Forcing mothers on welfare to work was believed to be an effective means of reducing
the number of black children born, and Bush sponsored a number of measures to do just
that. In 1970, he helped lead the fight on the Hill for President Nixon's notorious welfare
bill, the Family Assistance Program, known as FAP. Billed as a boon to the poor because
it provided an income floor, the measure called on every able-bodied welfare recipient,
except mothers with children under six, to take a job. This soon became known as
Nixon's "workfare" slave-labor bill. Monetarist theoreticians of economic austerity were
quick to see that forced labor by welfare recipients could be used to break the unions
where they existed, while lowering wages and worsening working conditions for the
entire labor force. Welfare recipients could even be hired as scabs to replace workers
being paid according to normal pay scales. Those workers, after they had been fired,
would themselves end up destitute and on welfare, and could then be forced to take
workfare for even lower wages than those who had been on welfare at the outset of the
process. This was known as "recycling."
Critics of the Nixon workfare bill pointed out that it contained no minimum standards
regarding the kinds of jobs or the level of wages which would be forced upon welfare
recipients, and that it contradicted the original purpose of welfare, which was to allow
mothers to stay home with their children. Further, it would set up a pool of virtual slave-
labor, which could be used to replace workers earning higher wages.
But Bush thought these tough measures were exactly what the explosion of the welfare
rolls demanded. During House debate on the measure April 15, 1970, Bush said he
favored FAP because it would force the lazy to work: "The family assistance plan ... is
oriented toward work," he said. "The present federal-state welfare system encourages
idleness by making it more profitable to be on welfare than to work, and provides no
method by which the State may limit the number of individuals added to the rolls."
Bush had only "one major worry, and that is that the work incentive provisions will not
be enforced.... it is essential that the program be administered as visualized by the Ways
and Means Committee; namely, if an individual does not work, he will not receive
funds." The Manchester School's Iron Law of Wages as expounded by George Bush, self
-styled expert in the dismal science..
In 1967, Bush joined with Rep. James Scheuer (D-N.Y.), to successfully sponsor
legislation that removed prohibitions against mailing and importing contraceptive
devices. More than opening the door to French-made condoms, Bush's goal here was a
kind of ideological succes de scandale. The zero- growth lobby deemed this a major
breakthrough in making the paraphenalia for domestic population control accessible.
In rapid succession, Bush introduced legislation to create a National Center for
Population and Family Planning and Welfare, and to redesignate the Department of the
Interior as the Department of Resources, Environment and Population.
On the foreign policy front, he helped shift U.S. foreign assistance away from funding
development projects to grapple with the problem of hunger in the world, to underwriting