The words “welfare queen” caught fire the following year, in 1976, when presidential hopeful Ronald Reagan took the stage at a campaign rally. “In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record,” Reagan declared. “She used eighty names, thirty addresses, fifteen telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veterans husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running a hundred fifty thousand dollars a year.”
