Chris Grayling Quotes

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.

We should be reforming our entitlement programs to empower people.

The minimum wage in Denmark is about twice that of the United States, and people who are totally out of the labor market or unable to care for themselves have a basic income guarantee of about $100 per day.

The conventional viewpoint says we need a jobs program and we need to cut welfare. Just the opposite! We need more welfare and fewer jobs.

We believe that the federal government is responsible to give every man employment or a guaranteed income.

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

I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I'll fix it.

The most important thing is guaranteed livable income, which will take a while to bring in because it means all the provinces have to participate.

Instead of a universal basic income, we could have a basic income guarantee. Or, as economists prefer to call it, a negative income tax.

The most important social welfare program in America is a job.

If someone believes that living on benefits is a lifestyle choice, then we need to make them think again.

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.

By common consent, most European countries support the maintenance of robust welfare states and are comfortable with taxation systems that support them.

Let's means-test benefits - let's means-test Social Security and Medicare and make the rich pay more for these benefits.

The country will also need 'new forms of social welfare' instead of its current system which is excessively centred on pensions.

As a result of the current universal benefit, the poverty rate for seniors in America is about 10%. Without the universal benefit, it would be over 50%.

I knew that good people who wanted to be a part of the American dream have become trapped in dependency because the federal government and the state government had made it in their economic interest not to take a job because the benefits that they didn't work were better. I changed that.

Raising the minimum wage means we have workers paying more in to support the Social Security system.

Today we are ending welfare as we know it.

I believe in a safety net. I believe one of the responsibilities of the Federal Government is a safety net.

Generous, effective, and broadly accessible social welfare policies do not require large government bureaucracies staffed with armies of public servants.

Is our national goal to place as many people on welfare, food stamp support, as we can possibly put on that program? Is that our goal? Is that a moral vision for the United States of America, just to see how many people we can place in a situation where they're dependent on the federal government for their food?

I am in favour of a fully transferable allowance.

I think what the Conservatives have done, scaling back welfare payment, is overwhelmingly positive. There's only a certain amount of welfare they can give out.

The original purpose of the welfare state was to lift people into self-sufficiency, not to create a permanent underclass dependent on taxpayers.