Welfare Reform As a Failed Political Strategy: Evidence and Explanations for the Stability of Public Opinion

Welfare reform as a failed political strategy: Evidence and explanations for the stability of public opinion Joe Soss and Sanford F. Schram Welfare reform in the 1990s: The promise of a Joe Soss is Professor of Political Science at the Univer- more generous public sity of Wisconsin–Madison and an IRP affiliate; Sanford F. Schram is Professor of Social Work and Social Re- For political liberals in the United States, the 1980s were search at Bryn Mawr College. hard times. The Republican Party controlled the White House and was winning support from traditionally Demo- cratic voters in the white working class and the South. Efforts to cut back social supports instituted in the 1960s Public policies are the primary instruments governments and 1970s were gaining steam. “Welfare”—which had use to address social and economic problems. Yet they once been a benign term applied to all public assistance, also serve a second, more political function. Lawmakers social insurance, and employment benefits—now carried are not just problem solvers; they are also political actors a narrower and more pejorative meaning, tied in media who, like good chess players, try to “think two moves coverage and in the public mind to images of lazy and ahead” before taking an action that could improve or dependent African Americans.2 The stigmatized specter undermine their strategic position going forward. Thus, of “welfare handouts” seemed to have become a potent as lawmakers try to gauge how a new policy might affect symbolic handicap for anti-poverty efforts and Demo- a particular social problem, they also contemplate its cratic electoral fortunes. potential to mobilize or mollify the opposition, create pressures for further action, appease or outrage the party Among liberals, these developments gave rise to intense faithful, redistribute political resources, change the terms self-reflection and, eventually, to a reformist impulse that of debate, and so on. In the iterative game of politics, it has been labeled “progressive revisionism.” Progressive pays to design policies in ways that yield advantages in revisionists argued that Democrats had pursued divisive the next round. As a result, students of poverty policy social policies in the 1960s, favoring the very poor and must analyze the initiatives that governments pursue, not racial minorities over the white working-class main- just as efforts to achieve expressed social and economic stream. These policies, in turn, generated a public back- goals, but also as forms of political action designed to lash against taxes and efforts to help the poor. Policy enhance particular actors’ abilities to achieve long-term commitments symbolizing cultural and racial liberalism political goals. were now costing the Democrats at the polls and under- cutting their more populist (and popular) economic agen- In the decade since federal reform passed in 1996, most das.3 research on “the new world of welfare” has focused only on social and economic goals, such as those related to Pronouncements by prominent policy scholars resonated work and self-sufficiency, family and child well-being. with these political analyses. Some well-known liberal Far less attention has been given to the political goals that scholars argued that the social policies associated with motivated a significant cadre of reformers. In the 1990s, the War on Poverty had “veered off course,” become an influential group of political actors argued that, by mired in “helping conundrums,” and could never build a reforming welfare and making aid recipients “play by the “bridge over the racial divide.”4 Conservative analysts rules,” the Democratic Party could shed an electoral li- reinforced these assessments with claims that permissive ability, free poverty politics from the crippling effects of welfare policies had fueled racial stereotypes, bred pa- racial resentment, and create a public opinion environ- thology among the poor, and undercut public support for ment more favorable to antipoverty efforts. In the re- antipoverty efforts.5 search summarized here we tested the prediction that policy reform would change the contours of American To progressive revisionists, these arguments also sug- public opinion.1 In what follows, we review evidence gested potential solutions. If the policies of the 1960s had suggesting that this prediction largely failed and present a moved public opinion in an unfavorable direction, per- general set of theoretical propositions that explain the haps Democrats in the 1990s could use policy proposals weak effects. to signal renewed commitments to personal responsibility Focus Vol. 24, No. 3, Fall-Winter 2006 17 Policy Change Feedback Mechanism Indirect or Direct Channel Mass Feedback Options C A Transform E 1. More Willing to Invest G in Public Aid Welfare Reform Deracialize 2. More Favorable to F B Negate the Democratic Party D Figure 1. Path diagram of the Progressive Revisionist Thesis. and the white working class. By ending “permissive” make