Jimmy Carter Quotes

I'd like to go over in a few minutes some of the problems with the present system, but I would like to point out that the most important unanimous conclusion is that the present welfare program should be scrapped entirely and a totally new system should be implemented. This conclusion in no way is meant to disparage the great value of the separate and the individual programs enacted by the Congress over the last 15 years. These include, as you know, a food stamp program for low-income persons, those who work and those who cannot work; the supplemental security income floor for our aged and disabled; work incentives for welfare families with children; increased housing assistance; tax credits; unemployment insurance extensions; enlarged jobs programs; and the indexing of social security payments to counter the biggest threat or enemy of the poor, and that is inflation. This conclusion that we've drawn today is to say that these many separate programs, taken together, still do not constitute a rational and coherent system that is adequate and fair for all the poor. They are still overly wasteful, capricious, and subject to almost inevitable fraud. They violate many desirable and necessary principles.

First of all, I want to thank you for letting me interrupt your meeting. If it's one person I don't like to follow, it's Barbara Mikulski. She always makes me feel inept and tongue-tied and without humor. But I do thank you for having me come over. I'm glad to bring my wife, Rosalynn. I think you've just done two things. One is to stand in silence to honor a woman who was a pioneer in a demonstration of courage in the early days of the civil rights movement, Fanny Lou Hamer. And you've also just recognized a woman who will move into Government, I hope very shortly, to continue that very strong and able fight for civil rights, particularly for women and minority groups, Eleanor Holmes Norton. I've had the pleasure lately of working with Midge Costanza in choosing some of the women who will meet this year in a continuation of the 1975 Women's Year conventions. They include, as you know, Gloria Steinem, and they include Betty Ford, who's agreed to serve--I'm very grateful for that--and Bella Abzug, who will be the chairman, and others, about 40 other women, who will represent our Nation in a continuing international discussion of women's rights. I'm proud of this effort, and I'm proud to be part of it.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose. The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next 5 years will be worse than the past 5 years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world. As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning. These changes did not happen overnight. They've come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy. We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the Presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.

Because of increasingly restrictive standards, many poor working people had been cut off Medicaid. Free clinics provided some medical care, but could not supply needed prescriptions or even such over-the-counter preparations as iron supplements for anemic mothers.

Ours was the first nation to be founded on the idea that all are created equal and all deserve equal treatment under the law. Despite our missteps and shortcomings, these ideals still inspire hope among the oppressed and give us pride in being Americans.

No objective person could personally observe existing conditions in the West Bank and dispute these statements.

Another thing that occurs is for a family that stays intact when the father shifts from a State where his family gets welfare assistance to one where he doesn't get many of the programs to aid him and his family, for instance, a father--and this happens to be Wisconsin--who is working full time at the minimum wage, after he pays his taxes and draws tax credits for earned income and receives food stamps, has an income of $5,691, working full time. If that father quit his full-time job and took a half-time job at the same wage scale, minimum wage, his income would jump almost $3,000, a little more than $3,000--$1,300 to $6,940. This is another defect in the hodgepodge welfare system that runs counter to the basic commitment of American people that work on a full-time basis--for those who are able to work--is beneficial, ought to be beneficial to a family. Another thing that happens in the welfare system is that those who are working and receiving benefits, if their income should increase, either to more hours per week, or to a higher wage scale, is quite often counterproductive, and it doesn't take a working person, adult, long to figure out that an increased effort pays no dividends.' For instance, for a family head who again is earning the minimum wage, if they got an increase in income of $100, they would lose--this is kind of an average for the whole Nation--they would lose $66.67 in AFDC payments! The earned income tax credit--they would lose $10; food stamps--they would lose $9.90; housing assistance, where that is paid, lose $8.25. So, they would lose, out of the $100 increase in check, salary, $94.82, which means that they would have a net reward of only $5 out of an increase in earnings of $100. So, you can see there's very little incentive to work your way off welfare. I might point out that the legislative leaders, particularly Congressman Ullman and Senator Long, have been through these proposals with us the last time this morning. And this is going to require a very close working relationship with the committees involved. It's one of those long-standing needs in the Federal Government that has not yet been addressed, and comprehensive welfare reform is long overdue. I think we have an excellent chance to meet all the principles and goals that we've described here. We will meet the time schedule to present to the Congress the complete legislative package by the first part of August.

The bill of rights for handicapped was spelled out in Title V of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and we are going to enforce the regulations that are specified in that bill. We're going to enforce the regulations that tear down the barriers of architecture, and we are going to enforce the regulations that tear down the barriers of transportation. I know you have heard the announcements made by Secretary of Transportation Brock Adams about the Trans-Bus. We've spent millions of dollars--the Federal Government has spent millions of dollars investing in the kind of public transportation that would serve your needs. And I am going to really enjoy in the future--as soon as those buses can come off the assembly line, and all of the new ones are going to be these kinds of buses--when they come up to you on the sidewalk and kneel down to let you get in. As you know, section 504, of which I am sure you have all heard and of which I am sure now that Joe Califano has also heard, has provided a framework for the regulations that have now been adopted. And Joe Califano assures me and he assures you that these regulations are going to be enforced. They require that when programs are made available to the public that those programs are made available to the handicapped public; the employers will give a handicapped person a fair chance to correct the handicap and to become qualified for an available job. They require the tearing down of the barriers that I have already described to you. When Federal funds come to the Health, Education, and Welfare Department, and later on without delay they will apply to all programs of a similar nature, they will provide that a handicapped child for the first time in the 200-year existence of our country has the right to go to free public schools, and that that child has a right to go to free public schools in a regular classroom with other students. It's almost inconceivable, and it's a reflection on all of us in leadership positions that these basic rights have been delayed so long. These are times for thanksgiving, but for a sustained demand and a time to assess other opportunities in the future.

