<<<figure out if he wants to be Reagan>>>
I don't he should become in any way like Ronald Reagan.
February 8, 2009
The ‘W’ Word, Re-Engaged
By JASON DePARLE
Ronald Reagan brooked no doubt that food stamps equaled welfare. Running for president in 1976 he told what became a defining tale about the “strapping young buck” in the supermarket line who used stamps to buy T-bone steaks. His first White House budget made deep food stamp cuts.
Newt Gingrich equated food stamps and welfare, and tried to use Bill Clinton’s pledge to “end welfare as we know it” to dismantle the program. Rudolph Giuliani, in his end-welfare days as the mayor of New York, railed against a “romantic and emotional” view of food stamps and ordered subordinates to withhold applications.
But George W. Bush did not treat food stamps like welfare. He dubbed the program “nutritional assistance” and gave bonuses to states that were most aggressive in signing poor people up. At the same time he pushed states to cut their cash assistance rolls — citing the failures of the welfare state.
There has long been an element of the subjective in what gets defined as the “safety net” and what gets attacked as “welfare,” that elastic and stigmatizing term. Now rising joblessness and misery have started new conflicts and exposed old rifts.
The recovery measures moving through Congress would spend significant new sums on programs for the needy. The House version includes food stamps, unemployment benefits, Medicaid, child care, Head Start, energy assistance, homelessness prevention, disability payments and infant nutrition. A Senate agreement was reached Friday night, with further negotiation to come between the two chambers.
Sponsors of this spending call it a humane response to soaring hardship and an economically productive one; giving money to the poor stimulates the economy, they say, because poor people are quick to spend it. Conservatives have argued that poverty programs undermine work and marriage, and some see the stimulus bill as a stealth expansion of the welfare state. The very word, welfare, was weaponized last week.
“I’m not trying necessarily to use it as a dirty word,” said Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Dallas Republican. “But if there’s a benefit that you’re getting that you don’t pay for — that arguably is a form of welfare.”
Like other House conservatives, Mr. Hensarling wants less spending and more tax cuts, for businesses and families. He is especially opposed to a refundable tax credit, championed by President Obama, that would send checks of up to $500 to low-wage workers, even if they paid less than that in income and payroll taxes.
Supporters call it “tax relief.” But Mr. Hensarling said: “It’s welfare. Period. Paragraph.”
These colliding instincts — pro-safety net, anti-welfare — each draw on legitimate concerns. One side sees poverty amid plenty, and an economy that heavily favors the few even when times are good. It trusts the impulse to help.
The other fears taxation, warning that it can quash initiative and choke an economy. This side also stresses moral hazards, warning that while feeding the hungry may be necessary, it can discourage people from feeding themselves.
“This tension waxes and wanes — but it remains a tension, absolutely,” said Isabel V. Sawhill, a researcher at the Brookings Institution. “Americans understand that some people are poor through no fault of their own. On the other hand, they suspect that some people aren’t doing all they could to help themselves. It’s pretty deep-seated in our national mindset, this belief that you can succeed.”
Other factors come into play — a collision of class interests, and, at times, possible appeals to racial prejudice. “Strapping young buck,” in Mr. Reagan’s day, was widely understood to mean black. Indeed, with minorities disproportionately poor, they are disproportionately found on welfare caseloads. When the old cash program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, was abolished in 1996, nearly 70 percent of its long-term recipients were African-American.
The demise of A.F.D.C. was a landmark event in welfare history. Many liberals warned the program’s end would fill the streets with paupers. But in the booming economy of the late 1990s, work rates rose, poverty fell and “ending welfare” was largely judged a success.
Conservatives claimed vindication. Some vowed to take their fight to other corners of the welfare state, though in that they found little success.
Liberals argue that the new cash welfare program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, has cut caseloads but left many people poor. And they say it is only now meeting its truest test, with the onset of a crushing recession.
Understanding public support for poverty programs to be fickle, some policy makers have designed programs that serve everyone, as Social Security and Medicare do. But universal programs like these are expensive and potentially unfair; they may tax the poor to help provide benefits to the rich.
Targeting the poor as recipients solves that problem, at the risk of creating others. Programs for the poor are often poor programs — stigmatized and underfinanced.
Taxpayers are especially wary of programs that give away cash. Programs that offer “in kind” benefits — like food or medical care — often seem less susceptible to abuse. This is one reason food stamps and Medicaid have survived, as cash assistance has withered. (Food stamps have the added advantage of enlisting growers and grocers as allies.)
Other approaches curry public support by focusing on children, who cannot be held responsible for their poverty. (Marian Wright Edelman founded the Children’s Defense Fund, not the Welfare Recipients’ Defense Fund.) One victory for that approach came last week at the White House, where President Obama signed a measure extending subsidized health insurance to an additional four million children. Still, poor children are raised by poor adults, and their needs cannot be met in isolation.
In recent years, Democrats and Republicans alike have advocated a “work-based safety net” that seeks to make benefits more generous while reserving them for people who work. The earned income tax credit — which distributes $47 billion a year in wage supplements — has thrived on this logic, despite occasional attempts to brand it welfare. But what now becomes of a work-based safety net, with ever more people out of work?
These complex dynamics can make for a safety net at odds with itself. The food stamp program now lays out a welcome mat, urging the needy to apply. Temporary Assistance, the cash program, often looks like an obstacle course, with time limits, work requirements and state discretion to shoo people away.
Amid rising joblessness, 18 states cut their cash caseloads last year. But every state increased its food stamp rolls, with the benefits (unlike cash welfare) all federally financed.
Despite the constant tug-of-war around the safety net, Robert Reischauer of the Urban Institute said he saw a consensus forming around aid for low-wage workers. “When most of the people receiving a benefit are working families, the entire aura around a program is different,” he said. “Redistribution is less of a hot-button issue.”
Still, last week’s buttons felt awfully warm.
Robert Rector of the conservative Heritage Foundation released a paper slamming the House stimulus bill as a “welfare spendathon.” With an expansive view of “welfare spending,” Mr. Rector puts the bill’s two-year welfare tally at $264 billion. (He counts things like Pell Grants, which help low-income students attend college, and Community Development Block Grants, which help low-income neighborhoods finance everything from sewers to crime prevention.)
“I find it offensive that they’re trying to sneak things in there,” Mr. Rector said of the bill’s supporters. “None of these programs deals with the fundamental causes of poverty, which are low levels of work and lower levels of marriage. They just say, ‘Give me more.’ ”
His liberal counterpart is Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He did not strain for politeness in responding to Mr. Rector’s work. “It’s demagoguery,” he said. “There’s nothing in this package that would give people a cushion to quit their jobs and be lazy. That’s the normal implication when you wave the word ‘welfare’ around. He’s trying to conjure old images of welfare queens. He’s waving the bloody shirt.” |
