Once President Obama unveils his budget next week as he’s expected to do, Congress will be looking at three very different proposals to tangle over. And one of the stickiest issues will involve how much to spend on that thing we call government “safety net” programs.
But how did that phrase– the safety net– become a household term for social programs in the first place?
You’d assume a historian would know the answer. But when if you start calling them up to ask, no one does. So, we enlisted a few to help figure it out. The result is a surprising etymology of a slippery phrase that goes from FDR to Ronald Reagan, and his speech that launched a thousand safety net metaphors– from “shredding” to “catching” — even as he questioned who really deserved to be caught in that net.
Check out the history of the safety net, as it appears in political cartoons, in the photo slideshow above.
How did the social safety net get its name?
No comments:
Post a Comment