Angela Rayner Quotes

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.

The welfare state, which grew out of post-war solidarity, has for decades been based on the principle that those who pay into the system are entitled to expect that the safety net will be there for them when they fall on hard times.

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. That is not the path that Australia will tread. Nor do we want the burdens of nanny state paternalism that now weigh down many economies in Europe.

The matter of social security and these grants is to help to address the levels of poverty in the country.

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

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.

I don't believe in welfare.

An indictment of entitlements has to focus on the huge 'social wealth' that the welfare state creates at the stroke of the pen. Yet statistical tests of the effects of welfare spending on employment yield erratic results.

People like entitlements. That's why we spend so much on them.

I think most Americans believe in a basic social safety net.

Social Security, all public and no option, rescued older Americans from living their final years in poverty.

Social security is the most successful government program in our nation's history. We are not going to cut social security! We are going to expand social security!

I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major's Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism.

The Welfare State, which begun in Imperial Germany for the truly indigent and disabled, has now become "everybody's entitlement" and an increasing burden on those who produce.

There are millions receiving government payments who have come to consider them as an earned right, who of course find them inadequate, and who are outraged at the slightest suggestion of a critical re-examination of the subject. The political pressure for constant extension and increase of these benefits is almost irresistible.

We are going to have the candidate of food stamps, the finest food-stamp president in the American history, in Barack Obama, and we are going to have a candidate of paychecks.

Compassion is good but politicians have turned compassion into the welfare state.

Is there any possibility of getting the super Welfare State's honey and avoiding the sting?

The automatic stabilizer is unemployment insurance, food stamps, additional coverage of Medicaid.

Without in any way minimising the economic and psychological blow that people experience when they lose their jobs, the unemployed in affluent countries still have a safety net, in the form of social security payments, and usually free healthcare and free education for their children. They also have sanitation and safe drinking water.

When I look at Social Security, I consider it the most important social program in the United States, arguably the most successful program in the world.

The decision is 'trust fund' versus 'no more Medicaid' - and that shouldn't be a tough decision.

Social Security is a promise that we cannot and must not break.

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.

Could we do without the social safety net, without Social Security, without Medicare, without farm subsidies, without unemployment compensation, without school lunch programs, without housing assistance? Of course we could. But we would not be a civilized society and we would not be an American nation any of us would be proud of.