The President, the Pope, and Compassion
I bet you thought I had given up on this blog. Please accept my apologies. It’s been a busy season of interviews, finals, and vacations. I haven’t even done my taxes yet! Enough with the excuses. I sense that Fantastiko may be in its final days, but I’ll press on until its last breath.
I caught President Bush’s comments on the Pope’s passing and was struck with frustration when he said that the Pope shared his belief that “the strong should protect the week.” Bush calls this compassionate conservatism.
Like other liberals, I generally think of this label as an oxymoron and have waited to see how Republicans could possibly pull this off.
Still waiting…
It’s not compassionate to cut programs that provide immediate support to the poor, especially when there’s no immediate alternative for everyone. I believe Bush does care about people in poverty. But compassion —or at least my concept of the word—doesn’t suit his policies.
Compassion implies that we’re going out of our way to extend kindness and support to anyone who needs it. To some extent, the existence of executive agencies meant to provide direct social support (e.g. HHS) demonstrates our government’s compassionate nature. But the enforcement of policies by public agencies is reflected by the current president’s policy desires. Now that we’ve had Bush for four years, does compassion sound like Bush to you? Am I the only one who is sure that if he could get away with it he would dismantle much of the core of social service and health care programs?
It’s kind of old news, but check out this Washington Post article on the Bush budget proposal for 2006. You tell me. Where’s the compassion in his budget proposal?
Whether compassion or kindness should have a place in public policy is not my problem here; that’s another argument. It’s the presentation of his policies towards the poor that bothers me. Although he continues to tout this compassionate conservative personality, his policies have yet to show a proven positive effect on poverty. His policies, instead, depend on the long-term hope that improving economic environments will provide incentives for individuals to pull themselves up. In doing so, the poor of today will be sacrificed for the benefit of the poor of tomorrow—maybe. That’s tough love, not compassion.
posted by The Decider @ 10:16 PM
7 Comments:
I wish I knew more about this subject altogether because after processing all of those numbers and rates I feel pretty lost.. It’s hard not only to wrap my mind around the amount of dollars being thrown around, but also the number of programs and areas for funding under consideration. Bush must be one tremendous mathlete though if he has somehow managed to create a budget that will work to cut the deficit in half by 2009 while actually spending more. Unlike you, Nan, I am only a little concerned with his poor showing of compassion—I mostly have resorted to the common coping mechanism of complete denial when it comes to acknowledging that people actually see him as something more than a wet fart.
Where is the Social Security stuff? Am I missing something? Probably.
$209 million for advocating sexual abstinence? Seriously? Now I have to go get gay married AND cheat on my new wife to counter his misguided efforts. Damn.
JB,
"Where is the Social Security stuff?" Good question. This is the big critique I've heard about Bush's proposal: it excludes Iraq, Afghanistan, and Social Security! Break out the supplementals!
"$209 million for advocating sexual abstinence?" As many of you heard on the Daily Show and Bill Maher, a new study on this issue makes this figure look even more ridiculous (http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/03/18/virginitystudy.stds.ap/).
"...managed to create a budget that will work to cut the deficit in half by 2009 while actually spending more." Don't forget taking in less revenue too! Increase in homeland security and defense balanced with a decrease in education (by 9 billion from last year?) says something important about his priorities.
- Nan
Compassion, Generosity, and Robin Hood
Compassion is "sympathetic consciousness of others' distress with a desire to alleviate it," according to my ancient copy of Webster's.
Generosity is my willingness to give some of what I have to someone who needs it more than I.
Your definition of compassion appears to be my willingness to take something from one person and give it to someone who needs it more than the first person.
Perhaps Mr. Bush has hijacked the term “compassion,” but you have flown it to Cuba.
Note to the youthful: yes, indeed, people used to do exactly that. Hijacking a bus to Cuba was less effective.
I think most of the social welfare programs in this country are failing. Instead of elevating poor people, we have created a permanent underclass of couch potatoes that do little in life beyond producing another generation of couch potatoes.
They also turn citizens into clients – and that is pathetic.
I think that most of the alternatives to big social programs proposed by Bush and the Republicans are half-assed.
I certainly don’t have the answer to this mess. But I suspect that if the Federal government simply got out of the Social Welfare Business and left it to the states to sort out, we would all be better off. The federal budget would go down; the state budget would go up. Probably zero-sum from the tax-payer’s perspective, but perhaps we would have better luck holding our state governments accountable for results.
-Chris
Chris,
You confuse me! Why would you care to have a public program at all—state-run or federal—if you think that public programs that depend on income redistribution are communist in nature? Is your problem the efficacy of current programs (yes, they're half-assed—partly because they ARE being run by states. They’re basically only financed by the federal government) or is it the income redistribution that they depend on?
