Richard Nixon Quotes
The nation’s welfare system is a monstrous consuming outrage…. There should be no government program which would make it more profitable for a person to go on welfare than it would be to work.
Nixon’s view was very popular, except the reality of the welfare system was much more complicated than most people thought. A very large percentage of the adults on welfare were women with young children. There was no practical way for them to work unless there was some mechanism for caring for the children. Most of these women could only earn minimum wage which was not enough to cover the cost of child care. Providing child care would then cost more welfare money for this investment and politicians, even those hating the welfare system as it was, would not make this investment which would have dubious payoff. Training the women for better paying jobs and covering their child care in the process, works but the investment is very large and gives the government even more control of American life so there has never been a consensus for this. In other cases, women could get work but not having an automobile, they could not get to jobs in most of the United states. Further, requiring welfare recipients to work, collapsed when the economy was in recession. Many women just could not find jobs, and even when the government provided assistance, the state of the local economy determined whether or not workfare was practical.
Richard M. Nixon, 1913-1994, 37th President of the United States (Republican, CA), State of the Union Message, 1972
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The argument here is that since the poor working class wages are so low, that they cannot save for an emergency, therefore the society must provide for welfare for those who might otherwise starve.
This clause is an interesting combination of liberal and conservative ideas. The former was the fact that it was the society’s obligation to provide jobs for the willing workers and welfare for the needy. At the same time, there was to be no assistance to the people who would not work—a classic conservative welfare reform.
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, Nixon previously served as the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961, having risen to national prominence as a representative and senator from California. After five years in the White House that saw the conclusion to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, he became the only president to resign from the office, following the Watergate scandal.
