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[This item restored after being vaporized by crap cost-effective Slate blogging software--7/24/9]
Marc Ambinder on how the White House made its fateful choice to try to sell its health plan on cost cutting rather than coverage:
Earlier this year, the White House decided to base its health care messaging on the concept of cost -- the current system was unsustainable and wasteful. They did not focus their argument on access, which appeals to people without access but doesn't do much for people with insurance, or about quality, which is complex and not intuitively helpful for Democrats. Maybe the price of doing business with the insurance company was to focus on costs. Maybe they overcorrected from the Clinton model in 1994, which focused on "health security."
"We tried access and quality, with a tad of moral imperative, once before and it didn't work out so well. Its difficult no matter how you slice it," a senior Senate aide told me. A White House adviser conceded that "access is killer, no matter how you poll it."
1) As is so often the case, overpolling seems to blame. In the event, polls on Obama's cost-obsessed pitch so far do not seem to bear out whatever his aides saw "earlier this year." I suspect they saw what they wanted--and they wanted to focus on costs. It's possible to take polls that show something very different; 2) Is "access" the right word to test-as opposed to "security"? "Access" makes it sound as if you are focusing on the problem of the uninsured--i.e. charity, to many middle class Americans--as opposed to security for everyone. If they polled "access," that may have stacked the deck from the start; 3) "Maybe" they "overcorrected from the Clinton model"? Maybe?
Ambinder goes on, in full captured-by-source mode, to say the "basic problem" with a cost approach is that " in order to reduce costs .. reform will cost something extra in the near-term." Er, no. The basic problem is that it's not clear Obama and Orszag's reforms actually will work to reduce costs in the long term without encouraging unacceptable practices like rationing. They might work! But "bending the cost curve" isn't something that has been done here. So Obama's asking for a huge investment up front for a scheme that might well not have the long run effect he desires.
In contrast, "security" is not a pig in the poke. We know what highly popular health care security in this country looks like. (It looks like Medicare--though that might be just one possible form.) We know it is attainable if we are willing to pay for it. It dovetails with a traditional liberal idea that the wealth of Americans shouldn't determine whether they live or die when they need a doctor.
Only the sophistication of modern opinion research could obscure this difference and tell Obama, in effect, "go with the untested, hard-to-explain cost-cutting scheme."
**--Don't give the problem a human face! Even the anecdotes Obama uses--even the anecdotes about middle class Americans who've gotten screwed by the health system--seem to confirm the vague sense that it's just a question of helping out a few hard luck cases--i.e. charity, rather than universal, middle class security. This is one instance where the hack CW advice to use telling anecdotes--as opposed to appealing generalities--may backfire. FDR used appealing generalities, no? ...
Update: Kevin Drum adds just a touch of fear-mongering to a security-oriented sales pitch. Not un-powerful! If Obama simply read Drum's post on national TV--and didn't add five Orszag-approved paragraphs on cost-cutting--it would be a step in the right direction. ...
Mark Blumenthal on various way pollsters can skew the results on the importance of "cost"--one promised to "eliminate co-pays and deductibles"! That's a) not about to happen and b) very different in voters minds from the "remote, systematic changes" that Obama and Orszag predict will "bend the curve" a decade or two from now.... 2:20 A.M
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Last Year's Model: Megan McArdle on the trouble with shifting from evil "fee for service" medicine to a "capitation" system, which is being proposed for Massachusetts. For one, with capitation
[d]octors who happen to get stuck with a sicker population go broke. If you try to rig the payments to account for degrees of sickness, you will quickly get mired in a system even more complicated than the current health insurance system.
Also they have a financial interest in letting you die quickly and cheaply! Or, as McArdle more tactfully puts it:
I don't like a system where the doctor has a financial incentive to give me unnecessary tests. But I'm even less fond of the idea of giving her financial incentives not to give me necessary ones.
2:10 A.M.
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Brad DeLong notes that the last two recoveries have been "jobless" ones, in which the unemployment rate took a long time to go down even after the economy as a whole started to grow. He offers some reasons, including:
[F]irms believe that their remaining workers will forgive them if they fire large numbers of workers during a recession out of economic necessity, but not at other times. Hence the start of the recovery is a business's last moment to slim down its labor force and become more efficient and profitable in the coming boom.
