What Ever Happened to the Welfare Crisis?

When the late Charles Wiley quit his militant National Welfare Rights Organization, he made the refreshing admission that he couldn’t get the air time he once easily commanded. It was a reminder that welfare was recently the “crise du jour” —hardhats hated “welfare chiselers,” newsweeklies ran ominous predictions about “spiraling costs,” Nixon pitched “workfare,” and Wiley was all over the tube.

There were, too, occasional policy statements from the liberal community: Jule Sugarman, Welfare Commissioner of New York City, hotly denounced a state report alleging waste in his administration, Mayor John Lindsay called Senator Ribicoff’s suggestion that welfare recipients clean New York’s dirty streets a “proposal from the dark ages,” and many past admirers of Mario Savio rediscovered propriety and limits to free speech when Johnny Cash wanted to sing his satirical “Welfare Cadillac” at the White House.

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Anthony R. Dolan

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When the late Charles Wiley quit his militant National Welfare Rights Organization, he made the refreshing admission that he couldn’t get the air time he once easily commanded. It was a reminder that welfare was recently the “crise du jour” —hardhats hated “welfare chiselers,” newsweeklies ran ominous predictions about “spiraling costs,” Nixon pitched “workfare,” and Wiley was all over the tube.

There were, too, occasional policy statements from the liberal community: Jule Sugarman, Welfare Commissioner of New York City, hotly denounced a state report alleging waste in his administration, Mayor John Lindsay called Senator Ribicoff’s suggestion that welfare recipients clean New York’s dirty streets a “proposal from the dark ages,” and many past admirers of Mario Savio rediscovered propriety and limits to free speech when Johnny Cash wanted to sing his satirical “Welfare Cadillac” at the White House.