Public welfare

“ But more important is the fact that social welfare depends more largely upon a proper understanding of its problems by the local community and a willingness to grapple with them intelligently and sympathetically, than upon the remedial treatment afforded through professional workers, courts, institutions and other public agencies. Social welfare is like health, for which sanitation and hygiene are more important than doctors and medicines. ”

“ To provide these things is the object of the state, viz., the public welfare of the citizens; it is to bring about public conditions which will enable the citizens to attain their temporal welfare. To this end the state must protect the rights of its subjects, and must protect and promote the public goods of economic life, but especially the spiritual benefits of morals and religion. ”

“ The relationship of tile service to public welfare, so intimately affected by State and Federal regulation, demands the effective correlation and a concerted drive to meet an insistent and justified public demand. ”

“ The dominant factor that will determine these things is the public welfare. When private property in a particular thing is found injurious to public welfare, it will be taken over by the state for the purpose of being socialized, as will hereafter be explained. ”

“ But it is not merely on account of the superior interest they have in the public welfare, that persons of high rank and great property, and such as occupy places of importance in the government, are bound to support measures calculated to relieve the distresses of the Poor;—there is still another circumstance which renders it indispensably necessary that they should take an active part in such measures, and that is, the influence which their example must have upon others. ”

“ In matters of most essential moment to the public welfare it can be safely better counted upon for efficient and faithful service, while its opponent opens only a prospect of uncertainty and confusion. ”

“ The wide extension of the police power in recent times in the interest of public health, sanitation, and general public welfare represents the effort of the government, in an individualistic society in which the older sanctions and securities no longer exist, to protect the individual as well as the community from the effects of unrestricted competition. ”

“ The man who wrongly holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains that every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it. ”

“ To be sure, the cases cited, and many others enunciating this fundamental standard under the Equal Protection Clause, have in the main involved state regulation of business or industry. The administration of public welfare assistance, by contrast, involves the most basic economic needs of impoverished human beings. ”

“ The establishment of Public Welfare Societies in so many localities is a proof that charitable forces are drawing together, and gives hope that if a place 192is found for them in the established system they may become powerful for good and not for mischief. ”

“ Officers discharge their duties, arrests are made, courts are held, offenders are punished, justice is meted out, and taxes are collected, by the authority of the State.
The National Government has similar functions to perform in every part of the country, but they are far less frequent than those of the State.
INSTITUTIONS.--The State maintains a number of charitable and other institutions for the public welfare. It makes appropriations of land or money for the support of asylums, prisons, reformatories, scientific institutions, schools, colleges, and universities. ”

“ This must necessarily be so, in the nature of things. It is vital to the public welfare that each one should be able at all times to do whatever the varying circumstances and present exigencies touching the subject involved may require. ”

“ And the more numerous the body, and the more changeable its component parts, the more difficult it will be to preserve the personal responsibility, as well as the uniform action, of the successive members to the great objects of the public welfare. ”

“ Our recent decisions make plain that we do not sit as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation nor to decide whether the policy which it expresses offends the public welfare. ”

“ The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. ”

“ The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us, and therefore in public life that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to do good to each by doing good to all; in other words, whose endeavor it is not to represent any special class and promote merely that class's selfish interests, but to represent all true and honest men of all sections and all classes and to work for their interests by working for our common country.
We can keep our government on a sane and healthy basis, we can make and keep our social system what it should be, only on condition of judging each man, not as a member of a class, but on his worth as a man. ”

“ We have slashed this redtape to 37 States, covering 75 percent of all the people on welfare in America, so that they can take steps to fix the broken system. State by State, we are building a welfare system that demands work, requires responsibility, and protects our children. ”

“ Here more than there is the tendency to exaggerate legislation and to neglect enforcement of law. Instead of harnessing the whole army of workingmen to the crusade and strengthening civic agencies such as factory, health, and tenement departments, houses are built and given to men, clubs are formed to amuse factory girls, amateur theatricals are organized. All this is called "welfare work." "What is welfare work?" ”

“ The steady expansion of this welfare program, as of public assistance programs in general, can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States. ”

“ The American people need a welfare system that honors American values: work, family, and personal responsibility. In 1994, and again this year, I sent Congress a sweeping welfare reform plan that would impose strict time limits on how long people can stay on welfare and strict work requirements for people when they are on welfare. ”

“ Governmental limits.—All society recognizes certain universal wants and the necessity of meeting these with essential order and the best economy. These universal wants enforce the organization of society under some form of government. Such an organization grows out of the necessity rather than the will of humanity. Hence government, local or more general, is the direct effort of individuals in society for the general welfare. Usually the best test of general welfare is the assent of the majority of mature and intelligent members of the community. ”

“ It is within our local communities that the real contribution to the welfare of our citizens is made. Those closest to the problem-the social workers in State and local governments, area agencies, and private and voluntary organizations-are usually the most qualified persons to decide what help is needed and the best way to provide it. ”