Sounds plausible. But why, then, does DeLong seem confident, at the end of his column, that if only the stimulus had been bigger we might not have been in for a jobless recovery? It's obviously a question of degree, but if employers use recessions as an excuse to slim down with a $787 billion stimulus plan, won't they use the recession as an excuse to slim down with a $1787 billion stimulus plan? The latter will produce a bigger recovery, presumably--but at some point don't you also run into the problem of inflation? Mightn't it be that--because of the factors DeLong cites--there is no longer any sized stimulus that produces a non-jobless recovery that isn't also so big that it reignites inflation? Just asking! ... That doesn't mean the stimulus shouldn't have been bigger. Only that a non-jobless recovery** might be an unattainable goal. ...
**--What's a non-jobless recovery? After all, jobs eventually come back even with "jobless" turnarounds. DeLong suggests one reasonable measurement: Will they return in time for the 2010 elections? .. . 2:08 A.M.
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OMB Director Orszag responds on his blog to recent skepticism about the health care cost savings he anticipates. ... I'm still skeptical, at least about whether Orszag's long-run "game changers" will save the government from titanic health-care driven deficits starting ten years from now. See, for example, Dr. Groopman on one heavily advertised "game changer," electronic medical records, which threatens to solve the health care cost crisis the way touch-screen voting solved the ballot-counting crisis. ...
If the "game changers" smell a bit like snake oil, and if they aren't (Orszag insists) necessary to offset the cost of expanded coverage over the next ten years, and if meanwhile they position the government as the bean-counting ogre who will be denying medical treatments people might want--where is the political genius in constantly bringing them up? ...More tk. ... 2:40 P.M.
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Ron Brownstein on the problem of reviving Rustbelt manufacturing:
For officials at every level, the great hope is that these fading car towns can move from rust to green, from building autos to manufacturing wind turbines and solar panels or buses and subway cars. These places offer many advantages for such production: factories, supply chains, transportation links, and a skilled workforce "that knows how to do metal," as Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio says.
But there are few examples of such conversions succeeding in the auto plants already closed, notes Dan Luria, research director for the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center, a government-business partnership. And although Obama's policies ensure that the U.S. will buy more alternative energy and transit equipment in the years ahead, Luria says, there's no guarantee that those products will be built in America, much less in these particular communities, unless Washington encourages it through an integrated set of carrots and sticks beyond anything under discussion. Brown, likewise, is urging a national manufacturing policy. [E.A.]
Hmm. Why might manufacturers of "alternative energy and transit equipment" want to avoid locating their factories in the heavily-unionized rustbelt? Do you think the ongoing example of Detroit's Big Three might have a cautionary effect on their decision-making? Let's have a "national manufacturing policy" to make them do it anyway--with an "integrated set of carrots and sticks.". .... 2:38 P.M.
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If All You Cared About Was Speed ... : Republican economist Keith Hennessy argues that even a Democratic welfare-like demogrant would have produced a faster stimulus than the infrastructure spending the administration chose--even if only a fraction of the money was actually spent (as opposed to saved). .... 2:37 P.M.
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Saturday, Februay 21, 2009
Will Taraji P. Henson destroy Nate Silver? Oscar oddsmakers say yes! ... But given Silver's track record, the odds on Henson (you can currently get 19-1) look mighty attractive. ... Except, you know, she wasn't that good in the movie. ... There is also Dana Stevens' methodological objection:
The Academy's voting practices don't involve "logistic regression"; they involve actual regression, the acting out of primitive, unmappable affects like grief, pity, fear, and desire.
8:10 P.M.
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Isn't the border fence shovel ready? ... [Thks. to reader C.W.] 8:03 P.M.
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"The Best We Can Do": A few days ago I said there were only four GM cars I would consider buying. That was before I bought the most recent Consumer Reports guide, in which the Cadillac CTS and the GMC Acadia --about which GM VP Lutz said, "This is the best we can do"--get below-average reliability ratings. That leaves two, the Chevy Malibu and Pontiac G8 (and one of those two, the G8, is too new for reliability reports). ... The case for further subsidizing GM would seem to be almost entirely macroeconomic (i.e., bankruptcy now would deepen the recession). ... 7:32 P.M.
