Ronald Reagan on Taxes and Welfare, Ex-Forbes

RONALD REAGAN, Autograph Letter Signed, to Lorraine Wagner and Elwood Wagner, May 31, 1968. 3 pp., 8? x 12.5?. Excellent.

California governor Ronald Reagan writes to his Philadelphia fan and her husband to answer questions related to tax reform, welfare programs, and a Danish attorney who criticized California’s mental health programs. For more than fifty years from 1943, Reagan exchanged hundreds of letters with Lorraine Makler Wagner, who became his fan as a young teenager.

Complete Transcript

Dear Lorraine & Wag

I’m off for L.A. so will get to the questions right away. We have a bill in the legislature to give to the counties one half cent in sales tax which they must use in place of an equal dollar amount of property tax. However our Assembly still dominated by Demos. is trying to kill the bill with unacceptable amendments. Their only reason has to be that it’s an election year and they don’t want us getting credit.

Actually the answer to property tax lies with a committee I have working on a program of complete tax reform. First we must have a substitute source of revenue broader based than just the property owners and geared to our economy so that it keeps pace with economic growth & inflation. In my book this is something like the sales tax. Then we must rule out taxing property to pay for welfare and education. Property should pay taxes for those services property actually receives such as fire protection, street maintenance, sewers, water garbage etc.

On the welfare centers this one goes way back. My predecessor hastily opened 13 multiple service centers where welfare recipients could go and find all services under one roof. It was supposed to be an experiment but the centers opened on the basis of where they’d benefit his campaign the most.

By the time we came along we learned that 4 centers were handling 94% of the load and the others shared 6% between them. Also and contrary to the original idea they hadn’t reduced the other welfare offices one bit, just duplicated the already existing services.

We closed all but the 4 and really made them a practical experiment. They proved successful because we expanded them to include such things as Fair Employment Practices – State Labor Office & even Exams for Civil Service. We now have 6 working very successfully and there will be more as we find areas where they can better substitute for the existing but scattered agencies.

The law says that Welfare recipients who are able bodied must be willing to accept harvest jobs from the farmers or go off welfare. Since Weitz ruled our Braceros we’ve had a harvest problem every year with whole crops left to rot in the fields. Remember we are the no. 1 farm state in the Union. Last year we even had to make prison labor available to harvest and of course we’ve used the Fed. Law regarding welfare workers.

Now the Danish official! He was a lawyer and in no way connected with Denmarks mental health program. He never contacted his consul here and they were embarrassed by his sounding off the way he did. His hostess was a woman who has attacked Calif’s mental health program for years even under Brown.

Calif is spending more per patient than any major state in the field of mental health but what ismore important weare no. 1 in the percentage of patients who arereturned to normal living. We have actually increasedthe ratio ofnurses topatientsandareconsideredthe outstandingstate inmentalhygiene.

Wehavea feelingouthere (I do definitely) that welfare is a failure.The aimof welfare shouldbe to salvage people and make them able to take care of themselves. We cant do all we’d like to do becauseof Fed. restrictions but we have started a pilot program in one city – Fresno. We’ve put all the welfare programs into one package under one director and we’ve set it up to take welfare recipients in one end and carry them through screening, analysis of their problems, basic ed. if that’s needed, job training & finally independence by way of jobs in private industry. In America today there are 458 different welfare & poverty programs and the only result seems to be more people on the dole not less.

That’s the story. Now I’m off to L.A.

All the Best

Ron

Mr/Mrs. Elwood Wagner

Historical Background

As governor of California, Ronald Reagan spoke out against the idea of the welfare state. He supported the California Welfare Reform Act of 1971, which cut welfare expenditures by $130 million, tightened antifraud controls, and required greater support of older citizens by their adult children.

Early in 1968, Niels Erik Bank-Mikkelsen (1919-1990), a Danish reformer and advocate for people with intellectual disabilities, visited the Sonoma State Hospital in northern California while on a tour of the United States. His criticisms of Governor Ronald Reagan’s plan to lay off 3,700 staff members from state mental health hospitals and cut the budget brought national attention to California’s mental healthcare system. After participation in the Danish resistance movement and time in a Nazi concentration camp, Bank-Mikkelson earned a law degree and entered the Danish Ministry of Social Affairs. In 1950, he joined the staff of the Danish Service for the Mentally Retarded and became the department’s head in 1959. In 1971, he became the director of the Department of Care and Rehabilitation of the Handicapped.

Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) was born in Illinois and graduated from Eureka College in 1932. After working as a radio announcer for several years, he took a screen test in 1937 that led to a contract with Warner Brothers Studios. Reagan served as governor of California from 1967 to 1975. He won election over two-term incumbent Pat Brown. As governor, he opposed the idea of the welfare state and favored less government regulation of the economy. After an unsuccessful attempt to recall him in 1968, Reagan won reelection in 1970 for a second term. He did not seek reelection in 1974, but went on in 1976 to seek the Presidency. He narrowly lost the Republican nomination to incumbent Gerald Ford, but went on to win in 1980 over Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter to become the 40th President of the United States (1981-1989).

Elwood H. Wagner (1926-2002) was born in Pennsylvania and served in the U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1946. He was stationed in Washington, D.C. but attended a Reagan fan club meeting in Philadelphia, where he met chapter president Lorraine Makler. They married in 1952, and had two children. He worked for the postal service in Philadelphia.

Lorraine Makler Wagner (b. 1930) was born into a Philadelphia Jewish family. She joined Ronald Reagan’s fan club in 1943, wrote him a fan letter, and was thrilled when he wrote back to her. For the next 51 years, she corresponded with Reagan, and he sent her approximately 275 letters. When he was attacked in the press, she would ask Reagan questions about his beliefs and statements and then write to the newspaper or magazine to defend Reagan. She also corresponded with his mother Nelle Reagan. She became the president of the Philadelphia chapter of Reagan’s fan club, where she met fellow member Elwood Wagner. They married in 1952. She worked as a tax examiner for the Internal Revenue Service from 1969 until retiring in 1991. When Reagan was president, he hosted the Wagners at the White House three times.

Ex. The Forbes Collection. Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990), American owner-publisher of Forbes magazine, and consummate collector, amassed one of the most substantial and broad collections of such breadth and depth that it filled a half-dozen residences, and sat on three continents. Many of his manuscripts were sold in multi-million dollar sales by Christie's in the early 2000s. The Forbes name is considered to be the apex of provenance when attached to an item like the one above. We are honored to have been chosen by the family to sell at auction the substantial balance of the collection.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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