Alan Keyes on Welfare & Poverty
No socialism for poor children-invigorate families instead
Q: The United States has the highest rate of child poverty of any major Western industrialized nation. There are 13.5 million American children living in poverty. What specific plans do you have to reduce child poverty in America?
A: America need not turn to socialist measures, with all the lethargy and servility that they bring in their train, to improve the lot of its children.
A liberation of charitable and entrepreneurial energy, which my proposal to abolish
the income tax would effect, and a re-invigoration of the family and the other associations that are the fruits of liberty and self-government will usher in an age of increasing prosperity, widely and deeply shared.
This is the only way to help the poor compatible with American political and moral traditions; it is the way not taken in the old welfare state; it is the way we must take today.
Source: National Association of Children’s Hospitals survey
Jan 8, 2000
Volunteer for community service; not via government funding
Q: Do you support funding for national community service programs such as AmeriCorps?
A: I am a great believer in volunteerism in this country, but I think it’s time we understood that it ought to be just that.
The business of helping one another is a business that ought to be centered in the private sector, in the faith sector in this country. I think government’s involvement has been detrimental.
Source: Republican Debate at Dartmouth College
Oct 29, 1999
Shift welfare from government to the faith sector
Government has botched up the welfare program, because when you enter the business of helping folks and - to put it frankly - you help them without the sermon, I think you do them harm.
Efforts in which we are aiming to achieve mutual help for one another should be put back in the hands of the private and faith sector in this country.
Source: Republican Debate at Dartmouth College
Oct 29, 1999
Disintegration of the family causes social ills
We must end government programs like the family-destroying welfare system and sex-education courses that encourage promiscuity. These programs actually hasten the moral breakdown. Our first priority should be restoring the moral and material support
for the marriage-based two-parent family. The disintegration of the family is the major contributing factor in poverty, crime, violence, the decline in educational performance, and a host of other expensive social problems.
Source: www.keyes2000.org/issues/welfareandfamily.html 1/7/99
Jan 7, 1999
Jewish support of welfare for blacks causes enmity
The tragic and violent clashes between blacks and Jews are unhappily not the product of a unique and isolated set of circumstances. I believe that, unwittingly, Jewish supporters of the government-dominated welfare state approach to the
economic and social problems of the black community helped to create the mentality that now produces anger and anti-Semitism in black neighborhoods. Welfare state socialism encourages
Source: Our Character, Our Future, p. 48-50
May 2, 1996
Encourage two-parent families instead of paying baby bonus
Most taxpayers are sick to death of a costly system that encourages and perpetuates poverty. The aim [of welfare reform] is to finally correct the perverse incentive system, which seems to enforce idleness and penalize people who work hard.
Current proposals for reform don’t go far enough. They entirely neglect the damaging impact that the system has had on family structure. It discourages marriage. It promotes single-parent, female-headed households. Instead of paying what amounts
to a baby bonus to unwed mothers, we should find ways to provide a marriage bonus.
Unfortunately, present proposals merely add a work requirement to the baby bonus policy, and that’s not good enough. It’s right and necessary to
encourage work rather than idleness. But for real welfare reform, we need to do more than fix the economic illogic of the welfare system--we need to work at mending the family structure it has helped to undermine.
Source: Our Character, Our Future, p. 57-9
May 2, 1996