because if you say welfare costs trillions of dollars you have to include social security and medicare, but if you tell the 65+ year old doddering fox news viewers (that republicans rely on) that they will cut social security or medicare they wont vote for them, especially since most of that goes to red states as well.
So they will say those "dont count" as welfare because "they" paid for them, so they think the trillions a year in social security and medicare and medicaid which is something like 2/3rds of the US budget is actually going to food stamps which is an old lie. its about $75 billion per year or about the cost of one stealth bomber and unlike the stealth bomber it produced $1.73 in GDP for every dollar spent and is one of the most productive government programs
Most "problems" republicans are trying to "solve" dont exist, for example millions of mexicans coming in every year dont exist, immigration has been down is actualy in the negative meaning more people are leaving than coming in. Crime is down in every major city, including chicago which actually has the 19th highest murder rate despite Trump and Fox news making it sound worse than Baghdad. Muslims are extremely vetted and take years too be accepted as refugees etc etc etc
