Thanks to stealth changes in welfare rules, the Obama administration is about to preside over the skyrocketing of welfare payments to the poor, the near poor, and the not poor at all.

Investors Business Daily has the graphic bad news:

The country has spent $15.9 trillion of other people's money on welfare since the mid-1960s. But it has failed. As noted in the Gospel of Matthew, we will always have the poor. It would be vain to argue otherwise. The evidence is hard, the facts clear.

"Welfare spending was 13 times greater in fiscal 2008, after adjusting for inflation, than it was when the war on poverty started in 1964," says a new study from the Heritage Foundation.

"Means-tested welfare spending was 1.2% of the gross domestic product when President Johnson began the war on poverty. In 2008, it reached 5% of GDP."

Apparently, we just haven't spent enough. At least that seems to be the position of the White House. It has opened the spigot of the fastest-growing government expenditure. Over the first two years of this administration, annual federal welfare spending will jump by a third, from $522 billion to $697 billion, says the Heritage study titled "Obama To Spend $10.3 Trillion On Welfare."

The cost to the families funding the programs is enormous. Heritage says each household is paying $560 a month this year and will pay $638 a month in 2010.

But this administration is just getting started. Over the next decade (which includes the current fiscal year), welfare spending will hit that $10.3 trillion mark - $7.5 trillion in taxpayers' money disbursed by Washington, $2.8 trillion in taxpayers' money handed out by the states. None of this even includes what the federal government will spend if it successfully takes over health care.