Considering that I didn't say that, it would be pretty ridiculous of me to try and tell you that. What the article said was that welfare reduces the number of
poor people, and if you look at the lower graph here...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ed_States..PNG
...it seems they've got it pretty correct. It remains to be seen whether the increase since ~99 is random noise or due to inept reforms enacted around that time, but the fact is that we have had welfare as commonly understood since the '60s and have seen no evidence of dependency, and we have had similar socialist-leaning programs since the '30s when poverty rates were 3 times what they are today.
That's the goal - less poverty. Counting the people "on welfare" is pointless because welfare changes decade by decade, it's an equivocation.