From "From Poor Law to Welfare State" by Walter I. Trattner

    When President Muskie was sworn into office, the country's welfare system had grown dramatically under the previous administrations.  The main problem that was seen was the duplication of effort of many programs, and how unorganized the system was.  Senator Dole had campaigned on a platform to reform the welfare system, stream lining it to the basics.  Even liberals such as Senator Moynihan supported reforms to the system, in addition to expanding welfare to target the largest segment of the poor, single parent families.
    The general mood of the country was against any aid to people who were able to work.  The Full Employment Act was perhaps the only welfare program, other than various food benefit programs, that both Republicans and Democrats supported.  FAP would solve the problem of dependency in single parent families by encouraging them to work, while providing Day Care for the children.  And as a nod to the growing difficulty of two parent families to support themselves, it was made easier for either one
parent to stay home, with cash assistance, or to get a job, with Day Care vouchers.
    At the same time that people were supporting programs that helped people get jobs, there was an equally large opposition to programs that helped people get ahead without working for it.  Many suburban voters disliked programs that helped poor families move to middle class neighborhoods.  With a growing number of Democrats supporting reforms in these service welfare programs, Congress and the President were destined to clash.
    With the House in the hands of the Republicans and the Senate only narrowly Democratic, it was nearly impossible to create a coalition.  Besides the opposition of Republicans, there were two groups of Democrats that were destined to clash with the President.  One was the Southern Democrat, who always had been more conservative than the rest of his party.  Usually he would vote for the programs such as FEA, against all service welfare programs, with the key exception of food benefit programs such as school lunches, and for aid to the elderly, but not always the disabled.  This area of the nation had always been home to black sheep for the Democratic Party.
    The other growing segment of the Democratic Party that opposed President Muskie were the Suburban Democrats of the North.  They were more fiscally conservative than the big spending populists from
the South.  They support FAP because it helped preserve the family, opposed almost all service welfare programs, and generally supported aid to those who couldn't work.  The number of Union voters in these areas caused them to strongly oppose aid to those who would not work, but were able to.
    President Muskie hoped to balance the demands of the various wings of the Democratic Party to advance the welfare programs he thought were needed for the country.  FAP was passed with the support of both parties, but that was the only major welfare legislation that was passed.  A Health Care program to provide universal health care was supported by liberals such as Senator Kennedy, but seen as too costly by both Southern Democrats, Suburban Democrats, and Republicans.  Other proposals to expand the welfare system were defeated by this triangle.

From the Encyclopedia Americana, "Muskie, Edmund S."

Domestic Policy-
    Welfare
    As oil prices began to rise, the rate of inflation also began to increase at a fast rate.  Although Muskie saw unemployment as a larger danger, he urged the Fed to keep down inflation.  With higher interest
rates and higher oil prices, the economy began to slow down. Unemployment began to rise, and the Full Employment programs were unable to keep up with the demand for jobs.
    To provide for more funding for the Full Employment programs, President Muskie did what was seen as the economical thing to do at the time.  The Keynesian doctrine of the Democratic Party was to increase spending during an economic slowdown, providing jobs to those who didn't have them.  But opposition from Congress restrited the expansion of government make-work projects.  This minor amount of increased spending by the government was unable to solve one of the major problems that was hurting the economy, oil prices.  At the same time, it increased the budget deficit to greater amounts.

From the Encyclopedia Americana, "Friedman, Milton"

    Friedman was born in New York City and educated at Rutgers University and the University of Chicago.  He worked as an economist with various federal agencies in Washington, D.C., from 1935  to 1940 and from 1941  to 1943. In 1946 he joined the economics department at the University of Chicago.  He is considered a leading protagonist of the economic theory that free market forces, rather than increased government intervention, can most effectively produce a balanced and noninflationary rate of economic growth.  He is the outstanding exponent of the policy that the Federal Reserve System can best promote economic stability by increasing the supply of money at a fairly fixed rate instead of sharply expanding or contracting it.
    During the Humphrey Administration, Friedman was one of the few conservatives to come out in support of the Negative Income Tax.  Although against the Full Employment Act and other welfare programs, Friedman believed that a Guaranteed Income was a better cure for poverty than the various piecemeal programs that the Democrats supported.  Other conservatives, such as William F. Buckley, Jr., supported the view that a Negative Income Tax alone would be the best welfare policy.

From the Encyclopedia Americana, "Kemp, Jack"

    After the defeat of the Dole-Kemp ticket in 1976, Jack Kemp continued to serve in the House.  There, Kemp took part in the silent war that was going on in the Republican Party.  Although Ronald Reagan
had been defeated in the Republican primaries of 1976, his supporters were still strong in the party.  In preparing to try to win the nomination in 1980, Kemp began a shift to win over the former supporters of Reagan and the more conservative wing in the party.  Young and charismatic, Kemp captured the spotlight of the media.

From the Encyclopedia Americana, "Bush, George Herbert Walker"

    Elected to the Senate in 1970, Senator Bush soon became a leading spokesman for the moderate, pro-business side of the Republican Party.  More socially moderate than the former Reagan supporters, Senator Bush also supported fiscal responsibility in government.  He was one of the few Senate Republicans for vote for FAP, but took the Republican stance in opposing more service welfare programs.  When the Democrats responded to the slowing economy with larger government spending, he was the most visible Republican criticizing these actions as irresponsible and fiscally dangerous.

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