LESLIE LENKOWSKY
Leslie Lenkowsky Areader of Gus Tyler's "The Politics of Pat Moynihan" must surely have wondered why anyone would review-let alone write-a 600-page book about a flawed bill that died. If...
...In concluding that FAP was essentially a hoax, Tyler is really suggesting that its gains were not worth their price...
...Moynihan's 1967 address to the Americans for Democratic Action suggested as much...
...These estimates only conservatives seemed to hear...
...The National Welfare Rights Organization believed the emphasis should be on more money and improved administrative procedures for the existing system...
...It rarely occurred to them that FAP, far from being another instance of tinkering with an unsound system, was an attempt to replace welfare with a program more conducive to social stability...
...Fathers could work, and would neither be compelled to leave home nor become unemployed for their families to receive assistance: FAP would have reversed the incentive of the present system...
...In this he is certainly correct...
...But even basic agreement on the FAP approach did not preclude conflict over the extent to which its particular aims were realized...
...others in Congress sought to stiffen the so-called "workfare" provisions...
...Perhaps they simply lack the ability to recognize, as does Tyler, the opening wedge Nixon has created for them...
...Liberals like Senator Abraham Ribicoff fought effectively to increase the income guarantee...
...and that it came from men interested less in assisting the poor than in helping to extricate the Federal government from any commitments to do so...
...A fivefold increase has extended the distribution of food stamps to over 12 million recipients, many of whom receive no other form of income subsidy...
...What has happened, of course, is that Headstart remains, but several million families have lost an annual $3 billion...
...If the Family Assistance Plan was as defective as Tyler claims, and was, in any event, "soon forgot" by its sponsor after failing in Congress, why all the fuss...
...As a result, Federal income taxes are no longer collected from families with the smallest earnings...
...President Nixon reaffirmed his belief that FAP is "the best solution to . . . the welfare mess...
...True, neither Tyler nor those who share his views are responsible for this result...
...that it was neither an adequate proposal nor a sincere one...
...Opposition can arise, too, when those nominally committed to certain goals fail to see that they are embodied in a particular piece of legislation...
...And while their cornerstone program did not gain Congressional approval, related bills did...
...contrary to Tyler's fears, enacting FAP will hardly reduce government involvement in social policy...
...Not least, a $5 billion general revenue-sharing program has been enacted, permitting a state like New York to rescind cuts in welfare payments imposed the year before...
...At best, they are obliged to view FAP and similar proposals as temporary aberrations, attributable to the influence of liberal advisers in the President's inner circle...
...Surely it would be more appropriate for an allegedly "staunch advocate of redistributing income" to insist that Headstart is not a substitute for the welfare state...
...Liberals such as Phillip Burton (D.-Cal...
...To acknowledge this is less a prelude to withdrawal than a precondition of progress...
...Strong liberal support will be necessary not only to complete the unfinished business of the income strategy, but also to guide its implementation...
...Still, the experience of the program in Congress and the inability of either candidate in the last election to say anything generous about welfare suggest rough sledding ahead...
...The events recounted in The Politics of a Guaranteed Income, as well as Tyler's discussion of it...
...Tyler concludes that "FAP was far less a means of redistributing wealth than of reshuffling poverty" because it gave little income to the poor and did not tax the very rich...
...Conservatives in Congress and in journalism are clearly not overjoyed about these actions of their Administration, and if any hoax is being perpetrated, it is they who might reasonably claim to be the victims...
...If so, certain dangers become apparent...
...Whether this is a decisive objection depends ultimately on the value one places on the additional $3 billion the program would have divided among the nation's poorest families...
...in large areas of the country, particularly the South, a social transformation will occur almost overnight...
...A conservative could doubtless find encouragement for his fondest liberal stereotypes in an article that makes no distinctions between Headstart and other programs that might be termed "costly and questionable...
