Obama Shows Some Fight

Maybe President Obama just likes being the underdog (as much as someone can be the underdog while President of the United States). His White House and Congressional Democrats are finally taking the offensive when it comes to the debate over the health care reform bill. The Dems are aggressively talking up the fact that the Republicans want to increase the number of uninsured people, allow insurance companies to set premiums in monopolized markets, and re-establish the Medicare donut hole. That is, Republicans are wasting time by trying to repeal the entire health care reform legislation, even though there's no chance that repeal will pass the Senate or get President Obama's signature, and the Dems are amping up their efforts to show the absurdity and danger of this effort.

My favorite move is that the Obama White House has purchased the Google search term "Obamacare," conservatives' appellation of choice for health care reform, so if you search for that word the first hit takes you to the Administration's website that explains the reality behind the health care law.

Finally the Dems are coming out swinging. It only took two years.

Welfare That Works

Tina Rosenberg has an interesting blog post about welfare programs in Brazil, Mexico, and other countries that make payments to poor mothers if they fulfill certain conditions like making sure their kids go to school and to the doctor. Worth a read, apropos of my post earlier today.

"Welfare queens" and "hard-working white men" in American Myth and History

Once in a while I actually agree with something David Brooks writes, and apparently today's the day. His column this morning argues that the debate pitting "big government" against "small government" is the wrong debate to have. Instead, he says, we should be arguing about what kinds of government programs best serve the public interest, and he points out that there are historical examples of both big and small governments doing both good and bad things. 

I do have a major problem, though, with how he defines the public interest, and - guess what - it has to do with his use of history. Or, to put it another way, his use of historical mythology. He argues that the way to judge government programs should be "the Achievement Test," which asks, "Does a given policy arouse energy, foster skills, spur social mobility and help people transform their lives?" In essence, he defines these qualities as quintessential American values and goes on to use the Homestead Act and the G.I. Bill as positive examples of government programs that passed the Achievement Test. Then he says this about welfare:

        "The welfare policies of the 1960s gave people money without asking for work and personal responsibility in return, and these had to be replaced. The welfare reforms of the 1990s involved big and intrusive government, but they did the job because they were in line with American values, linking effort to reward."

But this argument is entirely race-blind, gender-blind, and sexuality-blind, and I don't mean that in a good way. All of the "good" examples that Brooks cites overwhelmingly benefited straight, white men, or punished poor, black women, and they belie the idea that "effort" and "reward" are directly linked in American history. 

The Homestead Act took land that had been appropriated from Native American tribes and redistributed it to American citizens, nearly all of whom were white. The Act went into effect on January 1, 1863, the same day that Lincoln emancipated Confederate slaves - but since only citizens could claim land under the Act, and most African-Americans weren't citizens until the adoption of the 14th Amendment in 1868, blacks were largely unable to take ownership of the land made available under the Act for its first five years. Then, many states wrote prohibitions on black land settlement and ownership into their constitutions, so even once they were citizens most blacks were prevented from benefiting from the Homestead Act. 

The G.I. Bill provides an even starker example. Enacted in 1944, the Bill provided certain benefits to veterans that enabled them to go to college, buy homes, and start businesses. But many colleges were still segregated, as was nearly all housing stock, especially the new postwar suburbs, so benefits to black veterans had far less value than the corresponding benefits for whites. Since veterans were overwhelmingly male, these benefits accrued mostly to men and to their wives. Moreover, since homosexuals were purged from the military during and after World War II, they too were denied the benefits of the G.I. Bill.

As for the history of welfare, I have a few things to say. The first is that most historians consider the G.I. Bill a form of “welfare,” along with things like Social Security and Medicre, but Americans like to distinguish between welfare programs for the so-called “deserving” poor (the elderly, the widowed) and the “un-deserving” poor (single moms, people of color), and they’re usually referring to the second kind when they just say “welfare.” That’s certainly what Brooks is getting at here, and his brief analysis is totally clouded by his assumptions about welfare recipients.

The 1960s were the greatest period of experimentation in anti-poverty programs in American history, encapsulated by the “war on poverty” and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Most of these programs were, indeed, targeted at single women with children, partly because the roots of the formal government program, Aid to Families With Dependent Children, lay in a 1935 law that only gave financial support to single mothers with kids (then called Aid to Dependent Children). In the 1960s reformers had high hopes of eradicating poverty by providing financial support, social services for education and health, and other programs for the poor. By the 1970s, though, a growing contingent of American politicians and intellectuals had decided that welfare encouraged people to avoid work. These ideas were founded largely on stereotypes about lazy black women, even though black women made up a minority of welfare recipients. The increasing concentration of poverty among people of color in urban areas, largely driven by black migration from the rural south and middle-class “white flight” from the cities, helped perpetuate the innacurate idea that welfare recipients were all single black moms having kids out-of-wedlock - many of whom were just ripping off the government.

When Brooks says that AFDC “had to be replaced” and that the 1996 reform that introduced Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) “did the job,” he gives no suggestion of the metrics by which he’s measuring the relative success of these programs. What is clear from his analysis, though, is that he supports welfare programs that have offered financial support to “deserving” white men (the Homestead Act, the G.I. Bill) but opposes welfare programs that have offered financial support to “undeserving” women, especially women of color.

The problem with this kind of color-, gender-, and sexuality-blind remembrance of history is that it lends false credence to the idea that straight, white men have gotten where they are by embodying the American value that “link[s] effort to reward.” To whatever extent that may be true, we always have to remember that American history is filled with examples of government policies that benefited those straight, white men at everyone else’s expense. And I mean that literally: through their tax payments, all Americans have subsidized welfare programs like the Homestead Act and the G.I. Bill that benefited only a portion of the American population, and yet we have refused to subsidize programs that benefit only “special interests” like poor women. We are not and have never been a color-, gender-, or sexuality-blind polity, and "effort" has never been our only determinant of "reward."

