social safety net

MaryW commented on the word social safety net

“We've had the safety net programs a lot longer than we've had the term,” says Guian McKee, a historian at the University of Virginia.

McKee trawled through newspaper archives to see when the phrase “safety net” first started showing up to describe government social programs. The first reference he could find was in 1966, in a New York Times article about the New York Governor’s race. One of the candidates used the phrase to describe his approach to social spending, saying “public assistance will be envisaged as a safety net on the one hand, and as a transmission belt to productive employment on the other.”

Ironically, the candidate who said it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., FDR’s son.

But the “safety net” still didn't really become a household term in the way we know it now, for another fifteen years.

February 18, 1981 to be exact, in President Ronald Reagan's first speech to Congress. He was in the midst of laying out big and controversial federal spending cuts he wanted to make,

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“All those with true need can rest assured that the social safety net of programs they depend on are exempt from any cuts,” he said. Then he went on, “But government will not continue to subsidize individuals or business interests where real need cannot be demonstrated.”

And in those two sentences, Reagan popularized a vivid metaphor for government assistance, while at the same time redefining who deserved it.

January 29, 2017