Word: moynihan
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After his many years as Washington counsel, Moynihan presents, in The Politics of A Guaranteed Income, a detailed account of Nixon's first-term proposal for a guaranteed family income. The president's Family Assistance Plan (FAP) was a failure, but it was a curious failure and Moynihan's reportage and analysis is helpful in deciphering the long story. Moynihan was the FAP's chief architect and he tells its history as only an intimate expert can, yet his personal stake in the plan gives him an obvious bias in its favor. His familiarity with government is an asset...
...Moynihan's book has two aspects--the journalistic and somewhat biased one, and an equally questionable analytic one. The Politics of a Guaranteed Income is interspersed with terse commentary such as: "Men who counsel caution in a president do him no disservice, but they do not add much to his day. At the very top of government there ought to be some occasional moment of high spirts, of brave abandon." This may be true, but when...
...Moynihan proposes two main theses: Nixon's FAP was radical reform, and only a conservative executive could institute such a liberal program. He repeats these themes over and over until the reader is praying to be just simply left alone...
...FAILED because people in the Senate saw it as basic welfare reform, which it was not. Moynihan correctly says that FAP was a major program. But by itself FAP would not have reformed a badly mangled welfare system except by adding more millions of people to the welfare rolls. Senator Williams torpedoed the bill with his charts and graphs, showing that the total welfare system includes work disincentives which the FAP would not correct. When Nixon presented the FAP to the nation in August, 1969, he stressed that the plan would make work compulsory: "Anyone who accepts benefits must also...
...Moynihan's second thesis--that a conservative Nixon co-opted the liberals by proposing a reform plan--rests upon the assumption that all Congressmen should have supported the FAP. The liberal Democrats have always favored welfare reform and could be expected to propose a guaranteed income of their own (McGovern did); the Republicans could be expected to go along with their president's program on principle; and the conservative Dixiecrats were counted on to back the plan because their states would receive the most benefits. But the plan failed and it failed from the left. Liberals were heard saying...