Former Republican Representative (GA-6) and Speaker of the House
Ten Lessons from Successfully Transforming Welfare
There are ten big lessons I have drawn from the successful efforts to design and implement welfare reform. I suggest that we apply these lessons to developing solutions that will elevate the condition of our fellow citizens.
Successful reform
always starts with a big idea
Decide whether to repair or replace
Great change never starts with government
Cheerful persistence is necessary to successfully deliver large-scale reform in a free society
Collaboration is critical (including
involvement of key governors)
Real change always requires winning the argument
Words matter; communication good policy
Real change must be consistent with broad American values
Opponents of reform must be forced to carry the burden of their positions
Boys Town-style orphanages better than kids on welfare
Newt Gingrich, the soon-to-be Republican Speaker of the House, was eager to flex his muscle. Minor controversy erupted over remarks he made about welfare reform and orphanages. Some Republicans had suggested that the nation could reduce welfare rolls by
placing the children of welfare mothers in orphanages. The idea was to prohibit states from paying welfare benefits for two groups of children: Those whose paternity was not established and those born out of wedlock to women under 18.
The savings, according to this proposal, would be used to establish and operate orphanages and group homes for unwed mothers.
I thought this was a horrible idea. In a speech before the New York Women's Agenda on Nov. 30, 1994, I criticized
Gingrich.
Gingrich swung back: "I'd ask her to go to Blockbuster and rent the Mickey Rooney movie about Boys Town [an orphanage]. I don't understand liberals who live in enclaves of safety who say, 'Oh, this would be a terrible thing.'"
Reach majority by better ideas, not by handing out goodies
I dreamed of helping to elect a Republican majority in the House when there had not been one in 24-years, and at the time of which I speak, would not be one for another 16 years.
I wanted that GOP majority to be a certain kind of majority, one based on
ideas. I also wanted it to represent a party that would be open and beckoning to a majority of our fellow Americans not because we were handing out goodies to people but because we had better proposals for them and their families’ futures. In short,
I wanted to do nothing less than replace the welfare society with a society full of opportunity. I dreamed of a society that would begin to move the powers of a smothering, overcentralized federal government
back to the states and local governments back into the hands of volunteers much closer to the people and better aware of their real needs and wants.
One of the encouraging developments of the last few years has been that a lot of truly caring, intelligent people have spent a lot of time thinking about the tragedy of modern welfare systems. As a result, we now have a fairly good idea of what works
and what doesn’t. The eight steps we need for improving opportunities for the poor are:
Shifting from caretaking to caring: Caretaking’s most important concern is to make the provider feel good, while caring’s first concern is the outcome for
the person being helped.
Volunteerism and spiritual renewal: more volunteers could get to know individuals and their families, [and ] emphasize spiritual salvation.
Reasserting the values of American civilization
Emphasizing family and work.
Creating tax incentives for work, investment, and entrepreneurship.
Welfare state has distorted beyond its original intent
Newt Gingrich's campaign speech, in 1993 and 1994, included: "It is impossible to maintain civilization with 12-year-olds having babies, 15-year-olds killing each other, 17-year-olds dying of AIDS, and 18-year-olds getting diplomas they can't even read.
Yet that is precisely where three generations of Washington-dominated, centralized-government, welfare-state policies have carried us."
With those two sentences, refined from years of study and practice, Newt
Gingrich found the message that convinced the nation to elect a Republican majority to Congress. That majority chose him Speaker of the House.
Those two sentences--one undeniable, the other contentious--are the essential Gingrich. They are the end
result of a career-long search by Gingrich for a message simple and powerful enough to convince Americans that the welfare state had been distorted beyond its original intent. A mammoth, overreaching federal government now is causing more harm than good.
Error at core of welfare state is its dehumanization
The welfare system has failed because its core understanding of humans is wrong. Not because it doesn't have enough money. Not because the people who run it don't know what they're doing. Not because of some minor thing. At the heart of the welfare state
is an error.
Look at what the welfare state does. The welfare state reduces citizens to clients, subordinates them to bureaucrats, and subjects them to rules that are anti-work, anti-family, anti-opportunity, and anti-property. Now, if you doubt this,
one project might well be to apply for the system. Just spend two days being a person who's applying to get into the system.
The evening news is the natural result of the welfare state. That literally, when you watch the killings, you watch the
brutality, you watch the child abuse, my question back would be: What did you think would happen when you put people in these kind of settings and you deprive them of their God-given rights and you then say to them, 'Now you are less than a full person.'
In Gingrich's 1984 book Window of Opportunity, welfare programs received a scant three pages. Gingrich proposed that recipients receive cash and credit card vouchers directly in order to allow more choices and, not coincidentally, chip away
at the bureaucracy. It was a precursor of the plank in the Contract With America to turn programs into block grants for the states.
In 1984, Gingrich said. "No one must fall beneath a certain level of poverty, even if we must give away food and money
to keep that from happening." He urged the creation of day care centers for welfare mothers who would be forced to leave home to work or study. But in another preview of the Contract With America,
Gingrich suggested that minor girls should be ineligible for Aid to Families With Dependent Children if they became pregnant. Aid would go first to their parents or guardians.
The Speaker's fascination with space and technology is related to his concerns over a permanent welfare state. For Newt, the welfare state drains budgets and stifles innovation. Those who question whether Newt Gingrich has been consistent in his approach
to welfare issues should take note of his words in 1984 on what stymies space exploration and government seed money for biotechnology and futurist research:
In "Window of Opportunity," Gingrich wrote: "The amazing fact was that America literally stood
in the Moon and watched in its living rooms as the dream of freedom reached out beyond our planet in 1969. And yet we turned back and wallowed in the problems of the welfare state for a decade. Food stamps crowded out space shuttles; energy assistance
crowded out a solar-power-satellite project that would have provided energy for all; more bureaucracy in Health and Human Services shoved aside a permanently manned space station."
We must replace the welfare state with an opportunity society. This issue has the moral urgency of coming to grips with what's happening to the poorest Americans. How can any American read about an 11-year-old buried with his teddy bear because he killed
a 14-year-old, and not have some sense of, my God, where has this country gone? How can we not decide that this is a moral crisis equal to slavery?
I believe when we are told that children are so lost in the city bureaucracies that there are children
in Dumpsters, when we are told that there are children doomed to go to schools where 70% or 80% of them will not graduate. When we're told of public housing projects that are so dangerous that if any private sector ran them, they would be put in jail,
and we're given, "Well, we'll study it. We'll get around to it." My only point is: We can find ways immediately to do things better and to reach out and to break through the bureaucracy and to give every young American child a better chance.
[As part of the Contract with America, within 100 days we pledge to bring to the House Floor the following bill]:
The Personal Responsibility Act: Discourage illegitimacy and teen pregnancy by prohibiting welfare to minor mothers and denying increased AFDC for additional children while on welfare, cut spending for welfare programs, and enact a tough two-years-and-out provision with work requirements to promote individual responsibility.
Source: Contract with America 93-CWA5 on Sep 27, 1994
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