Welfare State

I would like to add some points to former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich's column "How the welfare state has grown" (April 7). Mr. Ehrlich fails to mention the fact that every president since Lyndon Johnson, beginning in 1964, has raided the Social Security Trust Fund and transferred the money to the government's general fund to pay for the country's wars and for the campaign promises they made to their constituents in order to get re-elected. He also failed to mention that President Ronald Reagan called upon Congress in the early 1980s to increase Social Security contributions because he claimed the system was going broke.

I would like to add some points to former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich's column "How the welfare state has grown" (April 7). Mr. Ehrlich fails to mention the fact that every president since Lyndon Johnson, beginning in 1964, has raided the Social Security Trust Fund and transferred the money to the government's general fund to pay for the country's wars and for the campaign promises they made to their constituents in order to get re-elected. He also failed to mention that President Ronald Reagan called upon Congress in the early 1980s to increase Social Security contributions because he claimed the system was going broke.

WASHINGTON - When the redoubtable Newt Gingrich was speaker of the House, before a sea of troubles persuaded him suddenly to give up his official megaphone and become a private citizen, he loved to rant about the evils of "the welfare state." The phrase was his putdown of every manner of Democratic Party program that sought to help the nation's poor, elderly or otherwise disadvantaged soul, embodied in the party's self-congratulatory label as the party of the people. Mr. Gingrich still rants about the welfare state with less influence, but it doesn't matter much.

Former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s Sunday columns are usually thought-provoking, but not always in the way he intended. His latest opinion piece laments the vastly expanded entitlement economy - what he calls "a European-style welfare state" ("How the welfare state has grown," April 7). Although few objective observers would describe the U.S. social safety net that way, most people recognize that our current spending on these programs is not sustainable in the long term. However, like Mitt Romney before him, Mr. Ehrlich seems uninterested in how this state of affairs came to be, other than blaming "big government.

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. " - Thomas Jefferson My recent column on the challenges associated with the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program elicited numerous and very personal stories from readers about how individual (disabled) recipients depended on the program for daily maintenance. And, many asked, how dare I (and others of my ilk) question such a vital program?

EVEN AS German Chancellor Helmut Kohl comes within reach of Otto von Bismarck's all-time record for longevity in office, he is taking dramatic action to reduce the size of the welfare state launched by the "Iron chancellor" a century and a quarter ago. The stakes are enormous. Saddled with pension benefits, health care costs, job security provisions and other social entitlements, the country regarded as the economic engine of Europe is in deep trouble.Germany is losing its competitive edge, its reputation for hard work and, now, the government-management-union cooperation that made it a model for industrial harmony.

IF IT TOOK Richard Nixon to open U.S. relations with Communist China, it takes the "New Labor" Party of Prime Minister Tony Blair to peel away the welfare state that the old Labor Party created in Britain a half-century ago.Labor's May 1 election victory was so lopsided that many observers believed Mr. Blair would discard his tactical centrism, especially as so many traditional Laborites were returned to the back benches of the House of Commons. But in the space of two days, Mr. Blair re-emphasized that he means it.In a symbolic struggle that brought defections from his side, his government ended an $18-a-week welfare payment to single parents on top of other family support payments.

FRENCH VOTERS will choose in the parliamentary election starting today between the welfare state to which they feel entitled or a common European currency the year after next. That is, they must choose between a leftish party and the ruling conservative coalition. Both promise the French can have it all; neither means it.Two center-right parties knocked the Socialists out of the box in the 1993 parliamentary elections, winning four-fifths of the seats. In 1995 Gaullist Jacques Chirac won the presidency long held by Socialist Francois Mitterrand.

LONDON -- They are smoking less and living longer. They own more cars, television sets, microwave ovens and computers than ever before. Unemployment is down. Wages are up.So why are the British feeling so uncertain about their quality of life? Why does the long list of government services seemed smudged and tattered? The cradle-to-grave welfare state that covers 58.2 million people simply isn't what it used to be.The typical Briton sees a National Health Service that appears to be in decline, rides trains and subways that are aging and overcrowded, and walks streets that are viewed as increasingly unsafe.

