Esch Advocates Welfare Review
Congressman Marvin L. Éscn. ;R-Michigan) has called for a 'total review of assistance prorams preceded by the passage f immediate improvements." He indicted the present welfare ystem as "warped." "Our present approach to helping the disadvantaged is so warped," Esch said, "that t fails to fulfill its two basic mrposes." He described the ;wo purposes as "providing the necessities of life for those unable to do so by themselves and offering poor citizens the means and incentives to raise ;hemselves out of poverty." Esch said the present welf are system, which he called "inadequate, inequitable and inefficiënt," has produced "a cycle of failure. Inadequate incomes, depending on welfare, despondency and insecurity with no hope for the future, is the sad cycle which is passed on from generation to generation." The Michigan congressman advocated six immediate reforms while over-all approaches are developed and evaluated: uniform national eligibility standards to remove discretionary power of welfare administrators and reduce migration; changes making need the basic determínate for eligibility; legislation to close the social services Communications gap; uniform national benefit levéis; measures to increase work incentives, and simplification and streamlining of administrative procedures.