U.S. social policy both more effective and more welfare, as conservatives had long sought to do, perhaps generous is to make it more morally demanding. liberals could actually shift public opinion in a direction [Welfare reform is] visibly restoring public confidence in more favorable to liberal goals. government’s ability to help the poor lift themselves up.”7 With poverty politics widely viewed as a frustrating and politically costly quagmire, centrists in the Democratic An analytic approach to the progressive Party urged welfare reform as a strategy to move the revisionist thesis public in a progressive direction and realign the image of the Democratic Party on social issues. Embracing this We set out to test whether a decade of public opinion strategy, Bill Clinton made the pledge to “end welfare as evidence supports such claims. To do so, we first trans- we know it” a centerpiece of his 1992 presidential elec- lated the revisionist narrative described above into a tion campaign. Influenced by the arguments David model with direct, testable linkages. The path diagram in Ellwood advanced in Poor Support, Clinton and his aides Figure 1 distinguishes between two variants of the pro- originally hoped to bargain for stronger social supports as gressive revisionist thesis. The first suggests that new a condition of imposing stronger work requirements and policies would transform welfare into a program that time limits on welfare receipt. After the Republicans cap- would affirm majority values and present Americans with tured Congress (and the reform agenda) in 1994, how- an antipoverty program they could support (Path A). By ever, a more sequential political strategy emerged: re- associating the poor with work, refusing to aid those who strictive behavioral rules passed now would make it did not “play by the rules,” and publicly claiming credit easier to gain public support for social benefit expansions for the policy, Democrats would cast themselves and in the future. Dick Morris, Bruce Reed, and other centrist future antipoverty efforts in a more positive light. By Clinton advisors argued that “the welfare restrictions— contrast, a second variant of the thesis implied that re- time limits and work requirements—would do more than form would move mass opinion by negating welfare— revamp one discredited program. [They] would help cre- removing it, with all its pejorative meanings and heavy ate a political climate more favorable to the needy. Once political baggage, from public discourse (Path B). With taxpayers started viewing the poor as workers, not wel- the distortions and distractions of “welfare” taken off the fare cheats, a more generous era would ensue. Harmful table, public attention would shift to more positive con- stereotypes would fade. New benefits would flow. Mem- siderations regarding low-income families. For each vari- bers of minorities, being disproportionately poor, would ant in the model, there are direct paths for effects (Paths 6 disproportionately benefit.” President Clinton signed C and D), but there are also indirect paths of influence welfare reform into federal law in August 1996. tied to deracialization of the poverty issue. In the trans- formative variant, the image of a “handout to lazy blacks” In the ensuing years, as Temporary Assistance for Needy would be neutralized by a program design that clearly Families (TANF), the signature program of welfare re- required work and responsible behavior (Path E). In the form, came to be viewed as a policy success and public negative variant, removal of the racialized welfare issue spending shifted from cash aid to work supports, the would yield a similar outcome (Path F). With race re- predictions of progressive revisionists morphed into moved from poverty politics, both the poor and the claims of actual effects—sometimes cited to justify fur- Democratic Party would benefit (Path G). ther “New Democratic” strategies. “The results so far have borne out the central New Democrat insight that It is not possible to adequately test these predictions by inspired Clinton’s promise to end welfare: The way to comparing mass opinion in the final years of AFDC with 18 opinion after 1996. The heated campaign to reform wel- The ANES series also allows us to determine the propor- fare (1992 to 1996) had sharp but short-lived effects on tion of respondents each year who volunteered “welfare” mass opinion and, hence, would provide a misleading when asked, “Is there anything in particular that you [like/ baseline for comparing post-reform opinion8 To obtain a dislike] about the [Democratic/Republican] party?” From more valid assessment, one must compare opinion at its 1976 to 1986, “welfare” was named a basis of party “steady state” under AFDC, prior to 1992, with opinion at evaluation by between 7.3 and 17.7 percent of respon- its steady state under TANF, after 1997. To do so, we dents. The proportion naming welfare spiked as the wel- treated the public opinion record as a simple interrupted fare debate heated up in the early 1990s.

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