I’m not going to argue the effectiveness of our social programs here. That deserves another post. I will, however, address your comments on income redistribution (i.e. liberal definition of compassion).
Your interpretation of our liberal notion of compassion is wrong. You say it is "my willingness to take something from one person and give it to someone who needs it more than the first person."
Who said anything about taking? Last I checked, these programs—effective or not—were created and enforced by our own democratic process. You volunteered your tax dollars for public use by participating in our society as one of its citizens. Your publicly-elected officials acting on your behalf are acting legally. There’s nothing un-American or socialistic about using income redistribution as a means to solve social problems as long as our government acts democratically. You may not like the idea of income redistribution, but it is grounded in our own social agreements with authorities granted by the US Constitution. We do it all the time (how do you think that highway near your home was built?). To say that it is somehow inherently un-American to have programs that help our citizens—and they’ll always be citizens—through income redistribution (i.e. progressive taxes) is inappropriate.
Income redistribution in the US is not an idea invented by FDR, democrats, or communists; it was invented by the authors of the US Constitution by the powers given to the US government and is, thus, entirely American.
It’s a social agreement we’ve made voluntarily—not a system imposed on us by a socialist dictator. Furthermore, there are positive externalities associated with helping the poor. Our society benefits if their lives are improved. We have a stake in being compassionate. Using “taking” in your definition is misleading (don’t worry; I won’t hold it against you. As a Republican, you’re supposed to mislead us as much as possible).
Okay, I lied. Couch potatoes? Come on. That’s an ignorant, Newt Gingrichesque thing of you to say. You're a smart guy. Where did you get this idea? Tell me, where’s the research that supports the idea that this is a class of lazy people? Please share it with us. What does lazy even mean?
The research I’ve seen suggests that any preference against working (rather than depending only on welfare) can at least just as easily be attributed to the availability of only minimal incomes with no benefits, the nature of part-time work—often with shifts making child care and education difficult to obtain—along with mental health problems, lack of health care access and high health care costs, lack of education and training, drug abuse, infrastructure problems (e.g. transportation), lack of child care support and other local resources, and frequent lay-offs. That’s IF they get hired in the first place. Please go to http://www.urban.org/Template.cfm?NavMenuID=24 and check out the wealth of research on this area. Have you, by any chance, been listening to Ann Coulter? Rush Limbaugh? If so, try reading up on the experts first.
To get public assistance, people have to show that they’re honestly looking for work, so you can’t say that they’re not finding work because they’re couch potatoes. I have yet to see anything in the current literature that suggests that poor people are poor because they’ve grown dependent on public assistance. At best, I’ve seen relationships—none if which infer causality.
- Nan
Nan-
First, you gotta meet Danger! - very cool dog.
Why would you care to have a public program at all…?
Because I want to see an end to poverty, and the many problems that are consequences of poverty. However, when I support a public program, I have three expectations:
1. I expect the resources that are committed to the program to be used honestly and accountably,
2. I expect the government to be reasonably efficient in the administration of the program, and
3. I expect that after a reasonable number of years of funding the program, the government will show reasonable progress in achieving its goals.
In your opinion, are these reasonable expectations? In your judgment, have they been met?
Throwing good money after bad may be compassionate. It may also be foolhardy.
Now regarding welfare programs being screwed up …partly because they ARE being run by states. They’re basically only financed by the federal government…
You nailed the problem. States spend the money, but don’t have to face the tax-paying public on the matter. I think that states would run much more effective programs if they were spending their own money. I would gladly pay much higher state taxes if I had confidence that the expectations above would be met.
I think that my county government is more responsive to my needs than my state government. My state government is more responsive than the Federal government. Naturally, if we push responsibility for social welfare programs too low, we risk having jurisdictions that simply cannot afford to take care of their own. But, if we can have some plan in place to mitigate that risk, we can probably push the responsibility for raising funds and distributing money to at least the state level.
Nan, I think you’ll agree that poverty is a triple tragedy: first, because of the sheer number of people who are suffering, second, because the portion of the population in poverty is growing, and third, because those in poverty seem increasingly unable to get out of it. We can find statistics to prove the first two points. The third point is tougher to prove, but I think many of us sense that economic mobility is lower than it used to be.
OK, “couch potatoes” was harsh, but the permanence of the underclass is a problem that must be fixed. Permanence leads to hopelessness that leads to all the symptoms we see: drugs, gangs, teen pregnancy, and broken families.
If we look at a chart of federal spending on social welfare, we see higher and higher levels of spending against a problem that only seems to get worse. It could be that we just need to do more of the same (i.e. increase funding to existing programs) to reach the tipping point and begin to improve. I just think it is far more likely that we need to change our approach.