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Don't Answer That, Part XVIII: Mark Hemingway, among others, is charging that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "is angling for a 'big chunk"' of the stimulus bill's $8 billion for high-speed rail "for his pet project," a magnetic-levitation train between L.A. and Las Vegas. ... Am I crazy--I sort of like the idea of a high-speed rail line to Vegas. It wouldn't destroy existing communities--the route is mostly desert. It seems like a good full scale test bed for new technology that, if it works, can later be applied in more densely-populated, harder-to-build-in areas. And it would open up the route for development. (Don't worry about an office park boom destroying the fragile Barstow ecology. Barstow is already a mess.) .. As Keynesian boondoggles go, this seems like a promising one (although, Yglesias notes, there are other possible routes) ... 7:07 P.M.
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Sunday, February 15, 2009
1) A Times of London story highlights worries about the Thermidorian welfare reform backsliding in the stimulus bill. Sample:
Douglas Besharov, author of a big study on welfare reform, said the stimulus bill passed by Congress and the Senate in separate votes on Friday would "unravel" most of the 1996 reforms that led to a 65% reduction in welfare caseloads and prompted the British and several other governments to consider similar measures.
2) I get an "Even ... liberal blogger" cite. Hahaha. Take that, Even the Liberal New Republic.
3) But the reference to liberalism isn't irrelevant, because the now-undermined welfare reform was the key to rebuilding confidence in (liberal) affirmative government. As Bill Clinton recognized, voters may well have been willing to let government spend, but they didn't trust old style liberals not to spend in actively destructive ways, like subsidizing an isolated underclass of non-working single mothers with a no-strings cash dole. It's a 75-25 values issue. Work yes. Welfare no. Even if welfare spending was only a tiny portion of the liberals' spending agenda, it poisoned the rest of it. Only when Clinton's New Democrats put an ostentatious "time limit" on welfare and required work did they regain the public confidence necessary to increase other kinds of spending (on work-related poverty-fighting benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit, day care and Social Security, for example.)
A reemerging "welfare" issue is a potential killer, in other words, for Obama's big remaining plans, especially health care. If Dems seem determined to reinstate dependency--or at the least blind to the dangers of dependency--voters aren't going to trust them to spend trillions on universal health insurance and fortified pensions. It's hard to believe Obama doesn't realize this.
4) If not, he may soon. I don't think the debate about welfare has been settled by the stimulus' bill's passage. I think it has just begun. I'm not saying this in a morale-maintaining way--"this fight is not over," "Where do we go from here," etc." I mean that, in fact, there has so far been no debate about welfare the way there has been a debate about pork and Keynesian spending. Before the stimulus bill passed, its welfare provisions were hardly mentioned in the NYT and WaPo. They were just bubbling up from The Atlantic's 's website to a Newsday blog last Friday, as Congress was voting.
Now that the bill has safely passed, even the liberal MSM may feel the obligation to mention them in public. Maybe even in actual print. Reporters have to cover something. More on pork? Welfare seems fresher.
5) In any case, the rump Congressional GOP and talk radio conservatives can force their hand. Why should opponents of the welfare-expanding provisions stop harping on them? Has Obama been asked about his welfare un-reform at a press conference yet? I don't think so. He will have more press conferences. It won't be an easy question to answer. (Reporters could also ask his HHS secretary ... Oh wait. Never mind.)
Welfare is a liberal sore spot that, if Republicans play it right, could become a bleeding open wound for the administration. Voters probably thought they'd settled the dole-vs.-work issue back in 1996. Obama will be fulfilling the crude GOP stereotype of his party if he even waffles on reopening it.
Remember that Newt Gingirch rode the welfare issue to power after haranguing about "the liberal welfare state" for a few election cycles. The new welfare debate, if it happens, won't necessarily be that prolonged. The main question is whether the Administration can effectively paper over the meaning of what's in the stimulus. If not, Congress is still in session. It seems to me there is a real chance for Republicans to get it to "revisit" that part of the bill, as they say in Washington. Obama may decide he needs to excise the most poisonous part of the stimulus to save the rest of his New New Deal.
