Gary Hart Quotes

We shouldn't have to give up all our rights, just because we are receiving a Government benefit.

I do not believe that older Americans should be forced to live out their lives in poverty, their tiny savings destroyed by illness. Dependent upon their relatives. Feeling unwanted by their country.

The states, just like the Federal government, just can’t let the poor die.

There is much in American society which I admire, but I have long held the view that the absence of an effective safety net in that country means that too many needy citizens fall by the wayside.

I was once a welfare recipient and am very aware of the successes and failures of this critical safety net. There are those that would have us believe that those receiving TANF benefits are lazy, shiftless, freeloaders who are just sitting around thinking of another way to suckle from the government teat.

When our economy is not growing, those least able to look after themselves are the first thrown overboard ...

The test of civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members.

I’m really not concerned about the very poor. They have a safety net.

Social Security works better than any other program in the world. Why dismantle it now?

Government has a final responsibility for the well-being of its citizenship. If private cooperative endeavor fails to provide work for willing hands and relief for the unfortunate, those suffering hardship from no fault of their own have a right to call upon the Government for aid; and a government worthy of its name must make fitting response.

There is no use in repeating that threadbare capitalist boast that we have more things than ever before and that workers are better off than were ancient kings. The point is that no age has ever so tragically failed to use the machinery it had for ease and security of living. Things may have increased but so has insecurity. The peasant and artisan of old was assured work and an honorable place in his family and community while he lived. He knew nothing of the dead line at forty or forty-five which gives new terror to old age. He knew almost nothing of unemployment as a social disease which in so-called normal times affects some ten per cent of the workers and is today the lot of twenty-five to thirty-three per cent of them.

… poor people deserve access to food, education, housing, and medical services

The great network of social insurance programs established by President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, President Harry Truman’s Fair Deal, President John F. Kennedy’s Great Society, and President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and defended by President Bill Clinton, sharply limits the amount of poverty a downturn [in the economy] can cause.

The main purpose of Social Security is to redistribute wealth, to make an increasingly large number of Americans dependent on government for their basic needs in their retirement years.

There was no welfare state, and people had to rely mainly on the Poor Law - that was all the state provided. It was very degrading, very humiliating. And there was a means test for receiving poor relief.

There's a lot of people out now around America who depend on checks from their fellow taxpayers being in the mailbox every day.

I don't believe in welfare.

So I really would like to see both parties respond to the poor with greater commitment. But I've got to tell you, the Democrats, I feel, are doing a better job in that respect than Republicans are.

The government is becoming the family of last resort.

Fiscal prudence does not prevent government from providing shelter for the homeless, work for the idle, care for the elderly and infirm, and hope for the destitute.

We can't turn our back on people who need help.

The physical lot of … workers had notably improved, with unemployment insurance, social security, and the new health services, while their children's school education was assured by the government-operated schools: in addition, they had, for intellectual or emotional stimulus and diversion, the radio and the television. But the work itself was no longer as various, as interesting, or as sustaining to the personality...

Give the working-man the right to work as long as he is healthy; assure him care when he is sick; assure him maintenance when he is old.

Today we are ending welfare as we know it.

Medicare is more than just a program. It reflects our values. It’s one way we honor parents and grandparents and protect our families across the generations.