George F. Will Quotes

Contrary to what President Obama said in his inaugural address, going on Medicare and food stamps does not strengthen us. Just ask people who are fourth-generation welfare recipients.

The Democrats generally recoil from the subject of entitlements.

Today we are ending welfare as we know it.

Welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic have discovered that largesse to losers does not reduce their hostility to society, but only increases it. Far from producing gratitude, generosity is seen as an admission of guilt, and the reparations as inadequate compensations for injustices - leading to worsening behavior by the recipients.

I wrote my thesis on welfare policy.

What Clinton severed with his welfare reform was the obligation of the federal government to step in when the states failed and to monitor these programs.

You know, I think that the Republicans have made it really clear that they want to end the so-called social safety net from cradle to grave.

For many of those who had historically supported welfare programs in the broadest sense, it was perfectly reasonable to enact legislation in which poor people were the objects of efforts to assist them.

No one was elected to Congress because he or she promised to cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

The issue I highlight in the book is welfare reform.

After years of piecemeal reform the current welfare system is complex and unfair.

Most of my folks back home think Social Security and Medicare are sacred commitments stronger than the strongest contract. And yet if you look at the details here in Washington, they're not even promises. They're scheduled benefits. I think we need to do all that we can to make sure those benefits are real.

The fundamental flaw in Social Security and Medicare is that they violate the 'welfare principle' in economics. The welfare principle forms the fundamental basis of all charitable work in churches and other private organizations: assist those who need help, and equally important, don't assist individuals who can take care of themselves.

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.

It’s been a very slow, very expensive business—reforming the welfare state.

Even in the United States, 'you have a sort of welfare state, even if you don't want to admit it -- you don't allow people to die on the street.

The vast majority of Americans—about 96 percent—benefit from some kind of government social program.

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.

Some people think that welfare reform should have hurt Bill Clinton with black voters.

When former president Lyndon B. Johnson unveiled his plans for the program that would become Medicaid, he reflected on the future of public policy in the United States.

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

Welfare reform isn't easy.

We do know the welfare system, starting in the '60s, basically encouraged the dissolution of marriage, encouraged families to separate in order to get the benefits.

I see an America where poverty is defeated by opportunity, not enabled by a government check.

The dependency on the dole, formerly limited in pre-Clinton days to 14 million women and children on AFDC, will now grow to a clear majority of the U.S. population.