Social Welfare Under Reagan

Archive Report

Welfare Spending Cuts

Controversy Over Benefit Reductions

At Issue in this presidential election year is the three-year-old question of whether President Reagan's social welfare programs are fair to the nation's poor. Reagan's critics claim that his economic recovery program has been built on the backs of the poor, that federal programs to help low-income individuals and families have been cut to finance an unnecessarily large defense program and to compensate for massive income tax cuts of benefit primarily to the wealthy. Reagan and his supporters counter that the welfare program reductions were needed to curb the excessive federal spending that was fueling doubledigit inflation and creating a dependency on the federal government.

The growth of social welfare programs has been a central issue of American domestic policy ...

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