Found this article in the latest US News and World Report. The issue is dealing with American milestones. Some of the articles include 100 documents that define our nation to the one I am going to post. The whole magazine is very interesting....
This article is interesting. And thought provoking.....
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/030922/usnews/22safety.htm
Casting a Wide Net
By Joannie Fischer
While some American ideals are held sacred, such as the right to life and liberty, many others fluctuate with the tides of history. But few ideas in the American mind-set have reversed themselves so completely, and transformed the nation so profoundly, as the notion of whether government ought to lend its neediest citizens a helping hand.
For the entire first half of the United States' existence, Americans ardently rejected the notion of a public safety net for even the most vulnerable citizens. Indeed, the idea of welfare was considered "un-American"--something repugnantly European. Yet over much of the past century, the country has engaged in the rapid-fire construction of a net so extensive and elaborate that about half of all government spending now goes to some kind of assistance. And we're not talking about just the down and out anymore: Nearly every American citizen receives some form of aid these days, regardless of need.
Early Americans were known for their distinctive anathema toward government handouts, a distaste historians attribute to both the opportunities of their expansive adopted land and the personalities of those who chose to move here. Up to 1870, half the nation's workers were farmers, landowners with extended families that pitched in during tough financial times or illness. But this all-for-one mentality didn't extend far beyond the family. It was still a nation of immigrants with little in common, says historian Larry DeWitt. Indeed, the country lacked any sense of ethnic unity that might have inspired more generosity. What relief did exist for the poor usually came from private or local coffers, but accepting welfare was not a simple choice: Those who took aid often lost the right to vote and sometimes even had to wear a large "P" (for poor) on their clothing.
The industrial revolution radically transformed America's economy and lifestyle, but it didn't put a chink into this bootstrap mentality. With "more jobs seeking men than men seeking jobs," as one early historian put it, it was hard to fathom that any willing worker could not provide for himself or his family. So even as most European nations were creating programs of welfare and "social insurance," Herbert Hoover was winning the 1928 election by denouncing the European model as "paternalism."
Rugged. Hoover's attitude didn't soften when the stock market crashed a year later, plunging a good chunk of the population into unemployment and homelessness. When 25,000 World War I veterans marched to the White House to request early payment of financial bonuses they had been promised, the president's response was to tear-gas them. That was the American safety net in 1932.
But by then the American public was learning some sad lessons. The Great Depression had shown that bootstraps just didn't work for many Americans. Even those most willing to lift a shovel, and even those who had socked away a lifetime of savings, could be made destitute by perverse twists of fortune. Almost overnight, support swelled for the very un-American idea that the government should bear responsibility for helping the unfortunate. Franklin Roosevelt was swept into office to create a "New Deal" between government and citizens.
Roosevelt called an emergency session of Congress and in 100 days transformed the role of U.S. government forever by creating all manner of assistance programs. His largest legacy was passage of the Social Security Act, which led to the vast system of benefits for the retired, disabled, unemployed, and poor. They're all still in place today. The demand was overwhelming: By the time the first checks were drafted, over 35 million people had signed up, and today the program covers 98 percent of workers.
The New Deal marked a turning point "as decisive as 1776 or 1860," argues historian Kenneth Davis. Not only did it transform the U.S. government from "a smallish body that had limited impact on the average American into a huge machinery that left few Americans untouched," but it also resulted in "a previously unthinkable reliance on government to accomplish tasks that individuals and the private economy were unwilling or unable to do."
While FDR's expansion of the government's role in helping those in need was astonishing and unprecedented, that was just the beginning of official compassion in the United States. After World War II, the GI Bill helped put a safety net under some 15 million returning vets, not only with cash assistance but with vocational training and educational scholarships.
Rehab. This idea--that welfare might come in the form of services, not just cash--came to fruition in the 1960s and was advanced most vigorously by Lyndon Johnson. The bedrock idea of the Great Society was entitlement: Americans by birthright were not only free but guaranteed a certain level of comfort. New government programs like Head Start and the Job Corps made that point, but LBJ's most stunning safety net innovation was the creation of Medicaid and Medicare. Those two programs declared for the first time that no American--poor, elderly, disabled--should go without decent healthcare.
Since these innovations, America has struggled to maintain its ethos of self-reliance and hard work. The Reagan administration cut back on spending for such things as public housing and job training, and the Clinton administration demanded more personal responsibility in redefining "welfare as we know it." Even so, taxpayer support of assistance programs has doubled since the '60s, to roughly 50 percent of the federal budget.
What's more, it's no longer a partisan issue. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle elbow one another out of the way to claim credit for expanding the safety net. Both houses of Congress are grappling now with plans to add prescription drug benefits for the 40 million Medicare and Medicaid recipients struggling with their pharmacy bills.
The revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine argued that the "government is best which governs least." That sentiment inspired Thomas Jefferson and other architects of a small federal government. But as the nation has grappled with economic downturns, that laissez-faire philosophy has lost some of its appeal, and modern citizens have come to expect a government that intervenes to soften the landing when they fall.
Hmmmm........
Government that is small and governs least....who'd a thunk it?!