Topic: Welfare, Matches 35 quotes.

Tax-payers Must Meet Public Debts

If I might be pardoned, I should like to add another word about two closely related subjects which I have mentioned or referred to at almost every, if not every, Conference since April, 1933; I refer to the enormous expenditures of the people’s money and to the ever-growing feeling and belief that a great group of the people can live off the public without working.

I should like to say again that neither the State nor the Federal Government has any funds except only such funds as it obtains from the people. Neither of them has anywhere a great pile of gold to which it can go for its money. You taxpayers must furnish it all; and every citizen is a taxpayer, either by direct or indirect taxation. Whenever governments borrow, they borrow from the taxpayers who must pay back or repudiate. To pay back large borrowings causes great hardship and burdening sacrifices; to repudiate brings economic and sometimes political chaos.

Source: President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
General Conference, April 1938

Topics: Taxes; Welfare

The Townsend Plan

We have on at the present time a great political campaign, and I want to say to the Saints that I hope they will not allow their political affiliations, their regard for political affairs, to cause feelings of ill-will towards one another. I have had some of the most insulting letters that ever came to me, condemning me for not being in favor of the Townsend Plan, and that I must be ignorant of the Plan. I am not ignorant of the Plan. I have not read every word of it, but I have asked one of my secretaries to read every word of the Plan and to give me the important points, and to my mind it is in direct opposition to everything I have quoted here today from Brigham Young and from the revelations of the Lord. The idea of allowing every man and woman who has reached the age of sixty years and wishes to retire from working to get $200 a month from the government! There is nothing truer than Brigham Young’s statement, that we should give nothing to people, unless they are not able to work, without requiring them to do something for it.

I want to say to the people that one of my nearest and dearest relatives criticised me for not favoring the Townsend Plan. I love him just as much as though he did not criticise me. I am perfectly willing for him to think and believe and act just as he wants to do, I want everybody to do this; I do not want the people of the Church, when they are working for the government, to work by the day; but I do want them to work by the job.

Source: President Heber J. Grant
General Conference, October 1936

Topics: Social Programs; Welfare

Individual Responsibility

A sense of individual responsibility grows out of an understanding of man’s relationship to other men and to God. The world is in serious need of a compelling sense of personal, individual, responsibility. As men are, so is the social group. A righteous nation is but the assemblage of righteous men. National prosperity is but the sum of personal prosperity. When each man sets his own house in order, the whole world will be in order. There is much talk of governmental or other organized provision for our wants, material and spiritual, when in reality our greatest needs must be satisfied from within ourselves. To lean upon others for support enfeebles the soul. By self-effort man will attain his high destiny. It cannot be placed as a cape upon his shoulders by others. Upon his own feet he must enter the kingdom of God, whether on earth or in heaven. By conquest of self he shall win his place in the everlasting glory of God’s presence.

Source: Elder John A. Widtsoe
General Conference, October 1936

Topics: Responsibility; Welfare

Readily and, I trust, feelingly acknowledge the duty incumbent on us all . . . to provide for those who, in the mysterious order of Providence, are subject to want and to disease of body or mind; but I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States . . . .

Source: President Franklin Pierce
From a veto message in 1854

Topics: Welfare

“Sponging” On The Government

Now without mitigation in the least of our sympathies toward those unfortunate ones actually in need, the observing cannot help but note that there is an ever-growing and deeply regrettable tendency to “sponge” on the government and take every gratuity possible to obtain and this too, sometimes by representation and connivance which will not bear the light of truth. It is true also that this disposition to “sponge” on the government is not confined to those only who are on the relief rolls.

In the obtaining of benefit loans and crop allocations with other concessions so lavishly bestowed it has been manifest in such degree and in such people as to be greatly astonishing to those who have the inside information. Not infrequently does one hear in pseudo justification of these regrettable actions, expressions such as these—“Well everybody’s getting it, I might as well get my share”—or “The government brought on these conditions they should get us out.” I have been informed of men making application for home loans under representations of distress whose regular income for one month would be regarded by many families as ample support for an entire year.

Source: Elder Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, October 1934

Topics: Government, Spending; Welfare

Far-reaching Results

I am not willing to take it for granted that these abuses must be. They are too serious and their results too far reaching to go unchallenged. I fear them, not only because they are costly to the public treasury, the drain on which is a matter of deep concern to every American, but for the more important reason which I have heretofore indicated, that the practice of “sponging” on the government is perverting the finest virtues of American citizenship—self-respect, self-reliance and integrity. Furthermore, I cannot but conclude that this distortion to the morale of our people makes fertile ground for the seeds of disloyalty and anarchy which those inimical to our form of government are ever seeking to sow.

Source: Elder Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, October 1934

Topics: Government, Spending; Morality; Welfare

Outlook For Coming Winter

There is little prospect that the coming winter will not present enlarged demands on our sympathies and our resources. It has been indicated from Washington that the state and local communities may be obliged to bear a larger portion of the burden. I hope we will do our utmost and I pray that no worthy person who is honest and deserving may be permitted to suffer. I pray with equal fervor that no person may become so dishonest and disloyal as to be an impostor on the generosity of our great merciful government which is seeking so diligently to relieve our distresses.

Source: Elder Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, October 1934

Topics: Government, Spending; Welfare

Rely On The Lord’s Plan

I refer to the words of Elder Richards, and I tell you that any Latter-day Saint who does pay an income tax, and who at the same time pays his tithing, his fast offerings, his donations, his help for the poor, will never be able to get the full benefit under the fifteen per cent which the tax income provides for. In other words, those men among us who have the Spirit of the Lord, and who obey his laws, will always spend more than fifteen per cent of their income for the Church and its work and people. That is one reason why I say to you as I said a few moments ago, that if we had but hearkened to the Lord and obeyed his commandments there would have been no occasion for us to have drawn on the federal government. I also say to you that in my opinion, reached after mature reflection, this people would have been better off materially and spiritually, if we had relied on the Lord’s plan and had not used one dollar of government funds.

Source: President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
General Conference, October 1934

Topics: Welfare

I want to impress upon the minds of the Latter-day Saints not to covet that which belongs to any public institution, or that which belongs to any city, or county, or the government of the United States. Unless I have been misinformed, many people have said, speaking of the distribution by the government of supplies to the people: “Well, others are getting some, why should not I get some of it.”

Source: President Heber J. Grant
General Conference, October 1933

Topics: Government, Wealth Transfer; Honesty; Welfare

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