Do you consider Social Security to be Welfare?

I was curious to see what percentage of whites, as opposed to blacks, were on welfare. (Bearing in mind that in the US, 12% of the population is black (as of 1990.)

Found an article from BNet.com that addressed the issue. But I have some issues with it.

It's all in semantics. As far as I'm considered, Social Security, which is admittedly a bankrupt system, isn't welfare, because people who work their entire lives pay into it, and get out of it what they pay into it.

Yet the authors of the article at BNet.com mix Social Security payments into their Welfare payments to come up with the following statitistics:

Some 61 percent of welfare recipients are White, while 33 percent are Black, according to 1990 Census Bureau statistics, the latest figures available.

The federal government defines welfare as all entitlement programs funded through taxes. These programs, listed as "direct benefit payments for individuals" by the Office of Management and Budget, make up $730 billion or 43 percent of the $1.47 trillion the government will spend this fiscal year.

(I'd like to know why the "latest figures available" are from 1990! Wasn't there a census in 2000?)

And:

Social Security is the nation's largest welfare program, although many Whites prefer to call it a retirement plan. The government writes retirement and disability benefit checks to 35.4 million recipients of whom 88.7 percent are White and 9.6 percent are Black.

Source: Who gets welfare? Despite prevailing stereotype, whites, not blacks, collect greatest share of public aid dollars

So knock those numbers out of the mix, and what does it add up to?

However, also from this article, regarding 1990 numbers:

Among the poorest of the poor--single mothers, living below the poverty line with minor children to support 39.7 percent of AFDC clients are Black single mothers and 38.1 percent are White women with children. Food stamp recipients are 37.2 percent Black and 46.2 percent White. Medicaid benefits are paid to 27.5 percent Black recipients compared to 48.5 percent White clients.

What percentage are Latinos, I wonder?

In any event, whatever misconceptiosn one may have about what races are getting the most out of welfare, the fact remains that too many people are on welfare, and are thus a drag on taxpayers. The question is, how to get them off?

Especially today, when the economy is in the tank?

Bearing in mind that once you start giving out "entitlements" people -across the spectrum of races- will never want to give them up.

Perhaps the only thing to be done is demand that all politicians are paid only $100,000 a year, and can't vote themselves raises, and have to pay to do all their own campaigning, and so on. Stop taking that chunk of money out of what we give to taxes, and who knows how much could be saved? (In addition, if there's even a sniff of an improper payment or some impropriety, the politician gets fired, gets no pension, and cant' use tax-funded lawyers for his or her defense! If it were their own dime on the hook, maybe they'd be a bit more honest in their dealings.