Whose Contract for Welfare Reform?

March-April 1995

WASHINGTON, DC—Welfare is now a symbol of something much bigger than the federal programs that support the poor. It's a symbol of government failure. It's a symbol of injustice, of contradictory values, of America in decline.

Americans do not like things that do not work. President Clinton's mistake during his '92 election campaign was to tap into welfare as a symbol of failure but then, once in office, to act as if the welfare problem was not so critical after all and that government could succeed on its old terms.

The great weight now hanging around the necks of reformist Republicans is their own promise to show that America is not in decline and that government (if reduced and remodeled) can succeed. The reality of welfare and poverty thus becomes less important; welfare as symbol becomes critically urgent.

What, then, is the driving force behind welfare reform this year? The answer, it appears, is the desire to get rid of a symbol of failure: Cut it! Give it to the states! Throw it back on the poor themselves.

But to erase a symbol of failure only exposes the underlying reality all the more clearly. The truth is that despite generally stable economic conditions, the reality of poverty remains. As do broken homes, failing schools, and dangerous cities that cannot be erased by an act of Congress.

The optimistic myth, of course, is that cutting back welfare support will force a chain reaction of positive results: able-bodied welfare dependents will have to work; once working they will quit dealing in drugs and committing crimes; cities will become safer; families will stay together; schools will improve. America will reverse its decline, proving that less government is better government.

This is the scenario that many Republicans desperately hope will play out. But their hope, I'm afraid, is about as well-founded as the earlier liberal hope that government programs could end poverty by becoming substitutes for spouses, parents, teachers, friends, counselors, employers, and communities of faith. The reality is that government is not the only institution that needs to be reformed, and the wider reform of human beings and society can no more be achieved simply by cutting government services than it can by adding government services. The big campaign promise to save America by cutting back government may prove to be as unrealizable as the earlier liberal promise to end poverty by means of government. Too much weight now hangs on symbols.

To overcome failure we need to do more than bash symbols. We must actually change course wherever irresponsibility reigns. A just government should honor citizens as those who have been created in the image of God. It should hold citizens accountable as people who are accountable to more than government, as people who flourish best in a society with many different centers of responsibility.

Human beings have many kinds of moral obligation—in marriages, families, schools, occupations, friendships, leisure, and citizenship. Government must do more than cut off its misguided funding experiments. It must protect, uphold, and secure with justice a manifold society in which people can express their true dignity and honor as creatures serving God and neighbor.

This means school reform, electoral reform, economic reform, transportation reform, family-law reform, and much, much more. Not that "reform" has to mean more government spending. It means protecting the responsibilities that belong to people. This amounts to much more than tilting against bad symbols and cutting government losses when the promises fail.

—The Editor