Safety Net: Welfare and Social Security

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 22, 1996 | by Doug Bandow

President Clinton long has based his claim to being a New Democrat on welfare reform. With the system widely blamed for breaking up families, discouraging work and creating dependency, the president promised to "end welfare as we know it." Yet now, under pressure from his party's core constituencies, Clinton seems to be edging away from measures he once endorsed.

Helping us learn how we got where we are today is Blanche Coll's Safety Net: Welfare and Social Security, 1929-1979 (Rutgers, 347 pp). Coll remains a moderate defender of the system -- including in her book a brief section on what she believes "went right" with policy, for instance. But her tone is measured, and she concludes that welfare recipients should be given "a place at the boardroom table."