Neighborhood Ministries

Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Social Security Act (1935) was passed to help the elderly, the unemployed, and the disadvantaged. While that seems like a great achievement, the devil is in the details. While the main goals were to help those who are retired by having them pay into a separate fund, it also included a program for unemployment insurance which employers would contribute to, which were good programs. However, they also included health insurance for those in financial distress, assistance for widows with children, and assistance for those who were disabled. Overall, they were good programs in the beginning, however they were not funded by those who benefited and opened the doors to more entitlement programs. They soon began making changes that undermined them. Welfare was originally restricted to widows and only assisted children of needy families. It soon was extended to include women whose husband was no longer in the home. While that sounds good, it opened the door for husbands who were unwilling or unable to support their family to desert their wives so their wife could get help. That led to widespread desertion and divorce, destroying the family structure of many families paving the way for families to continue on welfare from one generation to the next. This hurt Black families the most because Black men were more likely to have low-paying jobs and their wives could make more on welfare. The percentage of Black families with two parents has dropped drastically, resulting in increased crime, alcoholism, drug use, illegitimate babies, and single parent families. That has trapped many families in welfare because they can not make enough in entry level jobs to equal what they make on welfare, so they don’t dare leave it. Democrats found they could get widespread support among Blacks and poor Whites, who were dependent on welfare, by expanding the welfare programs  and telling recipients that Republicans wanted to abolish the programs.