welfare reform :: essays research papers

divorced, deserted, and minority mothers and their children. Few private and government retirement pensions existed in the United States before the Great Depression. The prevailing view was that individuals should save for their old age or be supported by their children. About 30 states provided some welfare aid to poor elderly persons without any source of income. Local officials generally decided who deserved old-age assistance in their community. The emphasis during the first two years of President Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" was to provide work relief for the millions of unemployed Americans. Federal money came to the states pay for public works projects, which employed the jobless. Some federal aid also directly assisted needy victims of the Depression. The states, however, remained mainly responsible for taking care of the unemployables (widows, poor children, the elderly poor, and the disabled). But states and private charities, too, were unable to keep up the support of these people at a time when tax collections and personal giving were declining steeply. In his State of the Union Address before Congress on January 4, 1935, President Roosevelt said â€Å"the time has come for action by the national government" to provide "security against the major hazards and vicissitudes [uncertainties] of life." He went on to propose the creation of federal unemployment and old-age insurance programs. He also called for guaranteed benefits for poor single mothers and their children along with other dependent persons. By permanently expanding federal responsibility for the security of all Americans, Roosevelt believed that the necessity for government make-work employment and other forms of Depression relief would disappear. In his address before Congress, Roosevelt argued that the continuation of government relief programs was a bad thing for the country: â€Å"lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit . . ..† A few months later, on August 18, 1935, Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act. It set up a federal retirement program for persons over 65, which was financed by a payroll tax paid jointly by employers and their workers. FDR believed that federal old-age pensions together with employer-paid unemployment insurance (also a part of the Social Security Act) would provide the economic security people needed during both good and bad times.