Ford Broadcasts, 1965-1966: 12237637

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

WETA-TV DOCUMENTARY ON GREAT SOCIETY, ET AL.

We, too, want to make this an ever greater nation--but not through sacrifice of the spirit and incentive by which the American people already have made themselves great.

This does not mean we are sit-patters. This does not mean we oppose just for the sake of opposing...It means we think our way of leading America to greatness is better than the way of Lyndon Johnson and the liberal Democrats.

President Johnson in his 1965 State of the Union message defined his Great Society program as aimed at improving the "quality" of the American people. Republicans believe it may undermine the character of the people instead of strengthening it because as engineered by Lyndon Johnson, it smacks too much of "Big-Daddy-will-take-care-of-you."

Perhaps the best example of this is the rent subsidies program for which the House recently voted funds by an eight-vote margin. The fact that some Democrats joined Republicans in voting against the funding of this program points up the basic weakness of it.

Republicans feel the rent subsidies program should not be launched at this time, when we are fighting a multi-billion-dollar war in Vietnam.

But apart from that, there is the basic question underlying a program like that of rent subsidies, What does it do to a family to have the government pay three-fourths of its rent bill? Will this be an incentive for this family to buy or build a home of its own someday? I doubt that very much. I think the effect will be to destroy initiative. It will only be natural for the

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