It really all comes down to children. While any conservative can argue that a mentally and physically able person should be able to find a job, any job, they still do not have an answer for the children.
Because some fiscal conservatives are also social conservatives, it gets even more confusing when sex is factored in. If a woman fails the abstinence test and does not use the contraception which some conservatives disagree with and does not get the abortion that many conservatives disagree with, then a child is produced.
Except for some obscure technical issues in some doctrines, most people agree that a child is innocent. He or she did not have a choice and can't 'cowboy up' and get a job until age 14 or older in most cases.
The bottom line is that some politicians do not care about starving children as much as they do about aborted fetuses. Recent cutbacks in welfare rules were opposed by some social conservative Congressman a few years back because they were afraid it would lead to more abortions.
It costs $20,000 to $30,000 a year to care for a healthy human being, in an orphanage, prison, or mental facility. Parents and foster parents do it for a lot less. Putting a welfare mother in prison and having the state care for her 8 children would cost taxpayers $100-$200,000 a year.
One of the reasons we are seeing so many abuse stories about foster care is that a) resources are being drained from social services, and b) more and more children are being placed in foster care, forcing social workers to lower standards.
As stated in
this post in a recent thread, the 'good old' days were filled with desperate mothers and murdered infants. This does not even consider child labor in dangerous conditions without the benefit of public schooling.
True rock-bottom conservative capitalism is social darwinism. The unfit die, and the children of the unfit usually die first. In this case the church may actually serve a practical function in providing some services, at least for members of their faith. They also provide an outlet and promote social order, possibly avoiding revolution.
Fortunately, we live in a republic where every adult citizen is guaranteed the right to vote. If voting were limited to landowners or people with household incomes over $75k, it is possible that the safety net would disappear. Since our government is responsible to 'all' of it's citizens, removing the safety net would require convincing citizens that they don't need it. Doing so would require that proof be provided that the game is not rigged against the middle and working classes when it comes to accumulating and keeping wealth for retirement. Anyone reading the headlines would realize that this is not true.
The safety net right now is unwieldy, and probably needs to be fixed. However, health care, illegal immigration, and a lot of other topics, some of which the president is avoiding with all of his singleminded determination, are mixed into the goal of universal employment. Taking care of them includes taking on some very big lobbies that have now aligned themselves with the ruling party to prevent reform.
For example, to get businesses to hire people off of welfare, non-farm employment of illegal aliens would have to be curtailed Even under pressure by common sense conservatives in the Republican party, there has been no real progress on this. This is because illegal immigrants are the drug of choice for businesses looking at the bottom line. It is cheaper to keep people on welfare and pass the cost along to taxpayers than to make the extra effort to give a job to a citizen with a history of chronic unemployment, or a single parent, or a recovering substance abuser.
Part of our welfare system is designed to prop up the people displaced by illegal aliens and allow more corporate profits, which, thanks to tax cuts, are not even taxed sufficiently to balance the cost.