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Against The ‘Safety Net’, Matthew Lawrence
Against The ‘Safety Net’, Matthew Lawrence
Matthew B. Lawrence
Jack Kemp and Ronald Reagan originated the ‘safety net’ conception of United States health and welfare laws in the late 1970s and early 1980s, defending proposed cuts to New Deal and Great Society programs by asserting that such cuts would not take away the “social safety net of programs” for those with “true need.” Legal scholars have adopted their metaphor widely and uncritically. This Essay deconstructs the ‘safety net’ metaphor and counsels against its use in understanding health and welfare laws. The metaphor is descriptively confusing because it means different things to different audiences. Some understand the ‘safety net’ as …