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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 18, 1986)
Editorial Hacks on welfare may spell cutbacks Some truth is contained within President Reagan's re cent attacks on the welfare system. The welfare system does create dependency, it does encourage families to separate, and requiring recipients to work for benefits could produce positive effects. However, whether or not his proposals will actually benefit welfare recipients and the nation at large de pend on the motives driving Reagan's welfare-revision campaign. - If Reagan achieved his aim of simultaneously suppor ting military growth, avoiding a tax hike and eliminating the federal deficit, domestic programs would have to be drastically cut. Bombasting the welfare program as “anti family” may be a Reagan ploy to inch toward massive cuts in the system. Cuts included in his budget proposal may foreshadow future plans to dismantle the welfare system. Reagan called for review and overhaul of the welfare system during his annual State of the Union Message to Con gress Feb. 4. He held the welfare system responsible for breaking up families and creating a “spider's web of dependency.” And in his budget proposal submitted the following day, Reagan asked Congress to require employable adults to search for employment in order to receive welfare benefits. Saturday, Reagan said, “Obviously something is desperate ly wrong with our welfare system.” Referring to welfare pro grams. he said, “We’re in danger of creating a permanent culture of poverty.” Some of Reagan’s contentions are true. The welfare system does tend to propagate dependence on the system. The longer individuals rely solely on welfare for income, the longer they are removed from the job market and the longer they must continue to rely on the system. In addition, education opportunities for the children of welfare recipients are severely limited. Often the cycle repeats itself from generation to generation. And requiring welfare recipients to work for their benefits, providing the system is implemented properly , can produce beneficial outcomes. Workfare programs, in which able adults are required io accept training or employment in exchange for welfare aid, exist in more than 20 states. If single parents with preschool-age children are exempt from the work requirement and adequate child care is pro vided for other single parents, the programs can provide par ticipants with education and job skills and enable them to wean from welfare reliance. Jobs can also provide par ticipants with a sense of usefulness and self-esteem. But even as Reagan called for efforts to employ welfare recipients, his budget proposal included provisions to eliminate by the end of the year a program that provides employment counseling and job-location assistance to welfare recipients. Reagan is also correct in asserting the current welfare system encourages families to break up. Single-parent families are eligible for more welfare aid in most states than two-parent families, thus many families separate as a means to survive. But while Reagan has commented at length on this problem, it is unclear how he proposes to solve it. The key to a solution is providing enough welfare benefits to two-parent families to dissuade them from break ing up. But Reagan may simply be using a legitimate com plaint to cast a negative shadow on the program in order to create an atmosphere conducive to program cutbacks. Oregon Daily Emerald The Oregon Daily Emerald is published Monday through Friday except during exam week and vacations by the Oregon Daily Emerald Publishing Co , at the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon. 97403 The Emerald operates independently of the University with offices on the third floor of the Erb Memorial Union and is a member of the Associated Press The Emerald is private properly. The unlawful removal or use of papers is prosecutable by law Advertising Director Susan Thelen Production Manager Russell Steele Classified Advertising Vince Adams Assistant to the Publisher Jean Ownbey Advertising Sales David Wood - Sales Manager, John Boiler, Michael Gray, Robin Joannides, Carlos Canadrid, Marcia Leonard, Shawn Leuthoid. Julie Lewis, Catherine Ulja, Anne-Marie Vranizan, Laura Willoughby Production Vince Adams, Kelly Alexandre, Lynne Casey, Shu-Shmg Chen, Ellen Cross, Monica Dwyer, Storm! Dykes, Manuel Flores, Steve Gibbons, Rob Has, Mary Lewis. Jim Marks, Ross Martin, Mary May, Mary McGonigal, Rob Miles, Angle Muniz, Kara Oberst, Charta Parker, Ken Parrott, Jennifer Peterson, Jim Pfaff, Geoff Rainvilfe, Michele Ross, Alyson Simmons, Peg Sofonika, Gregory Tlpps. First let me thank the editors of the Emerald for bringing up the question of freedom of speech and action in connection with the effort to have. Military Science deleted from our cur riculum (ODE. Feb. It). These' are important, widely held con cerns about which there is much misunderstanding and some deliberate obfuscation. There are many preprofes-' ■ sional areas not represented in our curriculum, such as engineering, training for the ministry, modern farming, and others. One university can’t do everything: ’ Is it the Emerald's position that persons interested in these fields, and organizations pro moting them, are being unfairly, excluded and prevented from presenting their views oh cam pus. and that our students are thereby deprived of some of their rights? If we could induce them to do it. should we invite the Catholic Church to set up. fund, staff and manage a training program for Editor Managing Editor News Editor Editorial Page Editor Assistant Editorial Page Editor Sports Editor Photo Editor Friday Edition Editor Sidelines Editor Night Editor Associate Editors Community Higher Education Student Activities Student Government University Affairs Julie Shippen Michelle Brence Joiayne HouU Michelle Brence Scott Harding Robert Cotlias Karen Stallwood Sheila Landry Allan Lazo Michelle Brence Scott McFetrtdge Andrew LaMar Mary Lichtenwalner Linda Hahn Kirsten Bolin Reporters Tony Ahern, Sean Axmafcer, Dan Coran, Kim Kaady. Cap! Lynn, Chris Norred. Chuck Thompson, B J Thomsen. Photographers Kamila AI Najiar, Shu-Shlng Chen, Maria Corvallis. Steve Gibbons. Rob Hare. Derrel Hewitt. Jim Marks, Ross Martin. Mews and Editorial MS-5511 Display Advertising and Business SSS-3712 Classified Advertising MS-4343 Production SSS-4381 Circulation MS-5611 Commentarx O: ^ * ° • ' ’•/ . . ’ o. •' ‘ ROTC is an outside group and should be banned from campus the priesthood, not under the control .of . the University? Should General Motors Corp. be invited to run our business col* lege in such a manner? Or should the .CIA lie invited to set up. staff and run a program in spying and covert activities— in the name of free speech and freedom of choice for our students? How about Accuracy' in-Academia?- . • ° • . There is . an immense • dif ference between encouraging* freedom of speech . and the presentation o{ all views, bn campus, and actively supper-* ting training programs design ; ad. funded and. managed by in trusive outside organizations with little understanding or concern for what makes a good university. This is especially.' true-in the case of highly cop-.’ trqversial organizations such as the military or the Moral Majority. It is particularly true in the case of the military since all of us are forced to help fund their programs through our taxes, regardless of what we may think of them. The University does not select the instructors, con trol the curriculum, and of course, we have no control over what the cadets may later be ordered to do at our expense and in our name —- as they did in Indochina and may soon be doing in Central America. The instructors do not have to meet usual faculty expectations either before or after appoint ment, are beholden to an out side organization rather than to the University and yet are ac corded academic rank and voting privileges. In 1979, Thomas W. Carr, then director of defense educa tion for the Department of Defense, outlined in con siderable detail the Pentagon’s plan for taking over higher education in the United States •' and'changing Ut character- Jh • . predicted that "the military will have, become 'a major inatru merit for, youth-.socialization, assuming a large portion of the role once dominated.by. family, church,. school and. civilian work setting.‘V " He also stated - that "the ■" military . stresses ^obedience. . established .procedures- and hierarchy — and has little in terest in a morn abstract scan h .for purer knowledge Education and the armed forces have come ° a Jong way. together-and the future looks bright." . • .. i ■ o ° Q ■ - We now see his predictions becoming reality with frighten-, ing rapiditywith the drying up of legitimate funding sources for l Iniversity programs and student assistance, the burgeon ing military programs. Defense Department- grints, .RjOTC scholarships and the. illegal use Of student financial records by draft registration officials; - It is-not my-motion,, but the military whichdenies freedom of speech here. IfjRQTC officers make public statements oppos ing Pentagon or administration policies, no matter how idiotic the policy, they would be promptly fired or removed from their position. Even their ad vanced students must take a "loyalty'’ oath, interpreted by their superiors as an oath of obedience. It is not an appropriate activi ty for the University to actively promote militarization of our country. Doing so does not pro mote free speech or freedom of choice. By Bayard H. McConnaughey Bayard McConnaughey is a University biology professor who recently made a motion to the University Senate to ban ROTC' from campus.