Actually, the U.S. has defaulted on its debt before

Apparently I was wrong that the U.S. has never before defaulted on its debt. Catherine Rampell has the details here.

Same Sh*t, Different Year: Republican Hostage-Taking

It's only the third day of 2011, the new Congress hasn't even been sworn in yet, and already Republicans are setting the terms of the national political conversation and threatening to hold Americans hostage if they don't get their way. I'm talking about the issue of the debt ceiling, which seemed to be all anyone could talk about today. Maybe that's just because all the pundits are back at work after the holidays but nothing's actually happened in Washington, but in any case what it means is that the newest Republican cause celèbre has already set the tone for the new Congress. Some background: Congress has established a "debt ceiling," which limits the amount of debt the U.S. government can legally take on. We add to the national debt every year that we run a deficit (which is most years recently), so every few years Congress has to vote to raise the debt ceiling to enable the government to continue taking on debt. If we don't raise the debt ceiling, the U.S. government would default on its loans - an event that would be an absolute calamity for the American and world economies and which, quite frankly, will never actually be allowed to happen. But, times being what they are, some Republicans are threatening to block the debt ceiling increase when it comes up this spring. They claim it's because they are opposed to deficits and want to rein in government spending instead of increasing the national debt, but they also love-love-love to cut taxes which, you guessed it, increases the national debt. The issue is all over the news and blogosphere today because yesterday the Chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors went on This Week With Christine Amanpour and laid out just how absurdly dangerous these Republican threats are: "I don't see why anybody's talking about playing chicken with the debt ceiling....If we get to the point where you've damaged the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity." Already, though, the Republicans have achieved what they really want, which is to set the terms of the debate for the new session of Congress so they can wrangle all their real desires out of the Democrats and President Obama. By threatening to vote against raising the debt ceiling, they're effectively forcing the Democrats to make major policy concessions in order to get their affirmative votes for the increase. This is just how it went last month: by taking a firm stand and not wavering on the Bush tax cut renewal, they forced the Democrats to negotiate on their terms. So now, two days before the new session of Congress, the political world is abuzz with talk of the coming confrontation over the debt ceiling instead of talking about job creation, education, tax policy, infrastructure investment, or any of the other really crucial issues facing the country. This is just the way the Republicans want it: they've put themselves in a great negotiating position and, yet again, made the issue an abstract question of "big government spending" rather than being forced to actually create policies that would help real people. So here's what I really hope: I hope the Democrats stand firm on this issue and, yes, play chicken with the Republicans. For once I want the Democrats to refuse to give in, just like the Republicans always do. Whatever the Republicans demand in return for their "yes" votes on the debt ceiling increase, Democrats should just say no. Because I'm willing to bet that when the day comes, most Republicans are not going to be willing to actually cause the first government default in the history of the United States over this issue. It's a dangerous bet, but that's the problem - the Democrats are always so scared of the potential consequences that they don't push hard and long enough to see if the Republicans will fold. This time, I think they will - if only the Democrats hold out long enough.

61% of Americans Think We Should Raise Taxes on the Wealthy (60 Minutes/VF Poll)

In a just-released  a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll, 61% of respondents said that the "first thing" we should do to reduce the deficit is "increase taxes on the wealthy." The second place response was "cut defense spending," coming in at 20% of respondents, trailed by "cut Medicare" and "cut Social Security" at 4% and 3%. Two things leap out at me about these numbers. The first is that raising taxes on the rich absolutely tramples all the other responses in popularity. The second is that our political leaders seem to have priorities totally out-of-whack with the priorities expressed in this poll, since raising taxes on the wealthy turns out to be non-negotiable and cutting defense spending only a tiny bit higher on the scale of negotiability.

If you've got a couple of minutes, check out the rest of the 60 Minutes/VF poll, which asked some fun questions like "Which one of these fashion items would you most like to see fall out of style for good?" and "Which one of these fantasy worlds would you most like to visit?" Also on the list: "If you could snap your fingers and magically fix one troubled part of the world, which one of the following would you choose?" The favorite: Washington, DC - which beat out the Middle East, Haiti, Sub-Saharan Africa, and New Orleans for this auspicious prize.

Attacks on public employees, 2011 edition

Here are some headlines from the last few days: "Public Workers Face Outrage as Budget Crises Grow." "Cuomo Plans One-Year Freeze on State Workers' Pay." "Frustration, Outrage, and Neighborly Bonds on an Unplowed Block in Queens."

These headlines, and others like them, encapsulate for me the deep conflict our country has about the value and merit of government services. We want our government to provide for our needs and wants, like plowing our streets, but we don't want to pay for those services, acknowledge their worth, or value the people who provide them. We want well-paved and well-plowed streets, prompt trash collection, good public transportation, reliable mail delivery, and all the rest. Those things cost money, and if we're not willing to pay for them in straight-up taxes, we will either have to forfeit them or pay for them some other way. We could, for example, increase our budget deficits, subway fares, and stamp prices.

Inevitably, those fiscal strategies shift the revenue burden to the young (or the future young) and the poor. They also damage our middle class, not least because public employment is a primary way for people to get to and stay in the middle income levels. Remember, when we talk about cutting government services and laying off public employees, we're talking about laying off people - not some abstract "big government," but actual people who have to pay rent and raise their kids and who, when they lose their jobs, decrease consumer spending and thereby hurt the economy. Why don't we instead ask people with more money - say, millionaires - to chip in more by increasing the actual marginal tax rates? Oh, I know why - it's because Republicans, and many Democrats, adhere to a primary principle that they will never, ever, raise taxes on the wealthy. Matt Yglesisas has some interesting things to say about that here.