P.S.: No, the stimulus bill doesn't fully unravel welfare reform--after 1996, welfare is no longer an individual "entitlement," for one thing (a term of art that triggered a whole slew of court-enforced rights). The time limits and work requirements are still at least formally in place. States can still do what they want, in theory, within much broader limits than under the old AFDC program. Many states, with little money to spare, may still refuse to try to expand their caseloads (even if they now have an 80% federal subsidy to do it). A debate on the issue might, in fact, help ensure that states don't go crazy and recreate the bloated and socially disastrous welfare caseloads of the three decades before 1996.
More important, the debate would stop the Money Liberals in the Washington "antipoverty community"--e.g., Peter Edelman and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities crowd-- before they can complete the rest of their agenda, which does involve unraveling welfare reform (eliminating work requirements, for example). Preserving Clinton's biggest domestic achievement isn't something you should want "even" if you're a liberal who believes in affirmative government. It's something you should want especially if you're a liberal who believes in affirmative government. 3:20 A.M.
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Friday, February 13, 2009
MSM (in the form of Newsday) only now just waking up to the welfare-expanding, work-relaxing clauses hidden in the stimulus bill. ... It's not like it's the day of the vote. ... Newsday was tipped off by Ambinder's page, apparently. ... A couple more weeks of debate and, who knows, maybe the story would filter up to the New York Times (though it would still have to get past the paper's "meddling" editors.**). ... [Thanks to reader S.]
**-- "Every hour, a new set of instructions on what the story should say came from New York, believe it or not."--Dean Baquet. ... 3:33 P.M.
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Marc Ambinder is now onto the stimulus' "get-more-people-on-welfare" provisions, even if nobody else is. He offers a summary of the issue and then a Dem response (even though his summary included Dem responses). A few points.
1) Ambinder writes
a number of conservatives and even liberals have written to me wondering why the GOP isn't making more of a fuss about this. The answers are fairly simple: they want to avoid being seen as poor-people bashers, they know that Americans still associate welfare with minorities, and there are different sensitivities they must consider when making political claims about the priorities of the first black president. [E.A.]
If Republicans are unwilling to defend work over welfare because we have a black president(!), they might as well all retire en masse now. Hard to believe even GOP consultants are dumb enough to give this advice.
2) See, the MSM doesn't care! Ambinder's anonymous Dem responder argues
A pretty clear lesson of the four-year long welfare reauthorization debate was that there wasn't much political juice left in the issue -- didn't exactly see it on page one much, did you? [E.A.]
Hmm. Maybe that's because the reauthorization debate didn't threaten to roll back reform, and the caseloads were down. Now a) the Dems are starting to roll back reform, in order to encourage states to b) get caseloads back up. ... And there's something fallacious (i.e. circular) about a liberal Dem citing MSM coverage as if the New York Times was an infallible oracle of the people, as opposed to an infallible oracle of liberal Dems. This is what you see when you look up "cocooning" in the dictionary! ...
3) Ambinder's anonymous Democrat says his party has always been suspicious of the "caseload reduction credit," fearing that states will just push people off the rolls in order to get the credit (whether or not those recipients find jobs).
Why exactly should a state get credit towards the work participation standards just because they have fewer people on the caseload? The evidence is pretty clear that it's not like 100% of people who leave welfare get jobs
A fair point--except that in this case it's the Dems who are preserving the caseload reduction credit. They don't want states to have to meet the "work participation standards" (i.e. make recipients work or train) so they've written the bill to let them to wriggle out of them using the "reduction" credit even when, as Dems intend, their caseloads start expanding. ... P.S.: As with "card check," Ambinder is a bit off on the details, in a spun-by-Dem-sources direction. He writes, confusingly,
States get "casework reduction credits" for the number of people they move off of the rolls; these credits help states meet a mandated 50% threshold for their TANF recipients to perform some type of work-related activity. The idea here -- if I'm reading the bill correctly -- is that the caseload reduction credit would effectively be "updated" to account for economic emergencies. State would get more welfare funds without letting their threshold dip below 50%.
