Molly Michelmore
APSA 2005
liberals took the opportunity to lambaste the administration’s plan as grossly inadequate.
Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-CT), Kennedy’s first DHEW Secretary, introduced a series
of amendments to liberalize the program by raising the minimum benefit level and
including childless couples. The Finance Committee’s decision to postpone hearings
slowed the FAP’s momentum and fatally injured its chances for passage in the 91
st
Congress.
In late June 1970, the administration submitted a revised plan to the Finance
Committee. Although the administration had addressed many of the Committee’s
concerns, Long, Senator John Williams (R-DE) and others’ hostility to the program had
deepened, even as their attacks shifted to new ground. According to Long, the new
proposal was a “worse bill – and a more costly bill – than the measure which passed the
House.” Perfectly willing to sacrifice ideological purity or logical coherence to
undermine the proposal, Long attacked not only the administration proposal’s high price
tag, but its also failure to provide recipients with higher benefits. The chairman at once
castigated the program as a “massive and costly experiment” that would “cost…a
staggering $9.1 billion,” and attacked the administration plan for shortchanging the
working poor.
In short, the administration was damned if it did, and damned if it
didn’t. And Russell Long was damned if he was going to let the FAP become law.
While the administration struggled to find a proposal that would pass Committee
muster, Chairman Long directed his committee staff to draft an alternative welfare reform
plan based on the principle that only those deemed unable to work should be eligible for
any “welfare” payment at all. Long’s alternative proposal, completed in August, 1970,
distinguished “between welfare and workfare” by creating one welfare program for single
50
Russell Long, “Hearings on the Administration Revision of the Family Assistance Plan: Opening
Statement,” Press Release, July 21, 1970, NARA, RG 46, SFC, Bill Files: HR 16311, Box 65, File:
Finance Press Release.
19
Convention