Political Quotes

“State and local. We brought them in and, by 1960, most people were covered by Social Security and that included survivors. So if the breadwinner died, the widow and the orphan were taken care of. Therefore, welfare--I am not talking about Social Security survivors insurance, I am talking about welfare as we knew it in the 1930's; when the breadwinner dies there is no Social Security survivors' benefits-- welfare as we knew it began to disappear because Social Security benefits, survivors' benefits, were usually more generous than welfare would be, and survivors' benefits supplanted what welfare had initially been for widows and orphans. From about 1950 onward, maybe a little earlier again--the Senator from New York would know more specifically than I would--aid to dependent children, as we now call it aid to families with dependent children, AFDC, started tilting toward support for unwed mothers and children who had never had a breadwinner in the house. It was no longer the concept of the widow and the orphan. There never was a breadwinner. And, instead of emergency financial support for a widow who was suddenly deprived of her breadwinner, AFDC, aid to families with dependent children, gradually and then overwhelmingly became a lifetime support system for many people. And in many cases it became a generation after generation support system. Today, only 1 to 2 percent of welfare is because of the death of a breadwinner.…”