To Renew America: on Welfare & Poverty
Eight steps to improve opportunity for poor
One of the encouraging developments of the last few years has been that a lot of truly caring, intelligent people have spent a lot of time thinking about the tragedy of modern welfare systems. As a result, we now have a fairly good idea of what works
and what doesn’t. The eight steps we need for improving opportunities for the poor are: - Shifting from caretaking to caring: Caretaking’s most important concern is to make the provider feel good, while caring’s first concern is the outcome for
the person being helped.
- Volunteerism and spiritual renewal: more volunteers could get to know individuals and their families, [and ] emphasize spiritual salvation.
- Reasserting the values of American civilization
- Emphasizing family and work.
- Creating tax incentives for work, investment, and entrepreneurship.
- Re-establishing savings and property ownership.
- Learning as the focus of education.
- Protection against violence and drugs.
Source: To Renew America, p. 73ff
Jul 2, 1995
Replace "welfare state" with "opportunity society"
The greatest moral imperative we face is replacing the welfare state with an opportunity society. For every day that we allow the current conditions to continue, we are condemning the poor--and particularly poor children--to being deprived of their
basic rights as Americans. The welfare state reduces the poor from citizens to clients. It breaks up families, minimizes work incentives, blocks people from saving and acquiring property, and overshadows dreams of a promised future with a present despair
born of poverty, violence, and hopelessness.The defenders of the status quo should be ashamed of themselves. The current system has trapped and ruined a whole generation while claiming to be compassionate.
The burden of proof is not on the people who want to change welfare. It is on those who would defend a system that has clearly failed at incalculable human cost.
Source: Renew America, by Newt Gingrich, p. 71-72
Jul 2, 1996
Enterprise zones let poor create their own jobs
Almost every public housing project in the US has an underground economy of people working for barter without securing government licenses or paying taxes. Jack Kemp has been the leading advocate of "enterprise zones"
that would encourage job creation within the legal system. Kemp has long proposed massive tax and regulatory breaks for anyone who would invest in poor neighborhoods.
Since these neighborhoods pay almost no taxes anyway and since they drain the pubic treasury through welfare payments, the cost of giving them tax breaks would be relatively small. If new investment helped poor people make the long-term transition from
welfare to productive work, these enterprise zones would more than pay for themselves. With Kemp's leadership, we are now working to apply this model in Washington, DC. We hope to have a full-blown experiment by 1996.
Source: Renew America, by Newt Gingrich, p. 79-80
Jul 2, 1996
Page last updated: Feb 22, 2019