Editorials/Pat on the Back/A Dressing Down
Jr, R. Emmett Tyrrell
Pat on the Back by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. W hat is it that makes Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan superior to so many of his colleagues on Capitol Hill? Yes, the abysmal decline of intellect up...
...Oh, yes, he also has imagination...
...Recognizing the differences 12 The American Spectator July 1995 between regions he would allow states to set their own eligibility based on income and assets...
...Depending on your view of welfare, that might sound like a modest sum of money or a catastrophic waste...
...Alternatives after welfare must be faced...
...Even the incentive to calculate one's best interest is weakened by a handout...
...No one is going to leave America'sdependent helpless in the street...
...He opposes their notion of setting time limits on welfare, knowing as he does that with time limits at some point government would have to "dump the children on the streets...
...Moynihan, social scientist that he is, confronts the data and faces up to the problems...
...Governor Tommy Thompson, assisted by social scientists from the Hudson Institute, will have until then to experiment with how programs can assist the casualties of the old system...
...The wretched condition of the welfare state's clients is, in Moynihan's opinion, going to be made more wretched by both Republican and Democratic proposals...
...Einstein esteemed that quality even over knowledge...
...Whether Moynihan has a solution is another matter...
...Better it would be to be poor in the Depression than in America in the prosperous 1990s...
...The cost to the federal government is $12.5 billion...
...The catastrophe, however, is to the dependent...
...Moynihan would be first-rate in other eras, too...
...This is the direction Moynihan is moving, and he again deserves applause for eschewing cheap gestures...
...When he advocated the Family Assistance Plan during the Nixon administration he made a more intellectually disciplined case for that government program than any national politician is making for or against welfare reform today...
...He favors flexibility at the state level...
...Whether any of his colleagues will join him is an open question...
...For them welfare and all the social policies that have accompanied welfare have been disastrous...
...Clinton's mantra, "end welfare as we know it," is meaningless...
...Family life has become almost impossible to maintain...
...Moynihan has faced these problems during thirty years of poring over the data and considering alternative welfare policies...
...Moynihan has engaged the issues of poverty and welfare for thirty years...
...Social pathologies are a constant part of daily life for poor people...
...Where there were once churches, families, and a cop on the corner there is now crime, drugs, gangs, and all the gruesome counselors, therapists, and other incompetents who feast off the welfare state while bringing very little relief to the poor...
...What is refreshing is that Moynihan is facing up to a matter that neither Democrats nor Republicans are facing up to, namely what do we do with the very poor after welfare...
...I think what sets him apart is that he has an orderly mind, an intelligent mind, eloquence, and an aversion to anything that is cheap...
...Then he concluded that he had been mistaken and wrote a famous letter to William F. Buckley, one of the program's opponents, admitting he was wrong...
...His interest is a natural extension of his intellectual roots back there in the New Deal...
...Moynihan is about to argue that both Republican opponents of welfare and Democratic champions of it are wrong...
...He is one of the few people in public life blessed with the gift to dramatize an issue who can also admit to having been wrong...
...Welfare and much of the progressive social engineering that have accompanied it have destroyed community among the poor...
...Right now in Wisconsin a bipartisan legislative alliance has abolished welfare, but the abolition will not be effective until December 31, 1998...
...Consequently Moynihan is coming forward with recommendations for welfare reform that will raise the level of debate above demagoguery and meanness to the domain of the civilized...
...Fourteen million people now receive help under the main welfare program...
...But let us not be killjoys...
...To be poor in America today is more horrible than at any time in this century, particularly if one lives in the inner city...
...Not much in Moynihan's plan is new, not even his seriousness about the problem...
...Yes, the abysmal decline of intellect up there accounts in part for his comparative superiority...
...Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...Many of his fellow Democrats may claim the same intellectual heritage—falsely!—but when they address poverty and welfare they slap on the grease paint and descend into soap opera...
...In sum and in fine, welfare creates dependency and destroys incentives...
...He stresses job training, job placement, keeping young unwed mothers in their parents' home, and child care...
Vol. 28 • July 1995 • No. 7
