THE PERMANENT CAMPAIGN AUGUST 25, 2011
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Fifteen years ago this week, President Bill Clinton gave his controversial signature to landmark welfare reform legislation. The anniversary has not gotten a lot of attention, even though the program created to replace “welfare as we know it” in 1996 is up for reauthorization by September 30. A few conservatives have rehearsed their revisionist histories of the 1996 law, according to which Clinton was forced to sign a bill he had vetoed twice (which ignores the rather profound differences in the three measures). A few liberals have either revived their original objections to the law, or have simply noted that an approach to public assistance that worked in the go-go economy of the late 1990s has not worked so well more recently, in part because the jobs that were the linchpin of the new system have all but evaporated, and in part because neither the federal government nor most of the states have kept the funding promises they made fifteen years ago.
But whatever you thought of the law in 1996, or of its performance since then, the biggest surprise has been the rapid erosion, especially during the last few years, of the hopes shared by liberals and conservatives alike that firmly connecting public assistance to a requirement to work would detoxify the social and racial poisons that had grown up around the old system. At first, that actually seemed to happen; the “welfare wedge politics” so common from the 1960s to the 1990s largely abated in the aftermath of the legislation. But now, even as the “working poor” (the bipartisan heroes of welfare reform) are bearing much of the brunt of the Great Recession, they have become the objects of a new and intense wave of conservative hostility that treats them as parasites just like the “welfare queens” of yore.
WHEN RICK PERRY paused, mid-tirade against taxes, in his presidential announcement speech to deplore the number of Americans who pay no federal income taxes (a theme also common in the rhetoric of his rival Michele Bachmann), he was implicitly attacking the Earned Income Tax Credit, which offsets (and, for some, exceeds) federal income tax (but not, of course, payroll or other tax) liability for people of limited income. It was a telling moment, as an expanded EITC, Ronald Reagan’s favorite social policy instrument, was central to the design of the 1996 welfare reform law for the simple reason that it helped “make work pay,” in the parlance of that time, providing a smooth transition from welfare to work. The very instrument once championed by conservatives as a way to put welfare recipients back to work was now officially under attack.
Neither the unimaginative Perry nor the shrill Bachmann pioneered this assault on work-based welfare reform, of course. It splashed onto the national scene in a campaign ad by John McCain in October of 2008, which attacked Barack Obama’s proposal for an increase in the EITC as “welfare for people who don’t pay taxes.” The ad marked a significant departure because McCain himself had once joined his 2000 rival George W. Bush in rebuking House Republican leader Tom DeLay for seeking to delay EITC payments as part of a budget proposal.
Today, however, in an environment where Perry is hedging his bets on whether Social Security is, indeed, the first big step on the road to serfdom, it’s perhaps not remarkable that he and other conservatives would suddenly decide that yesterday’s great Republican initiative to help the working poor is now not only fiscally unaffordable but morally objectionable. The transformation is widely observable across the conservative landscape, with Republican fiscal proposals in the states and in Washington going after a host of other key support systems for the working poor with a vengeance: state-level EITCs, job training programs, unemployment benefits, food stamps, Medicaid, you name it. It’s also no coincidence that, in the agitation against the Affordable Care Act, many conservatives deliberately stoked resentment towards alleged redistribution of federal largesse from virtuous Medicare beneficiaries to the uninsured, who are, by definition, working individuals and families who don’t qualify for Medicaid for one reason or another.
Underlying this assault, there seems to be a current of genuine anger at the working families who no longer receive “welfare as we knew it,” but remain beneficiaries of some form of redistribution, even if it’s only progressive tax rates. You can debate back and forth endlessly about whether there is a racial element in this hostility, as there definitely was in the old “welfare wedge” politics. The iron-clad conviction of many conservatives that race-conscious federal housing policies caused the housing and financial meltdowns is not an encouraging sign, in any case. But it is clear that the social peace so many anticipated in 1996—after it had been established that no one receiving public assistance could be accused of refusing to work—has now been broken. Work is no longer enough, it seems, to avoid the moral taint of being a “welfare bum.” And the cruelest irony of all is that, for so many, the work’s not available anyway.
Ed Kilgore is a special correspondent for The New Republic.
9 comments
Indeed, and this issue could be another surefire winner for the Dems. The working poor would have to vote, of course. That's the unfortunate part of the equation.
