Anti-Poverty Programs Quotes

We think there are better solutions to fighting poverty because we see what the War on Poverty has produced. It produced tens of trillions of dollars in spending. It has been a 51-year exercise, and yet the poverty rates in America today are not much better than when we started the War on Poverty.

Society’s willingness to provide for the poor among them increases when the standard of living is advancing.

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.

Not only does big government get in the way when it provides disincentives to work, it also has a profoundly negative effect on community. […] The more the government does for individuals, the more community is diminished.

Social Security is a problem solving program, not a problem creating one .... Social Security is our best anti-poverty program.

It’s what you have to do to find a way to kick poverty’s ass.

We are the wealthiest country in the world. There is no excuse not to help poor people….When was the last time you saw poverty mentioned on television.

Before this learning experience, I had assumed that with regard to programs that sought to help people out of poverty, the political world was essentially divided into two camps: conservatives who opposed these for a variety of reasons, and liberals who supported them.

Co-opting the conservative line on anti-poverty programs did nothing to halt conservative attacks on anti-poverty programs.

While Obama's economic policies have failed to spur growth, our anti-poverty programs have long failed to promote upward mobility and move people from welfare to work.

It's immoral to parent irresponsibly... And it doesn't help matters any when prime time tv, like "Murphy Brown", a character who is supposed to represent a successful career woman of today, mocks the importance of the father by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another "lifestyle choice." Marriage is probably the best anti-poverty program there is... Even though our cultural leaders in Hollywood, network TV, the national newspapers routinely jeer at [such values] I think most of us in this room know that some things are good, and other things are wrong.

When they seek to cut programs that help families living in poverty, I will fight them every step of the way.

Our task is to help replace ... despair with opportunity.

I grew up in New Jersey, but my parents are from out west. They moved the family to New Jersey when my father, a sociologist by training, took a job in Newark running anti-poverty programs for the Episcopal Archdiocese.

This may sound like common sense, but the unfortunate reality is that objective self-review and recalibration are rarely the norm with most social programs. The widespread belief that commitment, good intentions, and good deeds are enough carries the day.

I've always believed the two best anti-poverty programs are work and marriage.

There are a large number of white people who never owned a foot of land, who never have been in possession of any property, not even a cow or a horse, yet who have been as true and devoted loyalists as anybody else.

The government’s unprecedented expenditures failed to bring about the decline in poverty that Johnson had promised. Instead, they made things worse.

We have moved from a commitment to serve the deserving poor to an assumption that all are deserving. And much of this rests at the feet of politicians trolling for votes by larding on the largesse.

Now, you might say – “But why should we pay people for doing what they’re supposed to do?” It’s a fair question – but think of it this way: Every other anti-poverty program that’s been tried has failed to get the national poverty rate below 11 percent... Why shouldn’t we experiment with a program built around the one strategy that has proven time and again to work wonders – capitalism?

…it is only after our physical and political needs are supplied, and when we are free from necessary duties and cares, that we are in a condition for desiring to see, to hear, and to learn.