Bob Dole: “there are few examples that better illustrate the case of good intentions gone awry than the Legal Services Corporation.…”

“there are few examples that better illustrate the case of good intentions gone awry than the Legal Services Corporation. Created in 1974 to relieve the burden of an expensive legal system for poor Americans, the Legal Services Corporation has become in many instances the instrument for bullying ordinary Americans to satisfy a liberal agenda that has been repeatedly rejected by the voters. Mr. President, I wish to make clear at the outset that I support efforts to help low-income Americans by ensuring that they are not shut off from legal redress, especially where important constitutional rights are concerned. And I also have no doubt that the existing legal services framework has produced good programs and employs good people who are devoted to providing the very best representation to those who otherwise could not afford it. But as the Washington Post noted on September 18, 1995, the model of providing legal services to the poor has become twisted into something ``more ambitious: a powerful network of poverty lawyers funded by Washington and backed up by university-based centers of expertise, that would help not just individual clients but `the poor' as a whole.''”