Now I want to discuss something that's important to you and me both--our social security system. This is a problem for all Western democracies. Social security, which is probably the greatest legacy left over for us from the New Deal, has served us now for 40 years. But since 1975, social security has been paying out more than it's been taking in. Unless we take action now, the Disability Insurance Fund's reserves will be gone in 2 years, and the retirement reserves will be gone 4 years from then. Some have proposed a simple solution for this: to tax the American worker to the hilt. Well, we are not going to do that. Too many people are already paying more payroll taxes than they do income taxes, and we are not going to go this route to save the social security system. And we are not going to let social security go broke. We're going to keep faith with the 33 million Americans who already enjoy social security benefits and with the 104 million of us, who are paying into the social security system with the expectation that we will receive benefits when we retire, or when we become disabled, or those that are necessary to take care of our families if something happens to us. Now, there's no easy answer, but the changes that I have already submitted to the Congress will make social security financially sound for the rest of the century and will correct most of the problems for the next 75 years--and without a higher tax rate than already scheduled by law for the average wage earner. I'm going to need your help in Congress to get this bill passed, and I hope you'll help me with it.

There's no doubt in my mind that with a restoration of the work ethic in our country and with a close relationship with those who need additional employees, in prisons, as teachers' aides or helpers for extensive service workers, those who work in Federal parks, in private industry, among the aged, in recreation centers, that jobs cry out to be filled that are noncompetitive with present employees, and we are determined that these should be administered as much as possible in the community where the jobs take place. We believe that these principles and goals can be met. There will be a heavy emphasis on jobs, on simplicity of administration, on financial incentives to work, on adequate assistance for those who cannot work, on equitable benefits for all needy families, and close cooperation between private groups and officials at all levels of government. It's obvious that the more jobs that are made available by private industry and public regular employment and in public service jobs and training jobs, then the less cash supplement will be required. We will work closely with the Congress and with State, local, and community leaders, and we'll have legislative proposals completed by the first week in August prior to the summer homework session of the legislature, of Congress. Every State bas a separate and distinct and unique set of welfare laws, and although we've already started having public hearings, we will go back now when the basic principles have been established, based on the work that Joe Califano and his groups have already done, and work out the final legislative proposals to accommodate the special and unique needs and commitments of each individual State. If the new legislation can be adopted by the Congress, early in 1978, it will take an estimated 3 additional years to implement the program. The extremely complicated changes will be made carefully and responsibly. Congressional hearings are already scheduled. Jim Coleman will begin his hearings Wednesday; Secretary Califano will be there to testify on behalf of the administration; and in the Senate the hearings will 'be conducted by Senator Moynihan. We'll use these hearings which are already scheduled to permit accurate description of the nature of the task ahead and to permit the proposals to be both explained and debated.

Formerly admired almost universally as the preeminent champion of human rights, the United States now has become one of the foremost targets of respected international organizations concerned about these basic principles of democratic life. Some of our actions are similar to those of abusive regimes that we have historically condemned.

He noted that Christ himself, although the Son of God, was always gentle with those who were poor or weak. He went on to say that he tried to follow a simple rule: “You only have to have two loves in your life: for God, and for the person in front of you at any particular time.

Yes, I think the Humphrey-Hawkins bill, if passed—and I think it has a good chance to be passed—would provide enhanced job opportunities for college graduates as well as others. It would set a goal of a 4-percent unemployment rate, and it would permit me to judge when this was in conflict with a control of inflation. It would also bring into being a much closer coordination of effort between the President, the Federal Reserve Banks, the Congress, and others in the Government and in private industry to work together. It would require me to submit to the Congress an economic plan over several years, 4 or 5 years, that would ultimately lead to the realization of those goals. So, I think the planning concept, the involvement of all the elements who determine the outcome of our economic goals, would be a step in the right direction itself, and it would put a heavy emphasis on the reduction of unemployment.

We have now reached an agreement as far as the Federal Government is concerned, represented by me, and the Indian tribes. It would not require any further negotiation nor litigation by any landowner in Maine who owns less than 50,000 acres of land. It does leave up to the State of Maine and, I think, 14 landowners who have more than 50,000 acres, an option without any constraint on them—they can either accept the negotiated settlement, they can negotiate further for a better settlement for themselves, perhaps, or they can continue to litigate in court. The reason that I got involved in it, reluctantly, I might say, was because almost every piece of property in Maine was potentially tied up in a lawsuit, could not be bought or sold, and I could foresee a very serious economic consequence to Maine unless I made some effort to address it. This settlement would cost the Federal Government about $25 million. But I would like to point out, too, that we are bound by law—that is, the Department of Interior, represented legally by the Attorney General—to represent the Indians. And this is a recent development, brought about, as you know, by the discovery of some old treaty papers, I think in 1971, and we've tried to expedite the process. But there is no constraint on the large landowners nor the State to accept the settlement that we have evolved. That's up to them.

I realize that violence is not more prevalent today than in previous periods of human history, but there is a difference. We have seen visionary standards adopted by the global community that espouse peace and human rights, and the globalization of information ensures that the violation of these principles of nonviolence by a powerful and admired democracy tends to resonate throughout the world community. We should have advanced much further in the realization of women's rights, given these international commitments to peace and the rule of law.