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In one stroke, the Government's proposals would both raise the living standards of many poor people, particularly in the South, and reduce the gap between generous and ungenerous states. The disparity, already serious, became crucial last week when the Supreme Court rejected as unconstitutional state residency requirements for welfare. Unless the Federal Government does something—and soon—the more lenient states may attract many more welfare applicants in search of higher benefits, compounding the troubles in the ghettos and adding to the cities' already intolerable financial burdens.
While he is temperamentally opposed to the idea of the guaranteed annual wage—his welfare proposal would merely raise the minimum welfare floor—Finch has set aside $9 million in the new budget, more than double the sum proposed by Johnson, to test various income-supplement schemes. In the meantime, proposed revisions in the welfare system go at least partway toward a guaranteed-income scheme. No one in either party disputes that the welfare system, a cycle of Dickensian ignominy in 20th century America, demands radical solutions. Benefits vary greatly from state to state, city to city, and welfare recipients are frequently subjected to demeaning harassment. Most insane of all, those who could take jobs are often discouraged by rules that require working recipients, in effect, to hand their earnings over to the local welfare agency. Finch is keenly aware of the problem, and the new proposal encourages, rather than discourages, industriousness.
∙ EDUCATION. On the most controversial topic affecting his office, campus disorders, Finch has ignored Nixon's campaign rhetoric. Though the Government can take punitive action, cutting off federal funds from colleges affected by disruption and from student dissenters themselves, Finch argues that the universities should be given the widest possible latitude. Repressive federal action, he says, would endanger academic freedom and harm the vast majority of students who have never even thought of joining the S.D.S. He has campaigned energetically against half a dozen repressive bills pending in Congress. "In all truth," he told a congressional committee, "many academic institutions have brought much of it on themselves. They have not always responded to the clear need of any viable institution for constant self-examination and self-renewal. In attempting to serve many masters—Government and industry among them—they have tended to serve none of them well."
Many Southerners voted for Richard Nixon primarily because they thought that he would reverse or at least slow down the process of school desegregation. While Finch treated the matter delicately at first, and with galling ambiguity, his commitment to integration was never really in doubt. His position is now clear enough, and Southerners who expected a change are disappointed.