Rep. Allen West: Democratic handouts an 'insidious form of slavery'

In a speech on the House floor today, Florida Rep. Allen West marked Black History Month by proving, once and for all, that he knows nothing about history.

West's speech included the following show-stopper:

"Our party firmly believes in the safety net," West said in a late Wednesday floor speech. "We reject the idea of the safety net becoming a hammock.

"For this reason, the Republican value of minimizing government dependence is particularly beneficial to the poorest among us," he continued. "Conversely, the Democratic appetite for ever-increasing redistributionary handouts is in fact the most insidious form of slavery remaining in the world today, and it does not promote economic freedom."

As it happens, West got the history wrong from the word "our," presuming that the party he was referring to is the Republican Party.

The fact is, the modern Republican party has been firmly opposed to the social safety net for nearly 100 years. In less than two generations, the GOP morphed from the liberal party of Abraham Lincoln, whose second inaugural address inspired the establishment of pensions for Union veterans of the Civil War, their widows and orphans (the extension of which was actually vetoed by Democratic president Grover Cleveland in 1888) -- into the business-friendly 20th century party that fought ideas like farm subsidies and food and cash assistance to struggling Americans during the Great Depression, as both Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge did, believing it to be a moral hazard that creates a society of dependents.

When FDR proposed his New Deal programs to respond to mass joblessness with government programs, Republicans vehemently opposed them. Republicans opposed the Social Security Act of 1935 and the 1965 version signed by Democratic president Lyndon Johnson, which created Medicare and Medicaid. A pre-presidential Ronald Reagan railed against it as the creeping tide of socialism in 1961.

When Republicans in the House realized they couldn't stop the 1965 Social Security Act, due to Democrats' overwhelming majorities in congress, the tried proposing their own plan: voluntary Medicare that boiled down to government subsidies for doctors and drug companies.

Republicans have made moves toward co-opting parts of the social safety net. Reagan signed a bill in 1983 that secured the Social Security trust fund by raising taxes, and Republicans used strong arm tactics in the House floor, including bribery, to pass George W. Bush's Medicare Part D, which is essentially a revival of the 1965 GOP attempt to create a government dole for drug makers.