Is it just me, or is there something drastically wrong with President Bush's welfare reform plan that encourages unwed mothers to get married? Bush wants to spend $300 million of taxpayer money on programs that will encourage marriage. Consider this bit from a CNN.com article on the subject: "In making his case for promoting marriage, Bush said the lives of many low-income children living in single-parent households would have been better 'if their fathers had lived up to their responsibilities.'"

That may sound reasonable, but it's not. People do not become single-parent families for no reason, except for the occasional celebrity like Rosie O'Donnell or Calista Flockhart -- and I think we all know that celebrities are not an accurate representations of the public.

I'm not going to get into the rest of Bush's welfare reform ideas (How can any politician try to write legislation regarding a subject he personally knows nothing about? But I digress.), but I just think this marriage idea is destined to fail. Fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce, and I don't see how this legislation would make that figure drop. If people get married because the government 'strongly encourages' them to do so, what kind of a relationship is that? I honestly do not see how a marriage built on the idea of "we did this because the government gave us a prize for doing so" will last. And when the marriage fails, those children Bush is so worried about will be left to deal with the emotional consequences.

Ellmyruh