But the effect of the Dem stimulus' "caseload reduction" finagling is precisely to let the mandated "work participation" standards dip below 50% of the caseload. Example: Suppose a state's caseload was 100 in 2005. Then it dropped to 85 in 2007 and 80 in 2008 before rising to 90 in 2009 and (thanks to the stimulus' new federal incentives for caseload expansion) 110 in 2010. The stimulus bill lets states pretend that the caseload has stayed at 80, giving them a "reduction credit" of 20% from the 2005 baseline. This credit is deducted, point by point, from the 50% "work participation" requirement--meaning that our hypothetical state would only have to get 30% of its recipients into work or training activities. For the other 70%, it's "come on down and get your cash--and stick around since the feds are now paying most of the bill."
4) Ambinder says
Democrats respond, forcefully, that in ordinary recessions, unemployment benefits might tide families over, but during a mini-depression, there are no jobs to push welfare recipients into.
That's true, in at least some cases--though DeParle reports that some state administrators say there are still jobs of the type welfare recipients typically take. But lack of jobs isn't a reason to loosen work requirements. It's a reason for the government to provide the jobs. Have the Dems never heard of "workfare"? Give recipients useful community service work, and if they do the work then they get the cash. Simple. They can hold their heads up.
Of course, Dems have heard of workfare--and they know that AFSCME hates workfare (fearing ex-recipients will do their jobs for less). But AFSCME is pushing on an open door. Money Liberals don't really need to be pressured into relaxing work requirements. They've never liked work requirements, including "workfare," and are always looking for an excuse to say "It's OK to come back on the dole."
And the "mini-depression" is certainly no reason recipients can't be required to train (or if necessary go to school and get their GEDs).
P.P.S.: Stimulus welfare provisions a potential issue in the fight over Gillibrand's seat? We'll see about that juice. .. 12:58 P.M.
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Democrats down to the bare-minimum 60 votes on the stimulus in the Senate? ... P.S.: Do House Dems really think that drawing the process out, by letting the Senate GOPs filibuster, will win it for them? From The Hill:
“Make them filibuster” has been a rallying cry of rank-and-file Democrats all week, who say the strategy would portray Republicans as obstructionists and ultimately lead to legislation that better reflects the interests of the party.
Hmm. Filibustering Republicans would have a lot to talk about! My guess is the longer the bill stays un-passed, the more sordid details will come out and the greater the chance that it will be pecked to death. House Dems are deluded cocooning. ... 1:45 A.M.
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National Review says there's "not much" Republicans can do about provisions in the stimulus intended to expand welfare caseloads and undermine the work requirements of the landmark 1996 welfare reform law. That may be true. But there is something National Review's readers--and others who'd like to defend welfare reform--can do.
During the immigration debate of 2007, an emailer suggested that one way readers might influence Congress would be to "go ahead and mash up some negative ads" on the issue and post them on You Tube. Readers responded, and some of the ads were quite good. I think they had an impact--not by swaying public opinion, but by striking fear into heart of legislators by demonstrating what they might face in their reelection campaigns if they voted for the Bush-McCain semi-amnesty bill. The bill died.
It wouldn't be hard to do the same thing with the anti-welfare-reform provisions in the stimulus bill. Again, the idea would not be to influence the public. The idea would be to directly terrify Democratic legislators worried about their reelections by giving them a taste of how their vote might play. (It helps that many politicians are generally terrified of You Tube and other new information technologies they can't control.) Obama aide Rahm Emanuel, for one, is known to be sensitive to the political potency of "wedge" issues like welfare and immigration.
As with immigration, the basic text of the ads practically writes itself: "In 1996, Congress passed the landmark. .. . Caseloads fell by 70 percent. ... Now Congressman X wants to undo that success ..." etc. But I don't have the skill or creativity to do the job of putting one of these ads together, let alone to do the job well. Some of you do.