“ As human beings have become dependent on one another, the well-being or the degradation of one individual or family does not stop there. It strongly influences the welfare of other individuals and families. For their own protection people have not only the right, but the obligation to make a government that shall foster and advance the common welfare. ”

“ Under advancement by the State we understand the duty of the whole community to step in with its means wherever the welfare of the individual does not suffice to obtain him a life worthy of a human being. ”

“ It’s clear that it is laudable to aid the government, when one aids it submissively, following out its desires and the true spirit of the laws in agreement with the just beliefs of the governing powers, and when not in contradiction to the fundamental and general way of thinking of the persons to whom is intrusted the common welfare of the individuals that form a social organism. ”

“ We've created a welfare monster that is a shocking indictment of our sense of priorities. Our national welfare system consists of some 59 major programs and over 6,000 pages of Federal laws and regulations on which more than $132 billion was spent in 1985. I will propose a new national welfare strategy, a program of welfare reform through State-sponsored, community-based demonstration projects. This is the time to reform this outmoded social dinosaur and finally break the poverty trap. Now, we will never abandon those who, through no fault of their own, must have our help. ”

“ The American people have decided that it is better for people to work than be on welfare, that welfare should be a temporary help, not a way of life, but that the solution should support children and families, not undermine them. ”

“ Those who receive Government assistance have certain responsibilities: the responsibility to seek work or get education and training that will help them get a job, and the responsibility to get their lives in order. That means establishing lifestyles that will enable them to fulfill their potential, not destroy it.
We have responsibilities, too. We must structure our welfare programs so that they reverse policies which lock in a lifestyle of dependency and subtly destroy self-esteem. We must encourage family formation and family stability. ”

“ Of these laws the chief seems to be that Providence has commended the welfare of every man chiefly to his own keeping, not to that of others; and has so ordered things that men, in pursuing their own welfare within the limits set by justice, are ordinarily contributing to the general welfare. ”

“ Meanwhile, over the last 2 1/2 years, while I've been urging Congress to act, my administration has worked as hard as we can to change the welfare system by executive action in a way that honors the values most Americans hold dear: work, responsibility, and family. We've put tough child support enforcement at the center of the national debate. ”

“ Next week, the United States House of Representatives is scheduled to debate a welfare reform plan that will touch the lives of millions of Americans. The last time Congress reformed welfare, in 1996, it put millions of Americans on the path to better lives. ”

“ About one million and a half of these belong to the group which in the past was dependent upon local welfare efforts. Most of them are unable for one reason or another to maintain themselves independently--for the most part, through no fault of their own. Such people, in the days before the great depression, were cared for by local efforts--by States, by counties, by towns, by cities, by churches and by private welfare agencies. ”

“ But we can all agree that we must meet the challenge, not by pouring more money into a bad program, but by abolishing the present welfare system and adopting a new one.
So let us place a floor under the income of every family with children in America--and without those demeaning, soul-stifling affronts to human dignity that so blight the lives of welfare children today. But let us also establish an effective work incentive and an effective work requirement. ”

“ We should reform welfare to move people from welfare to work.
But we know that business has a role to play, too, if we want people to have better lives, provide for their families, and face the future with confidence. ”

“ I challenge people on welfare to make the most of this opportunity for independence. I challenge American businesses to give people on welfare the chance to move into the work force. I applaud the work of religious groups and others who care for the poor. More than anyone else in our society, they know the true difficulty of the task before us, and they are in a position to help. Every one of us should join them. That is the only way we can make real welfare reform a reality in the lives of the American people. ”

“ If she lives in the country the relation of government to her life is not so varied, but she is still dependent on it for the education of her child, for the socializing influences of the community, and for much of the business prosperity of the farm. Are telephone connections cheap, are the roads passable at all seasons, are good market facilities provided? These are all questions that greatly affect her welfare, and they depend largely on the government. ”

“ When I signed the historic welfare reform law we set out to honor a moral obligation for our nation, to help many people in our national community to help themselves. This law dramatically changes the nation's welfare system so that no longer will it fail our people, trap so many families in a cycle of dependency, but instead will now help people to move from welfare to work. It will do so by requiring work of every able-bodied person, by protecting children, by promoting parental responsibility through tougher child support enforcement. ”

“ We still have a lot more to do — all of us — to make welfare reform a success. Providing child care, helping families move closer to available jobs, challenging more companies to join our welfare-to- work partnership, increasing child support collections from deadbeat parents who have a duty to support their own children. ”

“ I say to those who are on welfare, and especially to those who have been trapped on welfare for a long time: For too long our welfare system has undermined the values of family and work, instead of supporting them. The Congress and I are near agreement on sweeping welfare reform. ”

“ We've also pressed ahead on fundamental reforms to make the welfare system reflect the basic values that have stood up so well for so long, that if you bring a child into this world, you must take responsibility for that child; that Government will not subsidize irresponsible or reckless behavior; that welfare is a second chance, not a way of life. ”