This transfer of authority from government to individuals led to the privatization of more than 270 million acres of public land. Thousands of citizens reaped the benefits—and fulfilled the responsibilities—of ownership. They were invested; America was theirs—and they had the prized patent certificate to prove it.
Our second example of admirable legislation that promotes self-reliance is the 1996 Welfare Reform Act.
The bill was initiated by conservative Republicans to replace the failed social program known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children. The new program—Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF)—aimed to get poor parents off welfare and into paying jobs, thereby reducing child poverty and combating illegitimacy.
The results speak for themselves.
Since 1996, the poverty rate has dropped by about 1.3 percentage points; some 1.8 million fewer children live in poverty; hunger among all children is down by over 50 percent; and welfare caseloads have decreased by more than half.
Why, you might ask, was TANF so effective?
Because it made welfare a two-way street between society as a whole and its individual members. No longer a perpetual handout, the program strived to temporarily help the down and out get back on their feet—and off the government dole.
In short, TANF prepared individuals with hope for a self-reliant future.
The triumphs of the Homestead Act and TANF, however, occurred in the past. Question: What is now America’s single best opportunity to match those classics of positive government action?
Answer: fixing Social Security to allow people to control how they wish to live in retirement. No other government action could equal this one in benefiting so many Americans.
Social Security as we know it is headed for a crash and burn, presenting us with an enormous opportunity to recreate it as a liberating system for individual autonomy in the mold of the Homestead Act and TANF—what it should have been all along.
Congress should enact market-based Social Security reforms, such as personal savings accounts to help develop future generations of self-reliant Americans who can manage their own money and retirement planning with minimal help from the government.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Self-reliance is more than a single policy reform, no matter how big. Rather, as Getting America Right argues, it’s a mentality, a way of life, a return to the virtue that defines our proud past.