'Practical politics'
Amidei, Nancy
high employment? What jobs will unskilled, semi-skilled, or newly skilled laborers find given the high unemployment rate? Will these workfare participants be in direct competition for jobs with...
...The "exempted" list includes Social Security benefits (but not the costs of running the system), cash welfare, food stamps, veterans' pensions, railroad retirement, and Medicaid, but not Medicare, housing subsidies, programs which help low-income people get or keep a job, or any of the grant programs which currently make it possible for cities and counties to meet the needs of lowincome people not covered by programs on the exempted list...
...Yet the fact is -- and it is cause for celebration -- that Martin Luther King, Jr...
...Significantly, nothing in Gramm-Rudman-Hollings would prevent the Congress from cutting any (or all) of the" exempt" programs at other points during the budget process...
...They are only protected at the point when automatic cuts are needed...
...Because the president remains adamant about increased spending for the Pentagon, and equally adamant in his opposition to any tax increases, the budget he sends to Congress on February 3 is bound to make G-R-H look good (by comparison) in its treatment of poor people's programs...
...G-R-H is just the latest evidence of how sadly that leadership is lacking...
...the president first opposed the bill, then signed it...
...On his day, we comprehend that it remains to us to fulfill that a vision...
...King's life was one of repeated civil disobedience...
...None of these questions provides sufficient reason not to try workfare...
...and why participants must receive the tools and the wages to live adequately and get ahead...
...Many believe that all the interests of all poor people have been taken care of all through the process, (G-R-H has been explained in TV news reports with simple charts showing just that...
...Conservatives eager to see an end to the federal role in social policy and/or a balanced budget on almost any terms, found themselves allied with liberals who see G-R-H forcing tax increases and/or military spending decreases...
...If I were poor, old, and relied on government benefits to keep a roof over my head or food on the table, I'd be scared...
...I I II Mood in Washington I I I 'PRACTICAL POLITICS' TO LEGISLATE, EVEN IF BADLY Anyone who wants to lobby Congress these days gets one consistent piece of advice: "Be practical...
...To be taken seriously, the line continues, means accepting the realities of budget constraints...
...It is evidence of a growth in our appreciation of the dignity of every human being and the primacy of conscience in evaluating and enhancing the very rule of law...
...By that one measure, G-R-H may be said to be a victory for poor people...
...They head straight for the good old USA...
...Some of our national holidays, it is true, honor not just individuals but vast segments of our society...
...In his lifetime, Martin Luther King, Jr...
...As components of the American vision, they beckon to be fulfilled...
...If workfare is to be fair, its limitations and risks should be fully acknowledged...
...The magic of our free enterprise system (a system lately revivified by Ronald Reagan) produces imaginative people with a willingness to take risks and who are able to accommodate them...
...clearly set that challenge before us...
...In politics -- practical and otherwise -- the politically powerless have never fared as well as the po!itically powerful without committed national leadership on their behalf...
...Day shatters forever our public holiday color line...
...First, it sets before our consciousness the rule of that quiet, enduring law which is more substantive than even national statutes...
...Anything else runs the risk of being thought soft-headed, a.k.a, not in touch with practical politics...
...At 17 January 1986:5the same time, congressional supporters of domestic programs found themselves joined in opposition to the bill with the biggest of the Pentagon big spenders...
...King's real and not-ineffectual power...
...it seeks genuine inclusion and accommodation...
...But year-end congressional action on the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act (G-R-H), which mandates massive annual budget cuts to eliminate the deficit, makes it ripe for reassessment when poor people's interests are at stake...
...Yet Martin Luther King, a man of flesh and blood, stands a just man, one stirred to greatness by repeated efforts to rectify his failures, personal and social...
...Some might wonder why the Soviets would pay good money for military secrets when President Reagan has promised to make a gift to them of the biggest secret of all: the science and technology that will make Star Wars, or SDI, possiCommonweal: 6...
...and its rationale is the dignity of each and the common good of all...
...When Russia, China, Israel, and even Jane's Fighting Ships want to get the best military secrets money can buy, you don't see them running off to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore...
...4. Is workfare really the answer to the problem of poverty -or, more specifically, of the underclass...
...By roughly two-to-one majorities in both the House (271154) and the Senate (61-31), Congress voted to alter the balance of power between the branches of government, and shift responsibility for budget decisions to an automatic mechanism administered by budget analysts (who are not accountable to the voters), rather than by themselves or the president (who are...
...Wire taps and electronic snooping might preclude even the canonized from such honors...
...and it was described by one of its principal sponsors (Senator Warren Rudman, R-N.H...
...The facts are that many of the poor already work, that many others (such as the elderly) are out of the job market, and that the group most associated with the underelass -- young, "unemployable" males -- are least likely to gain in any way from workfare...
