“GOP’s Poverty Scam”: Why Does It Suddenly “Care” About The Poor?
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio finally gave his much-anticipated speech on poverty, a hot trend among Republicans seeking the presidency. Rubio emerged from the dense thicket of conservative think tank writing on the subject with one actual proposal: wage subsidies. Which, you know, fine, let’s have wage subsidies! They seem like an OK idea. Sure, they might encourage employers to pay low-wage employees less money in order to receive more subsidies, but if the options are nothing versus wage subsidies, I am going with wage subsidies.
Will any other Republican, though? Unlike raising the minimum wage, any wage subsidy program will actually require the government to spend money, and Republicans are unified in their opposition to the government spending money on poor people. Rubio’s support may not do much to convince them to abandon this core principle; he’s not the potential party savior he once looked to be.
Still, points for actually advocating for an actual policy that would actually help people! That’s more than Paul Ryan, Rand Paul or Eric Cantor have done so far in this rhetorical war on poverty. Thus far, their efforts have run up against the brick wall that is the modern conservative movement’s utter inability to craft policy that hasn’t been completely discredited by the last 30+ years of American political and economic history. So, Cantor has come up with “school vouchers” and Paul has tried “economic freedom zones,” which seem to be like “enterprise zones” — already the most popular urban economic revitalization scheme extant, to mostly middling effect — only with even fewer worker protections or environmental regulations. Also a capital gains tax cut. Always a capital gains tax cut. America is just one more capital gains tax cut away from winning the war on poverty!
The recent spike in Republicans suddenly claiming they care about poor people is, honestly, a bit strange. Their voters, for the most part, do not care, and do not care if their politicians say they care. For those wishing to win elections as Republicans in recent years, it has tended to be more effective to loudly denounce the poor, or at least to denounce those who support making the poor less poor. After all, the poor are only poor because they want to be, or are morally deficient, or because of Democrats who keep them poor to maintain a large voting bloc of poor people.
When Republicans called Barack Obama the “food stamp president,” they claimed that they meant that it was a shame that Obama’s policies had devastated the economy so much that so many people now relied on food stamps. Their actual meaning (well, their actual meaning besides just wanting to blow a racist dog whistle) was that liberal policies had fostered a culture of dependency — that is, that living on the dole was so swell that unemployment was a better option than working for a living. This, again, is the blame-the-poor argument that the right has made forever and that the Republican Party has enthusiastically adopted since Reagan.
And it’s not a terribly ineffective political argument! Americans hate the poor, and deeply resent the idea of any of their money going to help them. That’s why Clinton killed welfare, and why food stamps are now at risk. There’s little political upside in promising to help the poor, and for years Democrats have only ever promised to help “all Americans” and “the middle class.”
But Republicans have decided that part of what hurt Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign was that time he called nearly half the nation moochers. This was, they are well aware, merely a slightly artless restatement of a core conservative belief, but it turns out that in a nation in the midst of an ongoing, seemingly never-ending employment crisis, this is maybe not a popular position among voters not already deeply committed to the conservative project. So saying “I care about poverty” is one way to help shake the correct impression voters have that Republicans are devoted solely to the further enrichment of the already wealthy.
Poverty is also a subject about which it’s incredibly easy to bamboozle most of the mainstream political press. You can get swell coverage merely for saying you care about the poor, as Paul Ryan recently has. Because political reporters are unable and unwilling to analyze policy, and curiously reluctant to speak to anyone who can, you can also claim any program at all will lessen poverty or help the unemployed. And for Ryan, “caring about the poor” is a good way to reestablish Seriousness: He becomes one of the Few Serious Republicans with plans to help the poor. Poverty is a better subject for this act than most other liberal issues — like, say, the environment — because Republicans are at least allowed to acknowledge that it is bad that some people are poor.
If Ryan talks about the poor to burnish his wonk cred (and remove the stink of his association with Mitt Romney), Paul’s new shtick is clearly “compassionate libertarianism” (not to be confused with bleeding-heart libertarianism). Like compassionate conservatism, it is the same as the non-compassionate version, except its proponent publicly expresses compassion for people who will not benefit from it.
The only risk these Republicans have to avoid is supporting any policy at all that will help poor people, because those policies will then be supported by Democrats. If Rubio’s idea shows any sign of being able to pass in Congress, Democrats will support it, and then it will become a Democratic policy, and Republicans will be forced to hate it forever. Just about the only prominent Republican elected official who has actually done anything that will actually benefit actual poor people, as Alec MacGillis notes, is Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who accepted the ACA’s Medicaid expansion. That is, he helped Ohio’s impoverished by enacting a Democratic policy. (He may have done so in part because Ohio is just about 50.1 percent Democratic, according to the 2012 presidential election results, and Kasich is up for reelection this year.)