- ironyroad
August 25, 2011 at 10:25am
EK writes: "Underlying this assault, there seems to be a current of genuine anger at the working families who no longer receive “welfare as we knew it,” but remain beneficiaries of some form of redistribution, even if it’s only progressive tax rates." Remember that progressivity comes from two places: Collection AND spending. Our working poor (second quintile) are paying all-up taxes of 9.9% (tax, ss, etc) on the collection side. On the spending side, that same quintile received an aggregate benefit from the government of roughly $18K/household AFTER their taxes were subtracted. So, they pay hardly any taxes, and actually make a decent sum off the government. The middle quintile receives roughly a $6K benefit/household, and the fourth quintile is actually running a deficit: their benefit (minus taxes) is negative $8K. Think about this: Our 4th quintile has about $60K after taxes. If you are hoping to send two kids to college on that amount, it's going to be tough. And yet our appetite for redistribution has become so large that it has HAD to grow down into this quintile. Is it justifiable for a person making $60K a year to be angry about funding what he might view as a lazy lifestyle? Don't get angry at the word lazy. There are plenty of able-bodied people that just won't work. That is what everyone is focusing their anger on. What people shoudl be upset about is the able-bodied person in their 20's that is siphoning away gov money from the disabled single mom in her 30's. Michigan just dumped 30K college kids off of food stamps. That is pure abuse. And its the tip of the iceberg.
- seattleeng
August 25, 2011 at 11:57am
"Don't get angry at the word lazy. There are plenty of able-bodied people that just won't work. That is what everyone is focusing their anger on."
And this is where I call BS. We aren't getting angry at the word lazy, jackass. We're getting angry at the word "plenty", because you obviously don't know what the hell you're talking about.
- GSpinks
August 25, 2011 at 12:59pm
"There are plenty of able-bodied people that just won't work." Perhaps there are -- but those people aren't the "working poor", are they? If you don't work for a living, you can't qualify for EITC as you are not earning any income subject to Federal income taxes. And the "lazy" comment is just the cherry on the sundae. Sure, the middle class guy making 60K with two college-age kids can get steamed at the "able-bodied person that just won't work", though perhaps our middle class guy can't appreciate the fact that said "lazy" guy may have some genuine impediments to keeping and retaining a job, such as lack of transportation. But to be angry at a janitor with a wife and three kids who works full-time but only makes $20K with no health benefits? Angry at a day laborer with two kids whose work is seasonal but only gets him about $15K, again with no benefits? Angry at the home health care assistant who takes care of our middle class guy's elderly mother and is paid $20K a year, again with no benefits? I guess our middle class friend is too angry at lazy welfare queens to think about what Mom would be doing without the home health care nurse -- not living with him and his family and having his poor wife take care of her in addition to keeping down her own job, or being put into a cheap nursing home environment paid for by Medicaid where Mom is treated little better than a prisoner in a cell? Some times I wonder if you and other conservative friends ever actually pay attention to the broader world or the people who pick up your trash, make your food, maintain your plumbing and keep you from being mugged and beaten in broad daylight.
- wildboy
August 25, 2011 at 3:13pm
Sources for any of your claims, seattle? Or did you just make it all up -- again?
- roidubouloi
August 25, 2011 at 6:37pm
No, it did not have to grow into the 4th quintile, if indeed it did. After all is said and done, after-tax income shares are far more skewed to the wealthy than they were 30 years ago. So, the net of all this purported re-distribution that appalls you, seattle, is that we are re-distributing wealth to the wealthiest, the very plutocratic outcome you so desire for no better reason than that Ayn Rand told you you should. The guy making $60K is looking in the wrong place because the likes of you spare no effort at igniting class and race animosity toward those even less fortunate. He should be looking up for the source of his trouble, not down. The bottom didn't get the money that he doesn't have. The top did.
- roidubouloi
August 25, 2011 at 6:41pm
Roid writes: "Sources for any of your claims, seattle" Sure, right here: www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr151.pdf Roid rights: "after-tax income shares are far more skewed to the wealthy than they were 30 years ago" But for the umpteenth time: The poor and middle class have more than ever in this country. What you are upset about is that when the wealthy create new wealth, they don't just hand it to the poor. The wealthy don't take money from the poor. They create new money. From nothing. See Facebook, Google et al. Does anyone here think a $60K earner should be paying for an able bodied 25 year old not to work? That is happening all over the place.
- seattleeng
August 26, 2011 at 11:08am
Roid writes: "The guy making $60K is looking in the wrong place because the likes of you spare no effort at igniting class and race animosity toward those even less fortunate" Let me be very clear: If someone has a legitimate disability, I am the the first to say let's help that person. If someone's disability is due to dropping out of high school in 10th grade, getting pregnant at the age of 17, and then developing a meth habit at the age of 20, then no, I am not very interested in taxing our $60K earners to give this person $30K in annual benefits. I will give them a year of help gladly, but after that, they are on their own. This is not a race or a class issue.
- seattleeng
August 26, 2011 at 11:30am
roi. you've got to learn not to talk to tables named seattle.
- drofnats1
August 27, 2011 at 4:19pm