...He demonstrated a startling obedience to conscience, a value deep in the American grain...
...But they indicate why programs should be flexible and closely monitored...
...Ultimately, most chose to oppose G-R-H, reasoning that this bad legislation was particularly bad in its potential impact for poor people, and the claims of practical politics won't change that...
...King Day presents us with an opportunity for considerable reflection...
...Nonetheless, Congress voted for this "bad law" on the grounds that "practical politics" demanded it...
...The necessity for such tact is indicative of the enduring strains of racial fear and separation that run, so deep and massively, in the American psyche and story...
...as "bad legislation...
...No, sir...
...Instead of viewing the spies as traitors who would sell their country for thirty pieces of silver, why not regard them as entrepreneurs (ah, my heart leaps up at that word...
...That advice is given freely...
...Lest the holiday be a cause for backlash or narrowed to a particular interest and/or group, committees preparing for its initial celebration have demonstrated both caution and delicacy...
...Else the old soldier should be finally laid to rest...
...Along the way, Congress agreed that a short list of domestic programs would be "exempt" from the automatic budget cuts required by G-R-H whenever Congress and the president fail to meet yearly deficit targets...
...For them, the matter turned on the issue of the "exempt" list...
...Martin Luther King Day is not a saint's day...
...II II II FREE-MARKET ESPIONAGE THE AMERICAN WAY OF SPYING H AVINGjUSt passed through the season to be jolly and all that, I've decided to look on the bright side of the recent spate of espionage scandals...
...they could be cut early in the process to forestall triggering the automatic cuts...
...We may not be doing so well in shoes, textiles, cars, and TV sets, but America leads the word by miles when it comes to the production of first! class military secrets...
...By almost any other measure, "victory" would not be the noun of choice...
...its aim is to pursue truth by exhorting to self-sacrifice...
...Hindsight is always clearer of course, but choices of the sort made by supporters of G-R-H, while practical in an immediate sense, are positive for poor people only in the most short-run and narrowest of terms...
...The Ninety-ninth Congress has less time for idealism or evidence of need...
...The problem is one of appearance as much as reality: having some programs which help some poor people exempted during some part of the process is widely misunderstood...
...The legislative process that led to this commemoration was delayed, sidetracked, and finally signed reluctantly...
...Among those who trashed it were some who simultaneously took the dubious position that doing something bad is better than doing nothing...
...G-R-H created strange bed-fellows among both supporters and detractors...
...January 20, as July 4, honors a remarkable extension of human conscience and freedom...
...why the emphasis must be on opportunity and not punitiveness...
...why decent child care is a key to the whole process...
...These notions are always timely and unrealized...
...In some way, that shouldn't come as a surprise...
...its constitutionality is being challenged in court...
...Now we do...
...Without the exempt list, this "bad law" might have been defeated -- or at least more easily undone at the point of implementation...
...Like members of Congress, the various groups that lobby on issues important to poor people also had to consider "practical politics," and decide whether or not to support G-R-H...
...I I II A KING FOR THE DAY For the first time this January 20 Americans observe a national holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr...
...And if, as some in Congress have claimed, exempting programs like Social Security benefits and veterans' pensions left these representatives without any politically viable argument for voting no, that raises other questions about the value of practical politics...
...In brief, it's no panacea...
...Soon after, on December 20, Congress adjourned after killing House-passed provisions to impose modest controls on costly military contracting abuses, and failing to act on the far less draconian, three-year, $74 billion deficit reduction package that had absorbed most of their time since last January -- proving once again a preference for tough rhetoric over tough choices...
...Yet never before have we paused to reflect, on a recurring annual basis, on one of America's non-white heroes...
...who not only want.to make a buck for themselves but want to make it in an international market, thereby helping to correct America's balance of payments problem...
...The new law has been roundly denounced by political analysts of all stripes...
...I I Of several minds: David R. Carlin, Jr...
...NANCY AMIDEI (Nancy Amidei, whose frequent articles in Commonweal included ""The Caretakers" in the last issue, is a commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered...
...Or will workfare participants only find part-time, dead-end employment for low wages and few job benefits...
...Second, we have set before us (paradoxically, in an era that emulates the Rough ,Riders), an ideal of nonviolence, the source and instrument of Dr...
...Will these workfare participants be in direct competition for jobs with displaced workers receiving unemployment compensation...
...Nonviolence.extends democracy to its parameters: it values every human voice and silences none...
...There is a real danger of ending up with the worst of both the welfare and the working worlds -- mothers separated from children, anxious about undependable day care, and yet still not independent of public money, which may ultimately function as a subsidy for low-wage labor...
Vol. 113 • January 1986 • No. 1