It’s the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty, and it’s nice to see various liberals defending it. For years after its dismantling, no one (well, no one taken seriously in the political elite) was allowed to say that big government programs were an effective means of eliminating poverty. Now, finally, old-fashioned economic progressivism has begun to become a position people are allowed to advocate for in public. (Though everyone is still encouraged to couch all such advocacy in conservative, “pro-market” tones, because that is what our deeply conservative elite is most comfortable with.) There’s very little reason to be optimistic that Republicans “discovering” poverty will lead to any serious national effort to eradicate poverty, but maybe (maybe!) it will make conventional liberals less terrified of actually embracing the eradication of poverty as a goal.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, January 9, 2014
“Sorry, GOP Reformers”: Your Own Party Isn’t Interested
Republican reformers are getting excited. For years, Ross Douthat and David Frum have been stubbornly making the case for a more moderate and economically populist GOP that would speak to and offer solutions for the problems facing struggling Americans. They are no longer voices crying out in the wilderness.
David Brooks has joined them in a column touting several reform-minded articles in the latest issue of National Affairs, a center-right policy journal. This comes in the wake of a recent speech by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and some not-so-recent speeches by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) on how the GOP might begin to combat poverty.
Taken together, these columns, articles, and speeches show that the movement for Republican reform has begun to persuade…at least a dozen people.
That’s no doubt an exaggeration on the low end, but it goes a long way toward explaining why I’m skeptical about reform efforts. By all means, such efforts are to be applauded and encouraged. But until Republican voters begin to express their support for them in opinion polls and at the ballot box, reform proposals will remain the impotent pet projects of pundits and politicians.
The fact is that there’s no sign so far that those voters want anything to do with new government initiatives to help the poor — or to do anything else for that matter. “Government is too big!” “Taxes are too high!” “Washington is the problem, not the solution!” Those are the only messages the Republican base wants to hear — and thus the only messages most Republicans dare deliver on the campaign trail or act on in the halls of Congress.
There’s a reason why the first tentative expressions of support for reform have come from senators, who are elected by entire states every six years. That distance from those partisan passions, which have produced a deep right-wing skew in gerrymandered House districts, gives senators more ideological freedom of movement.
Still, Republican senators must deal with irascible primary voters. And in the House there is no such freedom, which is why that chamber’s Republican majority refuses to budge on extending unemployment benefits or reversing cuts to food stamps. It is also why Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) efforts to revive immigration reform is likely to fail as well. Republican voters want none of it, and that’s exactly what they’ll get.
Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) is the proverbial exception that proves the rule. He, too, has been trying to rebrand himself as a reformer — talking about the problem of poverty, and reaching a bipartisan deal to pass the bill that temporarily ended gridlock over the budget. All of it is an effort to make himself palatable as a general election presidential candidate. (Nothing inspires donors like “electability.”) But his position is only possible because he established himself as a leading conservative warrior on economic issues, which got the Romney ticket in so much trouble in 2012; indeed, it remains to be seen whether Ryan’s commitment to centrist reform is anything more than PR gloss.
That points to the depth of the GOP’s problem. Its base uncompromisingly demands that party members toe a line that places them far to the right of the median American voter. As long as that continues, Republicans will find themselves out of serious contention for the White House — and unable to follow through on any serious proposals for reform.
By: Damon Linker, The Week, January 10, 2014
“Delusional Pro-Poverty Agenda”: This Is Why The GOP Should Be Afraid Of The Minimum Wage In 2014
Illinois businessman Bruce Rauner, a top candidate for the Republican nomination for governor, demonstrated this week why Democrats are eager to use the minimum wage as a political cudgel in the 2014 midterm elections.
On Tuesday, Rauner suggested reducing the state’s $8.25-per-hour minimum wage to the national level, a $1-per-hour reduction.
“I will advocate moving the Illinois minimum wage back to the national minimum wage. I think we’ve got to be competitive here in Illinois,” Rauner told Illinois Radio WGBZ.
Rauner’s stance sharply contrasts that of Governor Pat Quinn (D), who has said that he wants to raise the minimum wage to $10 per hour. But it’s not particularly controversial in the context of the Republican primary. After all, each of his rivals for the nomination — Kirk Dillard, Dan Rutherford and Bill Brady — oppose raising the wage. Still, throughout the rest of the state, the idea of cutting the already insufficient minimum wage sparked instant outrage.
