Social Policy in the '96 Campaign

September-October 1996

By Stanley W. Carlson-Thies

"All things do not flow from wealth or poverty. All things flow from doing what is right." That's what Bob Dole said in accepting the Republican presidential nomination.

What is the right thing to do on a range of concerns beyond the economic? Many social issues remain key for assessing candidates—from abortion and affirmative action to violent crime and state-sponsored gambling. Still, at the top of the social policy agenda these days is the question of how to reconstruct government's relations with the institutions of civil society.

Our political system fosters bipolar choices. Democrats emphasize government as a constructive force, de-emphasizing its limits and downplaying the importance of civil society. Republicans argue for limited government to preserve liberty, not considering whether and how government needs to uphold institutions if they are to flourish. However, when families crumble, urban society collapses, school problems multiply, and neighborhood groups atrophy, the solution cannot be found either in creating more government programs to replace these institutions or merely ending harmful government policies. Government may need to play a constructive role to shore up social institutions.

New Departures

Bill Clinton often speaks to this issue. In this year's State of the Union message, he condemned the idea that a new federal program is needed for each social problem. He called for a smaller federal government that collaborates with citizens, state and local governments, and voluntary associations. Government should work with civic organizations and religious anti-poverty groups that "know the true difficulty of the task before us and are in a position to help." In a recent Washington Post interview, he advocated new federal "partnerships" in order to strengthen families and communities.

Clinton touts his empowerment zone initiative because it creates a framework that encourages and enables nongovernmental groups to become active. His administration has granted many waivers of federal rules to states ready to redesign their welfare programs, and he praises the new welfare law as a way for federal authorities to support state creativity in reforming assistance programs. Often since the last presidential campaign Clinton has preached a "New Covenant" in which government offers help while at the same time requiting citizens to do all they can for themselves.

However, the major proposals to actually realign government and society have come not from the Democrats but from the other side of the aisle. Notwithstanding their impulse simply to chop government, Republicans have been proposing creative ideas for how government can bolster and cooperate with civil society. Initiatives in four areas are especially noteworthy.

Welfare

Despite the president's commitment to change, the drive and basic framework for welfare reform came from Republicans. Their legislation is mainly deconstructive, reversing the New Deal by pushing ultimate responsibility for welfare back to the states, ending the federal guarantee of help to the poor, and trimming benefits and eligibility. It also has an innovative reconstructive element. Sen. John Ashcroft's (R-MO) Charitable Choice provision encourages states to turn to religious as well as secular nonprofit groups to provide welfare services. It protects the integrity of faith-based organizations by guaranteeing their right to act in accord with their religious beliefs. It protects beneficiaries by ensuring their access to non-religious service providers.

Government at various levels already extensively contracts with faith-based social-service agencies. Currently, though, it often requires or encourages the weakening of their religious character. Charitable Choice presumes instead that government should collaborate with them precisely because their religious character enables them to serve the needy in ways that government agencies cannot. Sen. Dan Coats' (R-IN) Project for American Renewal proposes other ways for government to support civil society, ranging from requiring it to turn over to nonprofit groups vacant housing to be used for the needy to offering a generous federal tax credit for donations to poverty-fighting charities—an idea Bob Dole has praised.

Religious Equality Amendment

Church-state expert Michael McConnell (University of Chicago) says that the secularizing strings attached to government funding of nonprofit organizations constitute a "relentless engine of secularization." To stop that engine cold and ensure that government respects the religious diversity of social institutions House Republicans have proposed a religious equality amendment. By explicitly affirming that the Constitution protects the expression of religion in public life, the amendment seeks to overcome the Supreme Court's inconsistent rulings and to give believers and religious organizations a solid defense against hostile officials.

This struggle to clarify how government should protect and uphold religion has garnered little Democratic interest. A year ago the Clinton administration did issue to all public education officials guidelines to protect religious expression in public schools. However, protection for religion in society must go far beyond the public schools.

School Choice

Comprehensive school choice—letting public funds flow to whichever school, religious or secular, parents choose—is the only viable public education policy when citizens hold multiple views of what schools should teach. This key restructuring initiative has been pushed especially by Sen. Coats and by Republican Reps. Jim Talent (MO) and J. C. Watts (OK) in their American Community Renewal proposal. Choice gives poor children access to better schooling, encourages parents to participate in their children's education, and helps to revive civic cooperation in dying neighborhoods.

Bob Dole spoke enthusiastically in favor of "school choice, competition, and opportunity scholarships" when he accepted the Republican nomination. With few exceptions, however, Democrats have resolutely opposed comprehensive choice. Their education policy is tilted toward government-run schools and has gone further awry in the congressional Democrats' "Families First" agenda, which emphasizes access to college education without a word about the poor foundation laid for it in many public K-12 schools.

Strengthening Families

The "Families First" Democratic agenda advocates a "moderate and achievable" set of policies intended to "help every struggling family." These include the enforcement of laws requiring equal pay for women, expanding the number of police on the streets, promoting a national crusade against teen pregnancy, making pensions portable, and providing affordable, "kids only" health insurance. This may represent the Democrats' attempt to play the Republicans' old game of calling every proposal a "family-values" policy. But it also acknowledges that families are interwoven with every other part of society and influenced by every trend and crisis. Families cannot be healthy if everything around them crumbles.

Families cannot be healthy, either, however, if they themselves are crumbling. The unraveling (and non-formation) of marriages and families is a major cause of many of our cultural and social problems and it requires specific attention of its own. Republicans have proposed a collection of policies aimed at reversing what sociologists call the "deinstitutionalization" of families.

The federal "defense of marriage act" will anchor in law the historic view that marriage is a permanent husband-wife relationship, hoping to limit damage from a likely Hawaii Supreme Court decision in favor of same-sex "marriage." "No-fault" divorce rules are being challenged in the states in order to stabilize marriage. The "parental rights" movement seeks government acknowledgment of the primacy of parental authority in the raising of children. And, of course, it has been Republicans, not Democrats, who have fought vigorously to protect the lives of unborn children.

Serious wrestling with these issues will occur as much within each of the parties as between them. But don't look for an in-depth debate about recasting the relationship between government and civil society at any stop on the campaign trail. The issue has none of the popular appeal of a bidding war between candidates promising tax cuts. But it cannot be ignored for long.