spending -- at the Federal level.

The time has come for America to have a frank discussion about which of the many unconstitutional Federal programs to terminate -- and which of the many unconstitutional Cabinet Agencies to close.