As The Chicago Sun-Times reports, the backlash to Rauner’s plan was swift and severe.
“In my 26 years in the Legislature, I’ve seen many candidates roll out anti-poverty plans, but Bruce Rauner is the only candidate to roll out a pro-poverty plan,” Democratic state representative Lou Lang said.
“He’s delusional if he thinks that the General Assembly would bow to his class warfare on low-income workers. He needs to have his delusion shaken up,” Lang added. “He needs to come to grips with the fact that the era of robber barons is over, and impoverishing workers is no longer an economic growth strategy.”
Quinn spokeswoman Brooke Anderson similarly blasted Rauner, insisting that “instead of alleviating poverty, this cruel and backwards proposal would take thousands of dollars from working people who are doing some of the hardest, most difficult jobs in our society.”
And Chicago labor leader Karen Lewis took even more direct aim at Rauner, who made a fortune in private equity, charging, “It is ironic that billionaire Rauner, who reported $53 million in earnings last year, or $7.36 per second, is calling for a reduction in the state’s minimum wage.
“While he sits back and ponders where to take his next exotic vacation or which mansion to lay his head, others are trying to survive in a climate of foreclosures, rising medical costs, and the shuttering of neighborhood schools,” she added. “Instead of pledging a war on poverty he is vowing to advance a war on poor and working-class people.”
The heated response to Rauner’s proposal was stunningly successful; within days, he was apparently scared away from it.
“I made a mistake. I was flippant and I was quick,” Rauner told the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday. “I should have said, ‘Tie the Illinois minimum wage to the national wage and, in that context, with other changes in being pro-business, I support raising the national minimum wage.’ I’m OK with that.”
Rauner expanded on his new position — that after cutting the minimum wage, we should raise it — in a Tribune op-ed on Thursday, writing, “Raising the national minimum wage would raise the level in Illinois and in our neighboring states, eliminating our competitive disadvantage. I support that.”
It’s not hard to understand how Rauner went from advocating a minimum-wage cut to advocating a raise in just a few days. Polls have consistently found that Illinois voters overwhelmingly favor raising the minimum wage to $10 per hour (a recent survey from left-leaning Public Policy Polling pegged support at 58 percent). It is a very difficult political environment to be running against a measure that could lift millions out of poverty.
Increasing the minimum wage isn’t just popular in Illinois; it has broad national appeal as well. So it’s not surprising that Democrats are planning to use the issue as a centerpiece of their 2014 campaigns. And if other Republicans mirror Rauner’s apparent fear of being attacked on the issue, their strategy could prove very successful.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, January 9, 2014
“The GOP’s Poverty Problem”: Views Of Republicans Toward Poor People Run From Active Hostility At Worst, To Indifference At Best
Poverty is all the rage among conservatives this week, and will be for, oh, another few days at least. My guess is that this is happening largely because Democrats have made clear that income inequality is the issue they’ll be pressing from now until the November midterm elections, and Republicans are concerned that it might work. So they’re going to head it off by showing voters that they care about people who are struggling, too. The question is, how do you do that when you’re fighting against extending unemployment benefits, trying to cut food stamps, preventing poor people from getting health insurance through Medicaid, and arguing against increasing the minimum wage?
The answer, it seems, is to make public statements in which the word “poverty” appears. Marco Rubio and Eric Cantor gave speeches on it, Paul Ryan will be doing interviews on it, and you’ll probably be hearing more from Republicans on the topic. Mixed in will be some advocacy for policies they’ve pushed for a long time like school vouchers, and the occasional grand if counterproductive idea, like turning over all federal antipoverty programs to the states.
In seeing this, I couldn’t help but think about one of my favorite tidbits from the 2004 presidential campaign, the Bush website’s “Compassion Photo Album,” which consisted entirely of photos of George and/or Laura Bush hanging out with black and Hispanic people. Put aside how condescending it was to present the very fact of talking to a black person as an exercise in “compassion,” as though they were so pathetic that it took a mighty act of generosity for Bush to deign to place himself amongst them. The point is that things like that, and “compassionate conservatism” in general, were never about winning the votes of minorities. It was about showing moderate white voters that Bush was, in the phrase that was so often applied to him by the press when he first ran in 2000, “a different kind of Republican.” When he weighed in on a 1999 Republican budget proposal by saying, “I don’t think they ought to balance their budget on the backs of the poor,” he wasn’t speaking to poor people, he was showing middle class people that he had a heart.
