Why Did Tricky Dick Increase Welfare?

Sounds like an odd combination; doesn't it? Welfare and Nixon. Yet, on January 1, 1974, millions of elderly, blind and disabled Americans found something new in their mailboxes: checks from Uncle Sam for up to $250. What's more, Tricky Dick was allotting millions of dollars to state and local governments for various medical and other services for them. What was up? Did the infamous "nut cutter" have a soft spot for the sick and old?

The answer is a little more complicated. The checks I just mentioned came from the new Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, administered by the federal Social Security Administration. Prior to that time, aged and disabled Americans who didn't qualify for much in terms of Social Security benefits could get additional grants through their local welfare departments, using money allotted as part of the Social Security Act. At the same time, the federal government was also spending millions on its "War on Poverty," sponsoring programs like Head Start, the Job Corps, etc. The local welfare programs and the anti-poverty programs had one thing in common: they employed lots of social workers. And Nixon disliked social workers, the way he disliked most of what he considered the educated elite.

Nixon put jurisdiction for supplemental benefits for the elderly, disabled and blind under the Social Security Administration, a vast federal agency with no experience in administering welfare programs. Social Security, let us remember, was designed as a form of insurance. The initial situation was a mess. At one Social Security office in Brooklyn so many people showed up to report not getting their checks that the agency rented busses to serve as waiting rooms. And some of the new program's rules were positively riddiculous. Still, Nixon had found himself in alliance with a lot of welfare advocates. He didn't like bureaucrats, and neither did they. Social Security essentially doled out the money on an honor system. But it was cheaper, Nixon believed, to just print checks than to pay investigators and worry about things like job training programs.

The related block grants to state and local government were another illustration of Nixon's philosophy. Unlike Johnson, who saw the Federal government as having an active role in defeating poverty, Nixon simply gave money to the states to spend their own way. Again, less bureaucracy. Fewer social workers. Such "outsourcing" of government programs was to become a major feature of other presidencies in the next deccade.