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6
Newark, or other N orthero cities. This
is a major cause of the stifling urban
migration.
8)
Welfare is personal/y degrading.
A welfare check is supposedly give.n to
help people live "with dignity." But
such handouts are often accompanied by
highly uNdignified snooping, question–
ing and checking up on the "means,"
morality and marital status of recipients.
Sorne want to work, but jobs aren't
available.
All
self-respect, dignity, and
desire to escape the poverty Jyndrome
are sabotaged.
And worst of all:
9)
Welfare is for LIFE.
Over 40
percent of all AFDC welfare cases in
sorne large cities are the
sons or datlgh–
ters
of previous AFDC cases! Sorne are
third-generation
fatherless families!
To live a life on welfare - or in
poverty - is to live no life at all. And
25 million Americans are locked in this
prison for life.
Recently, sorne government leaders
and econornists have been proposing a
drastic revision of our Welfare System.
The Nixon Plan
On August 8, 1969, on nationwide
television, the President of the United
States proposed a sweeping reform, a
series of changes which, although more
expensive initially than the present pro–
gram, proposed to treat many of the
catues
of the welfare rness and take
away sorne of its needlessly degrading
factors. He called it the Family Assist–
ance Plan.
No unemployed person would earn
more than an employed person - as
often happens today.
In short, it would annually provide
$500 per adult and $300 per child for
al/ families with children,
if that farnily
earns less than $720 per year.
If
the
family earns between $720 and $3,920
annually (figured on a family-of-four
basis) , it would still receive
50~
of wel–
fare support for each dallar the family
earns (above $720).
An additional incentive to work
would be a $30 monthly bonus for
those attending job-tcaining programs.
A penalty for those who refuse job
training and placement would also be
instituted.
The President would scrap the entire
The
PLAIN TRUTH
UPI
Photo
Approximotely one third of all
social welfare expenses - about
$40
billion Oolnually -
support
the
elderly,
chiefly through Social
Security.
AFDC program and attempt to employ
sorne of the AFDC mothers by provicl–
ing day care for the children. Such prac–
tices as the "means test" ancl the
personal intrusion by welfare workers
woulcl be eliminatecl. There woulcl be
no attempted separation of the "cleserv–
ing" and "undeserving" poor, as is
aJtempted
today.
Woulcl the Nixon Plan work ?
The President himself said, "[
don' t
know
whether it's going to work. All 1
know is that the system we've got now
is a social disaster, ancl l'm not going
another step clown that roacl." Congress
counted the cost of the Nixon plan for
over a year, then it was turnecl clown
recently by the Senate Finance Com–
mittee. The reason
why
is clear when
we unclerstand the
cost
involved.
Would It Work?
As an immediate effect, President
Nixon's plan would more than double
the welfare rolls, from about 10 rnillion
to nearly 25 million Americans. The
immediate cost increase would be about
$4 billion acldecl to a Fiscal 1971
buclget
deficit
that already is exceeding
$10 billion.
The long-range effect would be the
most critica!. The new welfare plan
would officially make the United States
a ''welfare state.'' The standard definí-
January
1971
tion of a welfare state woulcl be the
Universal Declara/ion of Human Rights
as proclaimed by the General Assembly
of the United Nations in 1948.
It
states
that
"everyone
has the right to social
security" and
"everyone
has the right to
a standard of living adequate for the
health and well-being of himself ancl
his family."
The key word is
everyone.
At present less than half of Amer–
ica's poor receive welfare. Unemploy–
ment and other welfare programs cover
only a portien of the nation. Neither
the cradle, the grave, nor much of the
in-between is thoroughly covered -
yet.
President Nixon is opposed to
most of the principies of "guaranteed
income" or "negative income tax." His
plan, nevertheless,
guarantees
$2,400
(including
$800
of food stamps) per
year to every family of four. The male
head-of-family must submit to job
training, but wornen heads-of-family
need not.
Would such programs work? Look at
the record of past job-training programs.
For eight years now, a program of
job training, on both the national and
state levels, has been under way. The
programs have cost
in
excess of
$6 bit–
/ion.
Critics on both sides agree that only
a "small proportion" of the 6.4 million
persons in the program were helped.
Mr. Nixon called job programs here–
tofore "a terrible tangle of confusion
and waste." Would future job programs
do better?
Training programs alone are not the
answer. No job training programs can
1)
guarantee jobs for those trained, 2)
guarantee proper wages and working
conditions for victims of job dis–
crimination, 3) instill the
deJire
to
learn into a person du1led by years of
poverty, malnutrition, or apathy, or 4)
solve the
primary
welfare problem of
non-white households headed by
II'OIIlell.
Profile of the Poor
Most of the poor are NOT necessarily
the lazy employables, but the working
or deserted
poor.
Of the 4.5 million
poor families (under the age of 65) eli–
gible to receive sorne supplement to
their income uncler the proposed Nixon
plan, 3.3 million are
already tuorking,
at wages below
$60
per week. Another