ABSTRACT
The President’s Commission on Income Maintenance Programs was appointed by President Johnson early in 1968 to study the income needs of poor Americans, examine all existing government programs designed to meet those needs, and make recommendations for constructive improvements. The Commission’s report, issued in November, 1969, was occasioned by both the discrediting of the welfare system and the Johnson Administration’s wish to postpone remedial action until after the election of 1968. The report sets forth a universal negative income tax system that, over time, would eradicate financial poverty. Its structure—complete federal administration and financing, impersonal tests of means, payment levels on the basis of family income alone, substantial work incentives—proceeds from a rejection of the existing welfare system, not an effort to tinker with it.