It's probably too late. The House is scheduled to vote on the stimulus package ... er, tomorrow.** But things move fast these days! And even if the bill passes, if there is enough of a stink embarrassed (or terrified) legislators might change it. Anyway, it seems worth a shot.
If you build them, I will link.
**--I'm assuming the welfare provisions are still in the bill. [Update: They are, I'm told. $5 billion to expand welfare.] They were in both the House and Senate versions. ... My goal isn't to use the welfare issue to sink the stimulus, if that were even possible. It is to get the welfare provisions removed or reversed. Your goals may vary.
More: Why would Republicans make an issue of marsh mice when they have welfare, a proven hot button (for good reason)? Hello?. ... They could even be bipartisan about it, noting that it's Clinton's achievement that's being undermined. ... P.S.: Maybe it's no accident-- the GOPs secretly want the welfare provision to pass and hope the resulting caseload boom will be a good issue to run on in 2010. They're saving their best shot for later. But that would be unpatriotic! It would also demonstrate an uncharacteristic amount of long-term thinking. ... 11:34 A.M.
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Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Steven Pearlstein argues that the ideal stimulus spending "is that which creates jobs and economic activity now, has big payoffs later and disappears from future budgets." The last criterion doesn't get much attention in many pro-stimulus arguments (including Pearlstein's), but it's important if you care about deficits. It's also important if you think the claim of government on the national GDP is limited, and you want there to be room for universal health insurance down the road. And, Paul Krugman even claims (for somewhat tricky technical reasons), it's important if you care about maximum stimulus, because "temporary government spending has a bigger effect"--i.e. it's better at creating new demand than spending that won't disappear from future budgets.
So if the big dispute in the stimulus conference committee was over school construction spending, where
House Democrats are pushing to have school-repair funding listed as a recurring expense; Senate Republicans want such an allocation to be a one-time-only deal.
And if as a result of the moderate GOP Senate crossovers like Susan Collins holding firm, the school construction spending will be a one-time only deal ...
Then haven't the much-criticized Senate centrists, at least on this one issue, helped produce a better stimulus bill--not just a lower-deficit stimulus bill, or a stimulus bill that leaves a bit of room for health care, but, according to Krugman, a more stimulating stimulus bill? ... Am I missing something? ... 11:06 P.M.
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Robert Rector and Katherine Bradley note that the anti-welfare-reform provisions in the stimulus bill aren't as bad as I'd feared. They're worse. They attempt replicate the fiscal mechanics of the old welfare (AFDC) "entitlement," but with a bigger incentive to welfare expansion:
For the first time since 1996, the federal government would begin paying states bonuses to increase their welfare caseloads. Indeed, the new welfare system created by the stimulus bills is actually worse than the old AFDC program because it rewards the states more heavily to increase their caseloads. Under the stimulus bills, the federal government will pay 80 percent of cost for each new family that a state enrolls in welfare; this matching rate is far higher than it was under AFDC.
12:58 P.M.
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If the election were held today, would Republicans retake the House? Michael Barone finds the Dem generic ballot plunge "astonishing," though he acknowledges it might be ephemeral. ... P.S.: Ramesh Ponnuru argues
Republicans would probably be better off if they spent less time pointing out the Democratic plan's flaws and more time talking up their favored economic fixes.
I dunno. If Barone is right, they're doing OK pointing out the flaws. (It's their fixes that are unappealing.) If the GOP's leaders had pointed out the Welfare Restoration provisions a little earlier, for example, they might have had a much bigger impact. ... P.P.S.: Remember when, during the Bush Social Security debate, responsible types urged Pelosi to present a Democratic alternative? She refused, and stuck to attacking the Bush plan. It worked. ... 12:52 P.M.
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Slouching toward 1994: The Corner reports that the Senate has dropped a requirement that employers who get stimulus money use the E-verify hiring system to screen out illegal workers. ... Update: But it's in the House bill, and could still be included in conference. Krikorian has more:
If Reid and Pelosi do strip the E-Verify provisions from the bill, they'd give Republicans an easy-to-explain reason to vote no: "The Democratic leadership rejected bipartisan measures to ensure that the jobs created would go only to Americans and legal immigrants, and we're not going to mortgage our great-grandchildren's future to create jobs for 300,000 illegal aliens."