As the presidential election counts down to (despite recent tightening in the polls) a likely Obama victory, even moderate Republicans despair that America is going the way of "social democratic" Western Europe, with a smaller private sector, more power in the hands of political and technocratic elites, and unlimited government. For their part, liberals cheer that America will finally catch up with the more "advanced" lands across the Atlantic. The fears of the right and hopes of the left reflect popular misconceptions about European realities.

There is one thing in our political discourse that bothers me greatly, and that is how we so easily denigrate tens to hundreds of millions of our fellow Americans to express our biases ("How the welfare state has grown - and sapped America's economy and culture" April 7). There is no excuse for it. It is so demeaning. It reminds me of one of the Star Wars movies, where the Death Star destroys a whole planet. Just like that. Rid of it, them. Mr. Ehrlich do you even realize that is what your thoughtless rhetoric does?

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. " - Thomas Jefferson My recent column on the challenges associated with the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program elicited numerous and very personal stories from readers about how individual (disabled) recipients depended on the program for daily maintenance. And, many asked, how dare I (and others of my ilk) question such a vital program?

As the presidential election counts down to (despite recent tightening in the polls) a likely Obama victory, even moderate Republicans despair that America is going the way of "social democratic" Western Europe, with a smaller private sector, more power in the hands of political and technocratic elites, and unlimited government. For their part, liberals cheer that America will finally catch up with the more "advanced" lands across the Atlantic. The fears of the right and hopes of the left reflect popular misconceptions about European realities.

With the Supreme Court taking up Arizona's "show me your papers" immigration law, we're once again thrust into a useful debate over the role of the government and the obligations of the citizen -- and non-citizen. Rather than come at it from the usual angle, I thought I'd try something different. If there were one thing I could impress upon people about the nature of the state, it's that governments by their very nature want to make their citizens "legible. " I borrow that word from James C. Scott, whose book "Seeing Like a State" left a lasting impression on me. Mr. Scott studied why the state has always seen "people who move around" to be the enemy.

"Thank God for Ronald Reagan!" I heard a successful restaurateur cheer one night in 1986, as he surveyed the people standing in line to get into his place in Baltimore's Little Italy. "If the Democrats were running the show, half the damn country would be on welfare. " That was a standard theme of the era: The country had been going to hell because of "welfare. " The Democrats' Great Society had spawned an expensive "welfare state," Reaganites argued, with too many lazy Americans on the dole.

In her article ("Criticism of O'Donnell misses the mark," Sept. 21) Janet Rosenbaum misses the whole reason why many Bible believing Christians aren't in favor of increasing the welfare state. We see the government as a bloated United Way where so many of our tax dollars go to administrative and bureaucratic costs. As Christians, we are called to care for the poor and we prefer to do so by giving directly to organizations that really make a difference in people's lives. Research has shown that conservatives on a whole give more to charity than liberals.

"Thank God for Ronald Reagan!" I heard a successful restaurateur cheer one night in 1986, as he surveyed the people standing in line to get into his place in Baltimore's Little Italy. "If the Democrats were running the show, half the damn country would be on welfare. " That was a standard theme of the era: The country had been going to hell because of "welfare. " The Democrats' Great Society had spawned an expensive "welfare state," Reaganites argued, with too many lazy Americans on the dole.

The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman famously commented, "It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state." As we've noticed in recent years, what was obvious to Mr. Friedman and indeed to the great majority of American citizens is apparently a mystery to many of our political leaders, Democrat and Republican alike. They have not effectively addressed the issue of the ongoing invasion of the United States from south of the border by millions of destitute Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans and other Central Americans desperate for jobs that pay a living wage.

WASHINGTON -- Charles Murray, who is the sort of big-thinking, think-tank scholar that Washington's power elite listens to, has a new plan to reduce poverty, encourage work, fortify marriages, insure the uninsured, "replace the welfare state" and save money in the long run. Unfortunately, his elegantly crafted and richly researched proposal, published by the conservative American Enterprise Institute as In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State,...