Who was to blame for California's controversial Social Welfare cuts in the summer of 1970? (Part II)

Fourkas, T. (1970, July 28). Welfare official says haste, budget crisis prompted cuts. The Modesto Bee, p. B5.

Chief deputy director of the CA Department of Social Welfare, Charles Hobbs, reported that the short-lived budget cuts which caused such a brouhaha were the result of his office being "hurried."  Hobbs stopped short of painting Reagan as the bad guy, though it is possible that he intended to imply ignorance on the governor's part.  It is clear that certain "unnamed sources" sought to promote this view--a desire which the Bee may have shared, as evidenced by its inclusion of the opinions of these "unnamed sources" that:

...the changes were made because the Reagan administration did not understand how the program was handled in the past.

 When told that Reagan denied being too hasty, Hobbs replied:

From the governor's view, things moved with logic and calculated speed. But from our point of view, they moved too hastily, because we couldn't measure what would happen, what the counties would do with the changes.

Hobbs argued that problems stemmed from the fact that authority to translate the initial cost-cutting goals into specific cuts was handled not by the Social Welfare Department, but rather by Director of Finance, Verne Orr.  County officials (presumably Welfare Department officials) claimed that the Orr cuts were written in such a way that it left them "little room for interpretation." 

Governor Reagan did not buy this argument, and accused the county welfare workers of intentionally trying to sabotage the budget-cutting process by "following the letter, but not the intent of the regulations."  Presumably, this meant that Governor Reagan felt the county welfare workers did have adequate discretionary powers, but that they simply chose to exercise those powers in a way likely to be most politically-damaging to the administration's push to trim the size of government.

One may dispute whether Reagan's or Hobb's interpretation of the "bind" in which county welfare workers found themselves was most accurate; But it is clear that Hobb's notion of what needed to be done was decidedly different from Reagan's.  Reagan wanted the budgets cut to address the state's financial crisis.  Hobb's, alternatively, merely spoke in terms of "improving" the Social Welfare Department:

The important thing is we make some changes in a system that is pretty bad, and that we make them not in terms of saving money but in terms of improving the system and involving more welfare recipients in the process

The Bee article ends with a report of the aforementioned unnamed sources' speculations regarding why the Reagan administration "decided" the Social Welfare program was out of control.

Hopefully, as my research advances I'll find ever more discussion and explanation of just what happened here.  As always, I welcome informed and verifiable comments!

Update: 7/30/2013 It seems that the Modesto Bee issue cited above is no longer available through Google News.  I leave the citation in the event that anyone wishes to locate the hard copy and consider the original article for themselves.

Modesto Bee editorialist stung by Reagan

n. a. (1970, July 22). Delayed reaction of budget cuts. The Modesto Bee, p. A12.

In this editorial The Modesto Bee warned against dire future consequences that could fall upon California like a biblical plague due to: wait for it...Reagan-led budget cuts!  That's right.  Future Californians could look forward to rampant ignorance, not due to bad pedagogies and educational philsophies, but rather as a direct result of the fact that in 1970 the eeeevil Ronald Reagan championed a budget that refused "cost of living raises" to the university professoriate (elementary and secondary school teachers, by the way, received raises).

Similarly, the roads of California were doomed to be littered with bodies like some post-apocalyptic Mad Max horrorscape, as the direct consequence of Darth Reagan's cutting of $1.4 million from the budget of a conspicuously unnamed, "long-standing improvement program for negligent drivers."  To bolster it's case, the Bee cited a report in the wholly-unpartisan-utterly-objective-and-disinterested L.A. Times that this short-sighted budget-hawkery:

...could result in about 35,000 negligent drivers remaining on the road this year who otherwise would have been removed...[I]n producing a budget cut, the public's interest in improving the safety of drivers on the state's crowded highways is damaged.

Update: 7/ 28/2013  -- It seems that many of the Modesto Bee issues heretofore available through Google News have disappeared.  I have tried to locate another digital copy of the original editorial, but have been unable to do so. 

Reagan: The Great Coalition Builder

John Heubusch has a good reminder at the Daily Caller of just how Ronald Reagan got his economic program through a Democratic House, and so inaugurated a turbo-charged peacetime economy.  

The Great Communicator communicating great truth

   

Carson:  How do you balance the budget?

Reagan:  It's like protecting your virtue; You have to learn to say "no."

Expanding Ownership: an op-ed by Ronald Reagan, October 1980

Expanding Ownership

This is an interesting piece...and I recommend reading it in full.  As you'll see, there are "pull quotes" that even President Obama might seek to pluck and use.  For example:

Our Founding Fathers well understood that concentrated power is the enemy of Liberty and the rights of man. They knew that the American experiment in individual liberty, free enterprise, and republican self-government could succeed only if power were widely distributed. And since in any society social and political power flow from economic power, they saw that wealth and property would have to be widely distributed among the people of this country...Could there be anything resembling a free enterprise economy, if wealth and property were concentrated in the hands of a few, while the great majority owned little more than the shirts on their backs?

Before any socialists try to play this as a trump card, however, I'd point them to what else Reagan says:

It should be clear to everyone that the nation's steadfast policy should afford every American of working age a realistic opportunity to acquire the ownership and control of some meaningful form of property in a growing national economy[.]

This is not to say that the government should confiscate from the "haves" and bestow upon the "have-nots", beyond the requirements of a compassionate welfare programs to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves. Far from it. But it is to say that our duty is to foster a strong, vibrant, wealth-producing economy...

Reagan on Solving Economic Crises

‎"I was 21 and looking for work in 1932, one of the worst years of the Great Depression. And I can remember one bleak night in the thirties when my father learned on Christmas Eve that he'd lost his job. To be young in my generation was to feel that your future had been mortgaged out from under you, and that's a tragic mistake we must never allow our leaders to make again." - Ronald Reagan October 13, 1982

Reagan in Retrospect: March 18, 1983

A wise person once said, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”  Few places prove the truth of this proverb more than Washington D.C.  As the budget battle continues over the next few weeks, and the Democrats decry the “draconian” cuts proposed by Republicans, it’s worth recalling that these guys really haven’t changed all that much.  Democratic economic proposals have nothing to do with whether the economy is up, down, or flat—they are pure expressions of political ideology…one might actually call it “political religion.”  No set of circumstances—not even +10% unemployment and $5 a gallon gasoline will convince the Left that their policies have not worked and that free market alternatives need to be embraced.  Just consider this diary excerpt from twenty-eight years ago:

Met with House Republicans regarding the Democratic budget that came out of committee on a party line vote.  Our guys were all gung ho and ready to do battle.  The Democrats...know they can’t get their budget but [Speaker] Tip [O’Neill] said it was a moral statement of Democratic beliefs.  I think they’ve handed us an issue.  They would reduce or repeal everything we have done.  They’d cut defense more than $100 billion over 5 years, but they’d increase social spending $181 billion and increase taxes $315 billion.  On Monday, Commerce will announce G.N.P. growth for the 1^st Quarter of 1983 as 4%--highest since the 1^st Quarter of 1981.  Our program is working…

The upshot of realizing you’re dealing with fanatics is the realization that there will be no “compromise” unless it means you rolling over and giving them everything they want.  Fanatics cannot be reasoned with…they have to be defeated.