PRESIDENT NIXON ★^1033Endangered Species Act prohibited spending federal funds on any project that
might extinguish an animal species. The Clean Air Act set air quality standards
for carbon monoxide and other chemicals released by cars and factories and led
to a dramatic decline in air pollution.
Nixon and Welfare
Perhaps Nixon’s most startling initiative was his proposal for a Family Assis-
tance Plan, or “negative income tax,” that would replace Aid to Families with
Dependent Children (AFDC) by having the federal government guarantee a
minimum income for all Americans. Universally known as “welfare,” AFDC
provided assistance, often quite limited, to poor families who met local eligibil-
ity requirements. Originally a New Deal program that mainly served the white
poor, welfare had come to be associated with blacks, who by 1970 accounted for
nearly half the recipients. The AFDC rolls expanded rapidly during the 1960s,
partly because the federal government relaxed eligibility standards. This arose
from an increase in births to unmarried women, which produced a sharp rise
in the number of poor female- headed households, and from an aggressive
campaign by welfare rights groups to encourage people to apply for benefits.
Conservative politicians now attacked recipients of welfare as people who
preferred to live at the expense of honest taxpayers rather than by working.
A striking example of Nixon’s willingness to break the political mold, his
plan to replace welfare with a guaranteed annual income failed to win approval
by Congress. It proved too radical for conservatives, who saw it as a reward for
laziness, while liberals denounced the proposed level of $1,600 per year for a
needy family of four as inadequate.
Nixon and Race
Nixon’s racial policies offer a similarly mixed picture. To consolidate support
in the white South, he nominated to the Supreme Court Clement Haynsworth
and G. Harrold Carswell, conservative southern jurists with records of support
for segregation. Both were rejected by the Senate. On the other hand, because
the courts finally lost patience with southern delaying tactics, extensive racial
integration at last came to public schools in the South. In Nixon’s first three
years in office, the proportion of southern black students attending integrated
schools rose from 32 percent to 77 percent.
For a time, the Nixon administration also pursued affirmative action pro-
grams to upgrade minority employment. The Philadelphia Plan required that
con struction contractors on federal projects hire specific numbers of minority
workers. Secretary of Labor George Shultz, who initiated the idea, sincerely
hoped to open more jobs for black workers. Nixon seems to have viewed the
What were the major policies of the Nixon administration on social and economic issues?