Adrift

Crooked Timber's Henry sends out a clarion call that stopping the GOP's plan to dismantle Social Security isn't enough. On the contrary, victory on the Social Security front could very well lead to complaisancy and will be a stern lesson to the Right to return to their usual manner of killing off social welfare programs -- letting them drift into decay.

But there are still ways in which a program can be dismantled piecemeal. First is what Hacker (and the others writing in this edited volume) call “drift.” As society changes over time, programs are likely to become increasingly badly calibrated to the needs that inspired their creation. But updating these programs may be difficult, especially given that conservatives can use the many veto points to block change. Thus, one may expect to see social programs becoming increasingly unmoored from society’s needs over time – and hence less politically defensible – as attempts to reform them and make them more relevant are blocked. Second is “layering.” When faced with highly popular programs such as Social Security, conservatives have had difficulties in making head-on attacks, so that they have instead sought to create an alternative institutional framework that will attract defection and undermine these programs’ rationale over time.

Meanwhile, E.J. Dionne tells liberals to stop apologizing for those self-same programs. Why? Because they actually do what they're intended to do -- lift people out of crushing poverty.

The fact is that every year 27 million Americans are lifted from poverty by our system of public benefits. More than 80 million Americans receive health insurance through a government program -- Medicaid, Medicare or the State Children's Health Insurance Program, known as SCHIP. Without these programs, tens of millions would be unable to afford access to medical care. As the center notes, government programs reduce both the extent and the depth of poverty.

Does all this cost a fortune? Not by any fair reckoning. Federal spending on Medicaid and SCHIP represents 1.5 percent of gross domestic product. Federal financing for the rest of the low-income programs consumes just 2.3 percent of GDP. For a sense of comparison, consider that defense spending consumes 4 percent of GDP and interest on the national debt gobbles up 1.5 percent. President Bush's tax cuts -- which go in large part to the wealthiest Americans -- will consume roughly 2 percent of GDP.

And federal spending for the poor does a huge amount of good. Food stamps, the center notes, "help more than 25 million people with low incomes afford an adequate diet." The school lunch and breakfast programs provide free and reduced-price meals to 22 million schoolchildren from low-income families. The supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children known as WIC helps about 8 million pregnant and postpartum women and their children under 5. One of its effects has been to reduce the incidence of low birth weight among infants. Think of WIC as one of our most important pro-life programs.

Or take the earned-income tax credit, which supplements the incomes of the working poor. Census data show that in 2002 the EITC "lifted 4.9 million people out of poverty, including 2.7 million children." Without the EITC, the center notes, "the poverty rate among children would have been nearly one-third higher."

One of the more absurd ideas that float through the fever dreams of Conservatives, is that the Republican Party is the party of ideas, while Democrats have nothing new to add to the political or social discourse. As Dionne notes, that's kind of funny coming from a party that is eager to return us to the policies of Calvin Coolidge. And since our "old" ideas have been such raging successes, perhaps that's a reason to keep them in play. And keep them relevant. And funded.