by Providence Crowder
Understanding the Democrat and Republican Parties Through Their Own Words
Political parties are comprised of individuals. Within a particular party, the individuals may vary to some degree on how they view particular issues. Corporately, however, political parties set platforms that generally represent the ideologies of the people that make up that party. In closely comparing the party platforms of the two major political parties in this nation, one can better determine which party best represents his or her moral, social, and economic convictions and make an informed choice based on that persuasion.
How the Democrat and Republican parties address the social ill of poverty is worth examining. Poverty is a reality in this nation and abroad, and neither political party diminishes that reality nor seeks to intentionally do injustice to the economically disadvantaged. However, the parties have differing ways in which they approach the poverty issue. I have compared two years from each party’s platform; years in which they specifically addressed Poverty, Welfare, and Welfare Reform. There were other years in which these issues had been addressed, but for simplicity, I used just two; 1968 and 1980. After each year’s bulleted platform summary, I recapped the conclusions of each party in my own words.
These are the parties, in their own words:
|Democrat Party Platform (Poverty, Welfare, Welfare Reform) – 1968
|Republican Party Platform (Poverty, Welfare, Welfare Reform) – 1968
Summary of the political parties – 1968:
That the Democrats had a very different approach to attacking poverty than Republicans is evident by comparing the platforms. The Democrats had enacted a variety of programs and payments to the poor in an effort to lessen the burden of the poor. They favored no limits on the amount of children that the federal government would provide assistance for and favored removing a requirement for the mothers of young children to work. The Democrats opposed state sponsored welfare and favored a federal plan instead. They also favored assistance payments with automatic cost of living adjustments.
The Republicans opposed their approach, citing that the programs and payments stifled work ethic and weakened the family unit. They favored making payments to privately run daycare centers on behalf of the mothers so that their children would be taken care of, allowing them to accept work to provide for their family. The Republican approach also favored home ownership and entrepreneurship for the poor to promote self-determination. Republicans suggested including representatives from the poor in decision making when it came to developing and implementing programs that would best serve them. The Republicans favored state and community sponsored services as opposed to a federal welfare program, except for a unified federal food distribution program (as opposed to food stamps) to help provide poor with sufficient food for a balanced diet.
Editor’s Note: Part 2 of Poverty and Welfare will be published tomorrow starting with, ” Democrat Platform (Poverty, Welfare, Welfare Reform) – 1980 .“