Stimulus jobs for illegals! Restore welfare as we knew it! Maybe I'm wrong about where the electorate's anti-Dem hot buttons are located, but it sure seems as if Reid and Pelosi are determined to unearth them and push them. ... You almost think they're not bringing up gays in the military because it won't turn the voters sufficiently against them. ... By the time they get to "card check" in the summer they'll have rubbed the public raw, no? .. 12:39 P.M.
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It's not nice to piss off Heather Mac Donald. ... 12:36 P.M.
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Tuesday, February 10, 2009
As promised, here are the gory mechanics of the liberal conspiracy to expand welfare rolls through an insufficiently publicized provision in the stimulus bill:
Under the welfare reform regime established in 1996, states were basically required to engage 50% of their caseload--mainly single mothers--in some kind of "work activity" (workfare, job search, training, etc.). But there was a problem with this half-the-caseload requirement: What about would-be recipients who got off the rolls entirely when the states found jobs for them--or who were diverted into jobs before they ever signed up for welfare? Shouldn't states be able to count these "successes" toward the 50% requirement? You wouldn't want to give states an incentive to somehow keep these people on welfare in order to count them. Thus was born the "caseload reduction credit," which let states count the net decline in their caseloads against the 50% work requirement.
Fair enough. But because caseloads declined dramatically after 1996--they've gone down by two-thirds--the "caseload reduction credit" effectively absolved many states of the requirement to get half of their caseloads working. When Congress reauthorized welfare reform it updated the baseline to 2005. States could still take the credit for any reductions after that date. Many did so, as caseloads continued to fall.
Now, though, Congressional Democrats want to encourage states to expand their caseloads, offering billions of federal dollars in the "stimulus" package as an incentive to do so. But wait, if states expand their welfare caseloads as the Dems want, they'd lose the "caseload reduction credit," since their caseloads would not, in fact, have been reduced. They might then have to start enforcing the "work activity" requirements on those caseloads. Can't have that! That might discourage states from expanding welfare, for one thing, since enforcing work requirements costs money, and states have no money. And Congressional Money Liberals** never liked work requirements much in the first place. The last thing they want to do is increase them. (Their whole theory is that the many single-mom recipients are "hard-to-employ" types with "multiple problems" who basically need to be supported on the dole.) What's a good Money Liberal to do?
Answer: Rewrite the law, in the stimulus package, to let states expand their caseloads but pretend, for "caseload reduction credit" purposes, that the caseloads have declined. Specifically, the revision would allow states take the credit they would have gotten based on their caseloads in 2007 or 2008 even if their caseloads soar (as the Dems would like) in 2009 and 2010.
In other words, they can expand their caseloads but still use the now-fictitious "reduction credit" to avoid the law's work requirements.
Lots of new people on welfare. Lower work obligations. The best of both worlds for welfare-unreforming Dems.
The major difference between the House and Senate versions of this deeply troubling provision, apparently, is that the Senate allocates only $3 billion to induce states to expand their caseloads, while the House bill might spend more than twice as much.
P.S.: On bloggingheads my colleague Bob Wright routinely ridiculed me as paranoid for worrying that if Democrats got back in power they would unravel welfare reform. Even I thought I was paranoid. If only for political purposes, I figured, Dems would have to wait a few months or years before sabotaging Bill Clinton's major domestic achievement. It took them two weeks. ...
**--By "Money Liberals" I mean liberals who define the equality they seek entirely in economistic terms. Confronted with the indignity of poverty, Money Liberals seek to end it by the simple expedient of sending cash to the poor. Money Liberalism, in this definition, ignores non-material distinctions, like those between those who work and those who don't, that (in an alternative, more Clintonian view) are fundamentally bound up in our ideas of dignity and civic respect (i.e. social equality). Specifically, an able-bodied person who fails to work and relies instead on the dole can't have full respect in our society, and shouldn't. The attempt to confer equal respect by spreading around cash--as opposed to guaranteeing work, and making work pay--is doomed. (More here, esp. the exciting footnote 2 on page 192). 3:05 P.M.
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