ABSTRACT
In the fall of 1967, the moderate conservatives in the corporate community and the White House began to think about raising taxes and committing a significant amount of resources to dealing with African American exclusion and poverty. Showing the depth of the corporate moderates’ support for the kind of social spending Nixon was soon to propose, the Committee for Economic Development issued a series of reports on improving welfare, job training, and urban education, which built on several years of work on these issues by corporate moderates and their advisers. The Reagan Administration’s original attempt to cut Social Security revealed that the corporate moderates were ready to join with ultraconservatives in limiting the program severely. Due to ample federal funds for law and order, city leaders were prepared to deal with any future social disruptions with immediate and overwhelming force, by deploying the well-armed Special Weapons and Tactics teams that had been developed post-1968 in 200 cities across the country.
