Why is the Left bad again?

Social Security Lifts 13 Million Seniors Above the Poverty Line, 2/23/05
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a bunch of reports today that go over all things social safety net. Viva los Fabians.
Interesting timing too because a few weeks ago I was perusing some conservative website, looking for some information on health care or something and found an interesting tidbit. I am going to paraphrase a quote that is on their site: Nearly everyone agrees on the absolute failure of social welfare programs. That is very rough but gets the idea across. Makes me wonder where his representative sample came from; the people in the cubicles next to him? Well, fail the programs have not. Succeed they have. Over 770,000 people are kept out of poverty in Texas alone.

But as I've said before, the argument isn't necessarily if we should keep people out of poverty or provide them health care, it's how to go about doint it. Direct government subsidies actually is a bit more free market than going through faith based groups and the like, a conservative dilemma for sure and one for the left as well. The thing is, faith based groups were what we had prior to the New Deal, and there was still 30+% poverty among the elderly, and now it's 8%. So which works better?