Republicans are doing the same thing now. The fact is that views in the GOP toward poor people run from active hostility at worst to indifference at best. I’m not saying your average Republican wouldn’t be pleased if cutting the capital gains tax did trickle down to the little guy, but even if it doesn’t, they’re still eager to do it because their hearts are with the wealthy. Conservatives see wealth as an expression of virtue; if you have it, it’s because you work hard and deserve it, and if you don’t, that reflects a defect in your character. That’s why so many of their proposals to address poverty are either of the “tough love” variety—have the government stop helping you as a means of encouraging you to get a firm grip on those bootstraps—or things like “enterprise zones” that involve giving tax breaks and exemptions from environmental regulations to wealthy investors and corporations, in the belief that the largesse will trickle down.
The political problem Republicans are trying to address is that, deny it though they might and protest it with cries of “Class warfare!”, economic populism has always been effective for Democrats. That’s partly because it speaks to people’s genuine sentiments about their own struggles and how society should work, and partly because Republicans are the party of the rich. They’d prefer not to be seen that way, of course. But they just are. So when Democrats say “They’re the party of the rich!”, they don’t have to do a lot of persuading, since it’s what voters already believe. A few speeches about poverty aren’t going to change that.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, January 9, 2014
“Returning To The Days Of Recalcitrance”: Rubio Demands States’ Right To Ignore The Poor
For a senator who likes to hold himself out as the future of the Republican brand, Marco Rubio has come up with a remarkably retrograde contribution to the party’s chorus of phony empathy for the poor: Let the states do it.
All anti-poverty funds should be combined into one “flex fund,” he said in a speech on Wednesday, and then given to the states to spend as they see fit. He actually believes that states will “design and fund creative initiatives” to address inequality.
“Washington continues to rule over the world of anti-poverty policy-making, with beltway bureaucrats picking and choosing rigid nationwide programs and forcing America’s elected state legislatures to watch from the sidelines,” he said. “As someone who served nine years in the state house, two of them as Speaker, I know how frustrating this is.”
Do-nothing legislators in states like Mr. Rubio’s Florida feel frustrated precisely because most federal safety-net programs are designed to limit the ability of states to refuse to help their less fortunate residents. As Lyndon Johnson knew from personal experience in 1964, when he began the War on Poverty, states could not be trusted to properly address the poverty in their midst. Or, to put it another way, certain states could be trusted to yell and scream and fight to the end for their right to do as little as possible.
One of the great achievements of the War on Poverty programs was to extend the safety net to the South, where white legislators saw little reason to spend taxpayer dollars on the basic needs of poor citizens, most of whom were black. Southern lawmakers in Congress fought for the right of governors to veto grants made possible by the Economic Opportunity Act, one of the centerpieces of the War on Poverty, and Southern governors exercised those vetoes repeatedly. But Sargent Shriver, director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, overrode those vetoes, bypassing the governors and sending anti-poverty money directly to the local agencies and community groups that could do some good with it.
If you think those days of recalcitrance are over, take a look at the map of the states that have refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. The list of 25 includes every one of the states that seceded from the union, with the exception of Arkansas, which is doing only a partial expansion. (Virginia is likely to accept the expansion after its newly elected Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, takes office later this week.)
But long before “Obamacare” became a curse word among Republicans, most of those same states were already stingy with their spending on Medicaid, which lets states determine who is eligible for the program. The 16 states that restricted Medicaid to those making half or less of the federal poverty line included the usual cast of characters: Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. The most generous states — giving Medicaid benefits to those at the poverty line or higher — were clustered in the Northeast and the upper Midwest, along with California.
That’s undoubtedly fine with Mr. Rubio and other Republicans who see nothing wrong with a country that is a patchwork of generosity and indifference.
“It’s wrong for Washington to tell Tallahassee what programs are right for the people of Florida,” Mr. Rubio said. “But it’s particularly wrong for it to say that what’s right for Tallahassee is the same thing that’s right for Topeka and Sacramento and Detroit and Manhattan and every other town, city and state in the country.”
That battle, though, was fought and lost by Southerners 50 years ago, just as they lost a far bloodier states’ rights battle a century earlier. The country long ago came to the conclusion that economic rights, just like voting rights and criminal rights, had to be uniform. As much as it might frustrate Mr. Rubio, people should not be made to suffer just because they were born in an uncaring state.
By: David Firestone, Editors Blog, The New York Times, January 9, 2014
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