75-07-B5

- Main Page \ Reagan Radio Commentaries \ 1975

<< Previous Broadcast

Next Broadcast >>

Welfare # 2

Transcript Welfare reform at the federal level is overdue and we can learn something from over hundred years of English history on the subject. I'll be right back. Yesterday I spoke with the sixty-two Congressmen Democrats and Republicans who were sponsoring federal welfare reform legislation I suggested that they need our help. No right thinking person questions our responsibility to lend less fortunate neighbors a hand but we can't ignore any longer the harm we're doing to the very people we're trying to help. We can look to history for what might happen if we don't recognize what we're doing and where we're going. England embarked on its first welfare program in 1547. By the end of the 17th century nearly a fifth of the English nation was receiving aid at least part of the time. (The mayor of San Francisco has just announced that one out of four in that city is on welfare.) In England the dole was often three times as much as the laborer could afford for himself and his family. By the end of the 18th century at a place called Speenhamland they decided that wages below a certain level should be supplemented according to the price of bread and the number of children in the family. (Sound familiar?) In the next 20 years the cost of the program doubled and re-doubled until it was one-sixth of the total national expenditure. Some local governments went bankrupt (that's what our mayors are trying about). Now labor was demoralized riots and fires swept the countryside. In 1832, a Royal Commission was appointed to study the problem. At the end of two years the commission reported-"the worker need not bestir himself to work." So they recommended that relief should not be made more attractive than the pay for the most menial of jobs. They said, "We do not believe that a country in which every man whatever his conduct or character is insured a comfortable living can retain its prosperity or even its civilization." In commenting on the social workers they said, "Their feelings are all on one side their pity for the pauper excludes any for the taxpayer." They saw the problem as, quote, "How to afford the people relief without injury to their diligence or their providence." Unquote. History does repeat itself. In 1969 the House Ways and Means Committee discovered the highest factor determining the size of the caseload was the size of the grant. When grant levels are too high there is no incentive to work. Not only have we accepted the questionable premise that welfare is a right, we've carried that to the extreme of believing certain types of jobs are more disgraceful and welfare it's time to disabuse ourselves of the idea that any job is somehow disgraceful or dishonorable. Sometime back a Rutgers Uuniversity professor discovered what that English Royal commission learned 150 years ago. He said "The billions of dollars that are being spent on the urban poor by all levels of government go mainly to support a growing welfare bureaucracy, youth workers, clerks, supervisors, key punchers, and people's lawyers. The bureaucracy is sustained by the plight of the poor, the threat of the poor, the misery of the poor, but it yields little in the way of loaves and fishes to the poor. When the old programs demonstrably fail they are re-baptized and refunded." Unquote. 62 Congressmen are proposing a way to change this they need your help and your letters. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 75-07-B5 Production Date 04/01/1975 Book/Page RihoH-389 Audio Yes Youtube? Posted by Me
		Added Notes