Word: hewed
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...course, HEW is here to stay, as is the welfare state. In part, the Federal Government got into the social services business because a capitalist society, reeling from the Great Depression, seemed unable to respond to pressing human needs, at least not fast enough. But there is now a growing feeling that the private sector has surrendered too much to the public. More and more Americans are objecting not just to the size of their taxes but to how the money is being spent. Today unbounded bureaucracy, consuming ever more of the national income, is a problem endemic...
...credentials to try and cope with HEW, that man is Joseph A. Califano Jr.?the ebullient, energetic and experienced Secretary of HEW. An impassioned advocate of federal programs, he devised many of them as President Lyndon Johnson's chief domestic adviser. Yet if he is a big spender and a master bureaucrat, he is also a canny enough politician to know that limits of some kind have been reached. Says Califano: "I am trying to make the department a symbol of the manageability of government. I want to deliver the services that have been set up to the people...
Like most bureaucracies, HEW had a modest beginning. It was created in 1953 from existing agencies by a cautious Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower. In its first year of operation, HEW's budget was a mere $5.4 billion, of which $3.4 billion went for Social Security. Immediately the department became a political issue, as congressional Democrats pressured Ike to increase funding. He held off until the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957. Then the first significant breach was made in hold-the-line spending. Fearful that the Russians might surpass the U.S. in science and technology, the President backed the National Defense...
When the Democrats returned to power with President John Kennedy in 1960, higher spending for HEW was on the agenda. Regulations were eased, and the cost of aid to families with dependent children ?the biggest welfare program?began to soar. When Johnson became President, HEW was transformed by the biggest growth of federal programs in the history of the nation...
...would dramatically change the nature of the country: Medicare and Medicaid, aid to elementary, secondary and higher education, civil rights, treatment of drug addicts. Scarcely any of L.B.J.'s programs were eliminated by Richard Nixon, or even cut back, and many new ones were added. In 1974, for example, HEW took over state programs for the aged, blind and disabled. The resulting Supplementary Security Income program is now a $2.9 billion item in the budget. Regardless of what party controls the White House, HEW has achieved a considerable measure of independence and a momentum that cannot be easily arrested...