# The real story of the welfare queen, crazy article!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-story-of-the-welfare-queen-crazy-article/677688>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [January 2, 2014, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-story-of-the-welfare-queen-crazy-article/677688 "2014-01-02T07:35:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 7

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**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\
**Post date:** [January 2, 2014, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-story-of-the-welfare-queen-crazy-article/677688/7 "2014-01-02T16:01:37Z")

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And yet people denied that she did anything all that serious:

> [@Welfare, the deserving and the truly needy...](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/welfare-the-deserving-and-the-truly-needy/217419/42):
>
> "Over a period of about five years, Reagan told the story of the “Chicago welfare queen” who had 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards, and collected benefits for “four nonexisting deceased husbands,” bilking the government out of “over $150,000.” The real welfare recipient to whom Reagan referred was actually convicted for using two different aliases to collect $8,000. Reagan continued to use his version of the story even after the press pointed out the actual facts of the case to him. "
> 
> From the “Mendacity Index”, _Washington Monthly_  
> [http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0309.mendacity-index.html](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0309.mendacity-index.html)
> 
> Its one of the oldest, and most cynical, plays in the Tighty Righty playbook: pit the poor against the poorer. Clap the working man on the shoulder and tell him that he’s the salt of the earth, that you share his “work ethic” values. Tell him how he too could afford a SUV and a cabin on the lake, college for his kids, if only it weren’t for that shiftless, no account welfare queen.

It’s certainly true that one story, no matter how dramatic, proves little to nothing about the question of whther welfare recipients as a group were costing the system large amounts of money via fraud.

But it’s equally true that Reagan did not exaggerate in any great respect the story of one single example of a woman who did, and those that claimed he was exaggerating were incorrect to do so.

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