75-20-B6
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Welfare-Abuses
TranscriptJulie Eisenhower is back with me again today to share with you her ideas on reforming the welfare mess. She'll be right with you. A funny thing happened to the Federal government. On its way to balancing this year's budget, it's 15 billion more unexpected dollars in the red. The 15 billion is due mostly to additional food stamp and unemployment payments. While the extra expenditures of money are disturbing, what's more disturbing is a look at who's receiving the aid. Each year more college students and educated, skilled individuals are going on the dole because it pays to. A not untypical story is that of a young woman in New York who left her 250 a week job at public broadcasting. She's now earning 700 a week, what with unemployment compensation and the income, unreported of course, she receives as a public consultant to three television companies. What induces a college student, whose parents may be earning a hundred thousand dollars a year, to sign up for food stamps alongside someone who is utterly impoverished? Perhaps one reason is the growing lack of respect for the bureaucratic tangle which enables some people to get more than they deserve and others far less than they need. I believe there's a deeper more pervasive reason. "Squeaky" Fromme, the 27-year-old who pointed a gun at President Ford a few weeks ago, spoke for many young people who abused the welfare system when she said, "If you have no philosophy, you don't have any rules." If there's no good and evil, no right and wrong, the logical conclusion is to do your own thing. In other words take the money and run. There's a golden myth that the United States has an economy with a bottomless pit, full of riches for all. Many of those who cheat the welfare system blissfully ignore a sobering statistic. Over the past 15 years America has lagged behind all the major industrial nations in the world in the rate of increase in production. They ignore, too, the simple truth that our economy has been rich in the past and is rich today because the majority of citizens still work very hard. There's a sense of tragedy which underlies the entire subject of welfare abuse. It's not the sham of an educated young person who swells the ranks of the 21 million on food stamp roles, it's not even the sad truth that there are jobs right now which could be immediately filled by some receiving unemployment benefits. The real tragedy is that the United States is a community of people. It's as simple as people helping people because when you don't work all of us are poorer for it. This is Julie Eisenhower. Thank you for listening. |
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