The Myth That Conservative Welfare Reform Worked--Part 3 by: Paul Rosenberg
Sat Mar 06, 2010 at 16:00
This is Part Three in my diary series, "The Myth That Conservative Welfare Reform Worked". Part 1 began this project by debunking the conservative narrative that liberals and Democrats were uninterested in reforming welfare, drawing principally on Diana Zuckerman's artlce, "Welfare Reform in America: A Clash of Politics and Research ", published in the Journal of Social Issues, Winter 2000 (pp587-599). Part 2 began the presentation of a five-section argument with the first two sections, "Section 1: The Rightwing Hegemonic Framing Of Welfare Reform" and "Section 2: A Common-Sense Take-Down of the 'Welfare Reform Worked' Myth".
In the interests of digestibility, I've decided to split both the diaries planned for this weekend into two parts each, running a two-part diary on national data this weekend (splitting Section 3 into two sub-sections) , and two separate diaries on international comparisons (Section 4) and state-level comparisons (Section 5) next weekend. In this diary, I will look at national data that helps explain the main false assumptions used in the conservative anti-welfare arguments made popular by Charles Murray in his 1985 book, Losing Ground. In the next diary, I will concentrate on data that illustrates what the real problems actually were, and how welfare reform failed to perform as promised.
Section 3A: The Story of National Data-Debunking The Conservative Frame In this part, we examine national level data showing that conservative welfare reform was not a success as it widely believed in Versailles. To do this properly, however, we must take account of the arguments advanced to make the contrary point-no matter how misleading, and yes, downright dishonest they may be. Thus, before any number-crunching can begin, we need to discuss how conservatives portrayed welfare as a failure in need of reform. At the end of 1970s, no one would claim that America's social welfare policies were a roaring success, but liberals would point to two major factors-first, a relative lack of effort compared to Europe, and second, the abysmal economic performance of the 1970s, which had stalled economic progress even for the middle class, much less for the poor. An obvious solution would be to take lessons from Europe-but that would be too logical. Instead, conservatives came up with a facade of research to "prove" their charge that not only had Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs failed to reduce poverty, it had made things worse.
This was logic of Charles Murray's 1985 book, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 (whose very subtitle was a lie--see below), and it was reflected in Ronald Reagan's claim in his 1988 State of the Union that "some years ago, the federal government declared war on poverty, and poverty won." But this had not always been the conservative position. Indeed, in late December 1980, Martin Anderson, an Ayn Rand acolyte and a researcher at the Hoover Institute, had just been announced as Reagan's first chief domestic policy adviser, and an AP story quoted from his writings:
The 'dismal failure' of welfare is a myth. There may be great inefficiencies in our welfare programs, the level of fraud my be very high, the quality of management may be terrible, the programs may overlap, inequities may abound and the financial incentive to work may be virtually nonexistence.
But if we step back and judge the vast array of welfare programs, on which we spend billions of dollars every year, by two basic criteria--the completeness of coverage for those who really need help, and the adequacy of help they do receive--the picture changes dramaticll. Judged by these standards our welfare system has been a brilliant success. The war on poverty is over for all practical purposes.
This was, of course, delusional. But it was a very different delusion than the one the right would later embrace. ...........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.openleft.com/diary/17655/the-myth-that-conservative-welfare-reform-workedpart-3
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