US Presidency
1972

The messages also include basic reforms which are essential if our structure of government is to be adequate in the decades ahead. They include reform of our wasteful and outmoded welfare system, substitution of a new system that provides work requirements and work incentives for those who can help themselves, income support for those who can not help themselves, and fairness to the working poor. They include a $ 17 billion program of federal revenue sharing with the states and localities as an investment in their renewal, an investment also of faith in the American people. They also include a sweeping reorganization of the executive branch of the federal government so that it will be more efficient, more responsive, and able to meet the challenges of the decades ahead. One year ago, standing in this place, I laid before the opening session of this Congress six great goals. One of these was welfare reform. That proposal has been before the Congress now for nearly two and a half years.