The Workfare State. Eva Bertram
Читать онлайн книгу.
more generous than the administration’s proposed earnings disregard.106
In a marked change from past practice, the committee otherwise rejected virtually every major provision of the Johnson administration’s 1967 proposal for public assistance reform. The final WIN provisions were crafted largely by lawmakers rather than federal administrators: WIN marked the entry of Congress as a central actor in charting welfare policy. The committee’s bill departed from existing federal policy in several ways. Perhaps the single most important shift was the explicit assertion that all AFDC parents, with limited exceptions, should be considered for work or training programs; participation for those referred would not be voluntary. Although requiring single mothers to earn wages remained controversial, the committee clearly stated its intention “that a proper evaluation be made of the situation of all mothers to ascertain the extent to which appropriate child care arrangements should be made available so the mothers can go to work.”107
In a second departure, the committee emphasized that the work provisions were to be mandatory, not optional, for the states. The workfare agenda for public assistance trumped the traditional Southern Democratic commitment to states’ rights for Mills: “For 5 years, this load has gone up and up and up, with no end in sight…. We want states to see to it that … unless there is a good cause for them not to be required to take it, that [recipients] take training and then work…. That is what we wanted to do in 1962. We left it to the option of the States, and they did not do it. Five years later, today, we are on the floor with a bill which requires that it be done.”108
A third significant departure was a direct challenge to the entitlement principle within AFDC. For the first time, Congress would set a limit on the number of AFDC families for which each state would receive matching funds.109 The “freeze” applied to cases in which the father was “absent” rather than deceased. In a reflection of conservative concerns about out-of-wedlock childbirth as well as work, the legislation also authorized the states to set up programs to reduce “illegitimate births.”110 The proposed limit on matching funds directly undercut the core New Deal welfarist commitment to provide public assistance to all who qualified, as a matter of right.
Mills’s proposed reforms were sent to the House floor in August 1967. Because the reforms were debated under a closed rule, and as part of a measure with a major increase in benefits for the popular Social Security program, House passage was assured despite liberal objections to key provisions. But the federal workfare proposals would not make their way to the president’s desk without a pitched battle among Democrats. The House bill drew immediate and strong opposition from several liberal quarters.111
Members of Congress were confronted by organized opposition to various aspects of the reform. Welfare rights groups labeled the proposed WIN amendments “the slave labor amendments.”112 Social workers accepted the principle of encouraging work through incentives and training, but rejected the compulsory and coercive elements embodied in the bill in favor of a voluntary, individualized approach. “Mothers must have the right of choice as to if and when it is appropriate and desirable for them to work outside the home, giving the care of their children to others,” insisted a representative of the Family Service Society of America.113 A broad array of civil rights, labor, and religious groups also organized against WIN, focusing on the provisions imposing mandatory employment and a freeze.
As the bill moved to the Senate, organizers worked with welfarist Senate leaders—notably Fred Harris (D-Okla.) and Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.)—to ensure that the Senate version was less punitive. But liberals in the Senate had to contend with Senator Russell Long. Long’s prominence on the Senate Finance Committee had risen in the wake of the 1963 death of Senator Robert Kerr (D-Okla.), a conservative who had nonetheless worked constructively with the White House on Social Security expansions. Long had assumed the position of committee chair in 1966. He was a Louisiana Democrat, a staunch opponent of civil and welfare rights and a leading proponent of workfare. During hearings on the bill, Long made his views known on the issue: “People who can work ought to work,” he announced. Poor mothers should not receive cash assistance for “filling up whole houses with children,” then refuse to work when jobs were available. He railed repeatedly against the twin evils of idleness and out-of-wedlock births, both of which were fueled, in his view, by the AFDC program.114 In September, Long confronted welfare rights activists during a Finance Committee session, and the exchange grew heated. When the women refused to leave until more senators arrived to hear their testimony, Long exploded, banging his gavel so hard that it broke. “If they can find time to march in the streets, picket and sit all day in committee hearing rooms, they can find time to do some useful work.”115
The Senate ultimately produced a bill that was less punitive than the House measure. After significant pressure from liberal Democrats, Long agreed to permit some work exemptions for recipients who were ill or had very young children. And in a series of close votes on the Senate floor that clearly demonstrated the divide between Northern and Southern Democrats, several of the most restrictive AFDC provisions were scaled back.116 Southern conservatives won the next round, however. When House and Senate leaders met in a conference committee to iron out differences between their two bills, the conference agreement reflected the harsher House version, rather than the more liberal Senate version, on almost every important issue.117
Opponents ratcheted up the pressure. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) contacted every senator to demand that new conferees be appointed. Telegrams were fired off to President Johnson from George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, and Walter Reuther, president of the Industrial Union Department, urging opposition and a veto if necessary. As Congress prepared to adjourn in December, liberal reformers became convinced that the best option was to postpone final action to allow for an extended debate in the next session. However, Long devised a legislative maneuver with fellow conservative Democrat Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Republican Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.). They moved to call up the conference report reflecting the House language and win passage on a voice vote—at a time when the Senate chamber was virtually empty of the bill’s opponents, thwarting liberal plans to filibuster the legislation. Furious, the NASW sent a telegram to the president asking that he eliminate the punitive elements of the bill.118
The Johnson administration faced a difficult choice: fight to retain the core New Deal conception of welfare developed and championed by party liberals since the 1930s, or accept the move toward a model of restricted and work-conditioned aid favored by party conservatives. Administration officials were not inclined to wage a decisive battle with Southern Democrats over welfare reform, and the administration accepted the turn toward workfare. HEW had not expected the freeze to be included in the final package, and many officials worried about the punitive orientation of the new law. But HEW leaders elected not to join liberal welfarists and labor leaders in publicly pressing the president to veto the legislation. Many in HEW agreed with the need for more work and training, even if they preferred the use of incentives rather than requirements to increase participation in those programs.119 Others in the administration may have held stronger reservations, but were simply unwilling to expend further political capital on the issue. “The Johnson administration stretched a long way in civil rights legislation and its war on poverty,” concluded historian Blanche Coll. “This much being done, and having offered the elderly and the poor generous medical care, the executive branch was not inclined to buck Congressman Mills and Senator Long in their drive to put AFDC mothers to work.”120
Although the WIN amendments were signed into law, the freeze provision had drawn enough public criticism to persuade Johnson to delay its implementation, and it was ultimately repealed by Congress in 1969, before it ever went into effect.121 There was no delay, however, in implementing the amendments’ work-related measures. A program was created that sought to prepare AFDC recipients “for work in the ‘regular economy’” and to restore their families “to independence and useful roles in their communities.”122
* * *
At the outset of the 1960s, the political initiative on welfare had rested with liberal Democrats in the White House, and a newly elected John Kennedy had galvanized the nation for a battle against poverty. By the end