It's hard to hear the truth. You may not even think the facts are truths coming from me, a bleeding heart liberal, but sad to say to conservatives, moderates, and uninformed Americans alike: you have the welfare system wrong.

I would love to do the honor of using this platform to debunk some myths with real facts.

1. "Welfare Queens"

In the 1980's, it was more popular for women to pawn, or traffic food stamps, or SNAP. They would sell these stamps to people in order to get cash money to buy drugs, alcohol, or really anything that food stamps legally can't buy, which by the way, is a lot of things. However, this breed is dead, and they make up less than 1.5% of all welfare recipients. This is according to Time magazine, which is a bipartisan, and credible in the facts that they publish under their head. It's important to understand that these statistics are real, and are backed up. If you're in disbelief, I offer to you to do some bipartisan research of your own.

2. Women have kids to receive larger welfare checks.

Raising children is hard, I mean, even having a child is hard not only mentally, emotionally and physically, but financially. Welfare checks do not cover costs of medical care, and prenatal care, not even close. Not to say that this has never happened, but it would be extremely far-fetched to say that even a large portion of female welfare recipients rely on popping them out to get a small check each month. This is conservative propaganda that is preached by legislators who may not even have real statistical data. Logically, this would not make sense. Use your brain. This does not happen as often as people like to pretend.

3. People get rich from welfare. Look at their shoes, and their XBoxes!

Wow, this is one of the most ignorant things I've ever heard. Do you expect people to somehow have to look poor? How incredibly wrong of you. People with lower levels of income have more flexible money. They aren't saving as much as people with high incomes, and they're not investing as much as higher incomes families are either. Sometimes people who live stressful lives of making ends meet come up with something to make their kids smile, make them look at them with thanks. If you think people are not "allowed" to live lives of temporary happiness, then you are pretty sick.

4. They spend their Welfare on alcohol, and junk food which is awful for their kids.

Wrong, again. SNAP cannot purchase alcohol or even certain kinds of foods that may be deemed unhealthy. You see, your early adult brain, who thinks of brand new legislation and policies that can fix all of America's many problems. And trust me, healthy food is expensive, and people only get SNAP once a month, and it's important to make it stretch across an entire month. So yeah, I think cocoa puffs and chips instead of salad and yogurt will feed a hungry child for a month.