-Chris
Chris,
Any dog named Danger! must be cool. I can’t wait to meet him. I’ll be in DC this summer, so I guess we’ll get to know each other well.
I think your expectations are fair and I share them with you. These expectations have not been met when it comes to social programs. My point is that it’s a stretch to say that these failures are the cause for the creation of permanent poverty. That said, I’m no fan of Clinton and Dole, the two politicians most responsible for welfare reform in the mid-1990s. From what I can see, they’ve failed in their efforts to fix the problems you point out in the previous welfare system (AFDC). To be fair, Clinton succeeded in avoiding an even worse version of the reform proposed by the congressional Republicans.
I think somewhere along the way, somebody got the idea that I somehow think that the programs we’ve tried (including the current TANF program) have somehow accomplished these goals. Our welfare programs are not effective or efficient. They need to be reformed again. They aren’t helping the poor to be more self-sufficient and are generally misguided in every way. As it stands, the current welfare program is not an exercise in compassion. Far from it. TANF openly encourages states and localities to avoid taking on new welfare cases in order to meet caseload reduction roll thresholds (kind of like Annual Yearly Progress in the No Child Left Behind Act). This has been especially devastating for poorer states and the clients that are hardest to reach. In part, the reason has to do with the financing method: by using block grants, the feds have given too much freedom for states to spend their money in ineffective ways.
THAT’S my problem with Bush. He said that he values protecting the weak. How so? That’s all I’m asking. He proposed a 9 billion dollar cut in federal spending on education and he’s going to reauthorize TANF, which discourages higher-education for the poor and discourages states from helping new clients. The system needs an overhaul and we’re NOT seeing it from President Bush. I want a new President!
To be fair, it’s likely Kerry wouldn’t have gone anywhere special with this. I’m a desperate man waiting for a white knight to come riding in…
Couple of things about your proposed state-financed, state-run social programs. From reading all your posts over the last 6 months, you seem married to the approach that local governance is inherently more efficient, effective, and accountable for social programs. I’m not so sure, especially in the red states (ironically). You’re assuming that the programs would be designed to address the relevant outcomes and that states can somehow sufficiently finance themselves. My budget professor, who used to run the Office of Budget and Management for the state of Ohio, once said that there are three things Ohioans want to hear from their state government and nothing more: 1) we’re reducing your taxes, 2) we’re spending our limited funds on education, and 3) we’re cutting welfare. There’s a good reason why we finance welfare federally: Republicans in many states aren’t as generous as you. Welfare isn’t even a consideration for them—state-run or otherwise. As an American, it’s in my interest and it’s in my moral code to help those who need help. I also have the right to hold states accountable for not taking care of my countrymen. It’s not without its problems, but the idea of federally created and financed social programs isn’t inherently bad or inefficient; we’ve just sucked at actually producing a good product. State and local governments will surely play a large role in any social program. But without our federal tax dollars, the poor in the poorest states would get left behind. That is, to me, unacceptable.
By the way, your triple-tragedy thing is brilliant and right on the mark. Our programs do not sufficiently address these issues. I’m curious of your take on affirmative action programs. Do they address them at all?
Finally, I’d just like to clarify that, under Republican control, spending for welfare-related programs have effectively gone down across states (see http://www.cbpp.org/tanfseries.htm#funding for a great list of interesting analyses). That said, I agree that it’s not a good idea to continue funding programs that don’t work. We need to fund entirely new programs.
- Nan
Nan-
Unfortunately, I don't have time tonight for a comprehensive response. I do have a few thoughts that I'd like to share.
First, not all states are poorly run. Mine for instance. Please see this report on Virginia Of course, I could not convice Alex and JB to move in. They chose the corrupt regime of DC.
Second, I think we need to stop thinking about social welfare and tax policy as different things. The current code appears to be much kinder to poor working families than the old one. (I say this because the standard deduction went up, there is a new credit for dependent children, and the bottom rate dropped from 15 to 10%.) But the incremental tax burden on people coming off assistance should not be there.
I feel uncomfortable with the idea that the feds need to bribe the states to do the right thing. It smacks of "we know better" and "we are from Washington -- we're here to help you." One of the most objectionable examples was when the feds threatened to withhold highway funds from states that did not increase the drinking age to 21. Barf.
I'm also a little uncomfortable with the notion that we need things like housing vouchers and food stamps because if you give cash to the poor, they will just misspend it. It seems insulting.
Together, these ideas bring me back to the old idea of a negative income tax.
All for now,
Chris
Post a Comment
<< Home