Future of Welfare

Report Outline
The Emerging Politics of Welfare
Growth of Income-Support Benefits
Prospect of Overhauling the System
Special Focus

The Emerging Politics of Welfare

Issue for The 1976 Campaign; New York Example

The “WELFARE MESS” is the nation's most enduring domestic issue, a classic battlefield in American politics for the clash of conservative and liberal ideologies. Packing as much political dynamite today as it did 10 and 20 years ago, welfare is bound to figure prominently once more as an issue in the national election campaign of 1976. President Ford has called for a cutback in welfare spending and his challenger for the Republican nomination, Ronald Reagan of California, wants the responsibility for all welfare and related programs transferred from the federal to the state governments.

The National Governors' Conference, in contrast, has taken a stand in favor of full federal financing of a minimum income standard for the entire population every year since President Nixon proposed such a plan in 1969. The threatened bankruptcy of New York City, attributed in large part to the heavy drain on its budget of extensive and relatively generous social-welfare programs, has intensified concern in all states where other cities with large welfare burdens are located. Payments to its one million welfare recipients cost New York City $48.34 for every man, woman and child in the city in 1974. A study by the private, non-partisan Citizens Budget Commission, released on Nov. 16, indicates that this amount still represented only 30 per cent of the entire welfare cost in New York City. The state and the federal government paid the rest.

Like his three immediate predecessors in high office, President Ford has felt compelled to direct attention to questions of welfare reform and the 94th Congress can expect an administration proposal on this subject shortly after its second session convenes in January. A special task force appointed by the Domestic Council in the White House has been studying the welfare situation, and other domestic problems, over much of the past year with a view to presenting the President with available options for action he might take or recommend to Congress to overcome defects of the system. Meanwhile hundreds of bills to change this or that phase of the nation's welfare machinery are before Congress, as they have been before previous sessions for many years back. A growing consensus, however, has come to favor complete overhaul and simplification of the entire system.