SOCIAL LEGISLATION

SOCIAL LEGISLATION. Laws that seek to promote the common good, generally

by protecting and assisting the weaker members of society, are considered to be social
legislation. Such legislation includes laws assisting the unemployed, the infirm, the
disabled, and the elderly. The social welfare system consists of hundreds of state and
federal programs of two general types. Some programs, including Social Security,
Medicare, unemployment insurance, and Workers' Compensation, are called social
insurance programs because they are designed to protect citizens against hardship due
to old age, unemployment, or injury. Because people receiving benefits from these
programs generally have contributed toward their benefits by paying payroll taxes
during the years that they worked, these social insurance programs are usually thought
of as earned rewards for work. Programs of a second type, often cumulatively called
the Welfare System, provide government assistance to those already poor. These
social programs have maximum income requirements and include Aid to Families
with Dependent Children, the Food Stamp Program, Medicaid, and Supplemental
Security Insurance.

Although the United States has had social welfare legislation since colonial times, its
nature and extent has changed over the years. For much of U.S. history, Americans
preferred to rely on the marketplace to distribute goods and services equitably among
the population. In cases where the market clearly failed to provide for categories of
people such as widows, orphans, or the elderly, families were expected to take
responsibility for the care of their members. When family members lacked the ability
to do so, private, religious, or charitable organizations often played that role Help
from the town, county, or local government was rarely provided, and even then only
in those cases where the need arose due to conditions beyond the individual's control,
such as sickness, old age, mental incapacity, or widowhood.
The Nineteenth Century
For most of the nineteenth century, social problems too large for family members or
private charities to handle fell under the jurisdiction of local government, consisting
of the town, city, or county rather than the more distant national government. Local
government's power to pass social legislation was premised upon the power of the
state to restrict individual liberty and property for the common welfare. Later, while
local governments remained involved, states began to assume a share of the obligation
of caring for some of their citizens. Beginning in the late 1820s, a number of states
founded asylums for the insane. A series of investigations by the reformer Dorothea
Dix played an important role in bringing the plight of the mentally ill to the attention
of state legislatures. Later in the nineteenth century, state and local governments
created other specialized institutions for dependent persons, such as homes for the
blind or mentally retarded.

The New Deal

The period of greatest activity in the realm of social legislation occurred during
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. The Great Depression, which began
when the stock market collapsed in 1929 and continued until the late 1930s, caused
widespread poverty and economic hardship. Millions of Americans lost their jobs and
businesses failed. There was no effective state or federal programs to assist the many
Americans who needed help. An elderly California physician named Dr. Francis E.
Townsend gained great fame by proposing a system of old-age pensions to be
administered by the federal government. The Roosevelt administration responded to
the popular pressure for such a program, and in 1935, Congress passed the Social
Security Act, the centerpiece of the U.S. scheme of social welfare.