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Thumbing through a magazine recently, I came across one of the most incisive articles on America’s welfare problems that I have read in many a moon. The author reviews current practices as well as the various suggestions for reform put forth on both the left and the right. Finding them all unsatisfactory for one reason or another, he comes up with his own comprehensive propos al: “replacing all cashlike welfare programs that assist the able-bodied poor (AFDC, general relief, Food Stamps and housing subsidies, but not Medicaid) with a single, simple offer from the government — an offer of employment for every American citizen over 18 who wants it, in a useful public job at a wage slightly below the minimum wage. “If you could work, and needed money, you would ... be given the location of several government job sites. If you showed up and worked, you would be paid for your work. If you don’t show up, you don’t get paid. Simple.” The most striking feature of the proposal is that it would apply to everybody able to work, including mothers of small children. Day-care centers for such children would be provided — in part out of the pool of employables produced by the work requirement. Problems remain, including the well-known doubts of conservatives about the desirability of ‘‘make work.’’ But the author’s insistence is persuasive: ‘‘The point is to enforce the work ethic.... Welfare doesn’t work. Work ‘incentives’ don’t work. Training doesn’t work. Work ‘requirements’ don’t work. ‘Work experience’ doesn’t work and even workfare doesn’t quite work. Only work works.” Turning to the next issue of that same magazine, I noted in a book review a graceful tribute to President Reagan: “‘... barring some unforesee able shock to the economy, it now appears entirely possible, even like ly, that Ronald Reagan will bequeath to his successor both a strong economy and a reasonably solvent federal government. An impressive feat, given how few presidents have pulled it off.’ A few pages further on, another book reviewer had these sharp critic isms to make of FDR: “Running in 1944 was a ghastly blunder for himself and the nation. His treatment of Churchill and the British as some how part of a dread ‘colonialism,’ his failure to understand Hitler’s deepest intent, his ‘unconditional surrender’ dictum at Casablanca, his fantastic misassessment of Stalin and the nature of Soviet power, his failure to direct his generals to meet that power as far East as possible, his enthusiasm about the later advance of the Soviet armies that was linked fatefully with Tehran and Yalta with all this history will not deal lightly. I laid the magazine down, its cover face up, the familiar logo easily visible. The New Republic The New Republic? Yes, and the author of that splendidly provocative article on enforcing the work ethic was Mickey Kaus, identified as its West Coast correspondent. The remarks about Ronald Reagan were from the pen of Michael Barker, editor of the monthly newsletter of the Gallatin Institute, and those on FDR were made by none other than the venerable Max Lerner. It would be a cheap shot to call attention to the above astonishingly non-liberal comments, in America’s leading liberal publication, if one’s only purpose were to patronize The New Republic. I can imagine what it must have cost Marty Peretz and his fellow editors to print those state ments — let alone what it will cost them to see them praised and reprinted here. But I salute him, and them, for having the intellectual courage to think hard new thoughts about tough problems, and to tell the truth even when it hurts. And my guess is that, by doing so, The New Republic will in the long run contribute more to the revival of a sensible liberalism, and to the health of the Democratic Party, than all the nuts and flakes on America’s further left put together.
Newspaper Details
Kittanning Leader Times
Kittanning, Pennsylvania, US
Thu, Jul 24, 1986
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Roger M.
USA 01 Jul 2026
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