75-07-B6
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Welfare # 3[edit]
Transcript[edit]Should our judgment of welfare be based only on whether it raises the standard of living for recipients or should we also consider what it does to the character of the people who participate? I'll be right back. For the last two days I've been talking about welfare and the need to correct some of the costly cumbersome bureaucratic nonsense that has taken it far afield from its original purpose. Today I'd like to touch on what it may be doing to the spirit and character of our people. Knowing how easy it is to be attacked is heartless and unfeeling let me say a few things about my own position. First of all I believe in our responsibility to help those who for whatever reason are unable to provide for themselves and their families. Right now I believe we could do more for the truly needy if we weren't spread too thin providing for some who are just greedy. Milton Friedman the noted economist once said "when you start paying people to be poor you wind up with an awful lot of poor people." From my own experience I'm convinced that most welfare recipients are unhappy being on welfare and they'd much rather be self-sustaining and self-respecting. I'm also sure however that encouraged by some professional welfarists many lose their desire to leave welfare and begin accepting it as a way of life-indeed a career in itself. When this happens-we're destroying human beings not salvaging them. There's a so-called national welfare rights organization dedicated to demanding a voice in how much of a worker's earnings must be shared with them. a few years ago a Mrs. Beulah Sanders representing this organization before the House Ways and Means Committee said, "Everyone in this country has a right to share the wealth the money has gone into the pockets of the middle class and if we don't get our share we're going to disrupt this state this country and this Capitol." Federal officials have habitually said fraud in welfare was less than one percent. But Dr. Richard Nathan while a deputy to the Secretary of Health Education and Welfare said, "Our problem is we can't even detect fraud." Former Congressman Bill Scherle of Iowa once told his colleagues; "Take the capital of the strongest, wealthiest, most freedom loving country in history. Give it an unemployment rate of only two percent but one out of five on welfare. The median income is $10,500. Yet federal aid per capita is six times as much as it is for the citizens of Iowa. Then set up a federally funded consumer complaint department in a model city project and what is the number one complaint of these deprived people? Jobs? Housing? Crime? Their color TV sets don't work properly. In 1968, C.O.R.E., the Committee On Racial Equality, told us why we should be supporting the present move in Congress to reform welfare. They said, "Handouts are demeaning. They do violence to a man, strip him of his dignity and breed in him a hatred of the total system. Poor men want the same as the rest of us. They want to be independent, they want jobs and control over their own destiny. Welfare," they said, "is no answer. We seek to harness the creative energy of private enterprise to achieve a solution to America's crisis. We look to American independence of spirit to recognize opportunity and to take advantage of it. It's happened in the past-it can happen again." The end, of course quote. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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