Study: $15 trillion in welfare spending has had little impact since 1964

"Compassion has to be very local and very personal, and what we've done is built monsters of bureaucracies in welfare, and we've built dependency on these programs," Parker said. "When you talk about compassion, if we were serious as an American people to help those that really need help, then we would dismantle the entire welfare state and start finding out who exactly it is that cannot help themselves and then we can go from there, but that's not what we have today."

The American Enterprise Institute released six charts from a Wednesday briefing on Medicaid reform showing the growth of the Medicaid program.

"In the 1960s, there were 18 workers per Medicaid recipient," James Pethokoukis tweeted, breaking down the charts. "Today that number is 2.5"

The charts show that fewer workers and their tax payments are supporting more Medicaid recipients, and suggest that for every 1.25 employed persons in the private sector, one person is receiving welfare assistance or works for the government.

Another chart shows that enrollment for food stamps has gone up 158 percent, Medicaid enrollment 52 percent, and government employment 6 percent, while private sector employment has gone down 2 percent over the past 10 years. Additionally, nearly 11 million people are now on Social Security disability, which is a 53 percent jump over the past 10 years.