From the WSJ Opinion Archives
FROM THE HEARTLAND
Poverty War II?
Liberals try to undo welfare reform.
What happened to all the liberals who predicted dire results when President Clinton signed welfare reform law in 1996? "My president will boldly throw one million into poverty," warned Rep. Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat. If the politics behind the reauthorization of that reform is any indication, those liberals are still out there. They've just switched tactics. Now they're hoping to co-opt the reforms and refashion their War on Poverty under a different banner.
Maryland's liberal Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin is one of the leading warriors in this new campaign. He's joined the end run around the reforms--scheduled to expire this year under a sunset clause--by introducing a reauthorization bill whose goal is "reducing the extent and severity of poverty." It also would provide federal bonuses to states that reduce the number of poverty-stricken children. Mr. Cardin describes it as "the next step in welfare reform." But it's clearly a step back, because what made the reforms significant and successful was that they took the focus away from "reducing poverty" and placed it on reducing the number of people on the welfare rolls.
Before Congress rushes to embrace Mr. Cardin's "steps," it might help to remember that the last time we had a war on poverty, as Ronald Reagan famously quipped, "poverty won." Poverty rates had fallen dramatically, to 18% from 30% between 1950 and the mid-1960s, thanks to steady economic expansion after World War II--a historic achievement for any society. But intellectuals persuaded themselves that it was within America's power to eliminate poverty altogether. And in LBJ, they found a politically adroit leader.
Alas, the vast increase in social spending during the 1960s and early '70s succeeded mainly in drawing new hordes onto the government dole, demoralizing both them and their communities by rewarding idleness over work. Social scientist Charles Murray's 1984 book, "Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980," pointed out the irony: Just as the War on Poverty began in earnest, progress seemed to stop--and it quickly went into reverse. After touching a low of 11.3% in 1971, the poverty rate began to move up again.
Policy elites, of course, saw this as reason to redouble their efforts. But public opinion agreed with Mr. Murray: It was time to shift back and establish reforms that would reduce incentives for dysfunctional behavior. Eventually this led to the 1996 reforms.
States would be allowed to impose work requirements in return for recipients' cash grants, and recipients would be limited to five years on the federal (though not necessarily the state) dole. It was a modest enough package, but almost immediately, welfare rolls began to plunge. Nationally they are still down more than 60% from their highs, despite the recession.
A robust economy helped, to be sure, but a succession of studies has made clear that the common-sense reforms played an even bigger role. Those who had been freeloading on the system dropped out rather than accept even the minimal work and job training requirements under the reforms. And by the end of 2000, poverty itself had receded to the 11% rate of 30 years earlier. (Never mind that the official poverty line would look generous in most other countries.)
The current Democratic proposal to target poverty appears modest at first glance: $750 million in "bonuses" over five years for states that reduce child poverty. The proportion of children in poverty declined to 16.2% in 2000 from 20.5% in 1996. Who could object to reducing child poverty a little further?
But there are several major problems with this approach. For one thing, states are already moving aggressively to deal with child poverty. Most have used their savings from cash welfare payments to boost subsidies sharply for child care, maternal counseling, transportation and job training. Indeed, in states like Michigan--whose supposedly mean-spirited Republican governor, John Engler, was among the leaders in pushing welfare reform--overall welfare spending is roughly the same as it was before reform. By 1999, however, day-care spending had quadrupled to nearly $400 million, compared with $90 million in 1994--and almost equal to outlays for cash benefits.
This also makes clear that once liberals have succeeded in redefining the federal goal as ending poverty rather than reducing welfare, the sky will be the limit. While work and job-training requirements may have succeeded in reducing caseloads at first, it's not clear that will last. There already is pressure to do away with time limits, and the willingness of bureaucrats to enforce work requirements is questionable. There have been almost no reported cases of recipients being cut off for failure to show up at job training centers. Add a positive mandate on the government to reduce poverty rates, and you have a recipe for a return to the old, failed War on Poverty.
Some conservatives have utopian leanings of their own, of course. They are demanding that the federal welfare program focus on subsidies for marriage and sexual-abstinence programs. Fine goals, perhaps, but moral engineering isn't likely to work much better than social engineering.
Rolling back barriers to productive activity should remain the focus. The lesson of the past half century is that poverty levels are far more likely to be reduced by old-fashioned economic growth than by even the most lavish welfare programs. If anything, the principles of personal responsibility that animated the successful reforms of 1996 should be extended to food stamps, housing and health care. And states that want to experiment with antipoverty programs should be expected to pay for it out of their own pockets.
Mr. Bray is a staff columnist at the Detroit News. His OpinionJournal.com column appears Tuesdays.