...What is open to question is his-conclusion that the shift amounts to a "booby-trap for the poor," "a bitter hoax," and a withdrawal of the national government from its rightful place in social planning...
...Public assistance programs for the aged, blind and disabled have been federalized, providing greater benefits...
...The truly revolutionary family assistance idea has been placed on the national agenda and will return...
...And family assistance, it now appears, really was-or quickly became-a conservative replacement for the welfare state, an attempt to curtail the involvement of the Federal government in social policy...
...Then he sardonically paraphrases, "In plain talk: Give them that $1,600 and knock out those useless services-like Headstart, etc...
...Yet, by establishing need as the basic criterion for assistance, FAP would have channeled money for the first time to the "working poor," many of whose budgets were more stringent than those of welfare recipients in the most generous states...
...For his part, the President vetoed a $2-billion day care bill with the reminder that his own, smaller program was included in the stalled FAP measure...
...Rather than as merely a footnote in history, Tyler suggests, FAP should be seen as the long-awaited counterattack upon the New Deal and its descendants-a counterattack, moreover, cloaked with a credo from a liberal intellectual...
...The answer is, of course, that for Tyler the spirit of FAP lives on though the body has expired...
...This was frequently the problem with FAP...
...on the day the New York Times announced that he had dropped it...
...Some may take umbrage at the suggestion that the interests of the least fortunate members of our society would be sacrificed to mere partisan purposes, but a working party-system is not necessarily a friend of consistency...
...But if that is the case, conservatives are not the only short-sighted legislators on Capitol Hill...
...Conservatives, similarly, missed the point...
...During the last four years, the policy of giving money to the poor has been practiced energetically...
...In this context, it should be noted that President Johnson's Commission on Income Maintenance, reporting in November 1969, urged virtually the same program President Nixon had transmitted to Congress a few weeks earlier...
...Tyler, for example, bemoans the low income guarantee, overlooking the fact that FAP's base was higher than welfare levels in many of the poorest states and was expected to be supplemcntcd in wealthier states...
...This is the question demanding attention...
...As HEW Secretary Robert Finch pointed out in his Senate testimony, the typical FAP family of 5.6 members would have had an average total income of about $4,700, slightly above the existing poverty line...
...Though government was limited in what it could accomplish, in certain areas of endeavor its power was unmatched...
...raise the possibility that the symbols of the American welfare state—categorical grants, centralized administration, service programs-have assumed an altogether unwarranted importance in the liberal pantheon...
...and the members of the Democratic Study Group, who have consistently backed Nixon's new programs, must be equally obtuse...
...Hopefully, liberals will not assume the posture so long adhered to by their opponents...
...The defeat of FAP in the 91st and 92nd Congresses should be attributed more to the conservatives of the Senate Finance Committee than to anyone else...
...Why, then, have some liberals like Tyler-individuals with much experience in "battles over legislation designed to improve the lot of the less than privileged"—concluded that FAP was precisely what they ought to have expected from a Republican Administration...
...Technically it was a Republican proposal, advocated by a President thoroughly distrusted by liberals...
...He quotes a memo from Moynihan advising the President that "costly and questionable" services could be eliminated...
...A number of governors felt that welfare was essentially a problem of federalism: If Washington would merely pick up more of the cost, Springfield and Sacramento would be perfectly capable of handling the situation...
...Tyler correctly observes that FAP would have narrowed only about half the disparity among state welfare payments and "would not have come anywhere near ending poverty...
...Still others argued for better job training and social services...
...Even now, four years of debate have not cleared away the confusion, especially for those already inclined to be suspicious...
...Thus, in discussing Moynihan's lengthy and often quite technical book, Tyler was actually warning that FAP's "allegedly revolutionary aspect" had survived and continues to shape the policies of the Nixon Administration...
...One reason for their antagonism to FAP was its origins...
...In addition, virtually all of the 10 million new beneficiaries-the working poor -would have had other income from employment, while those entirely dependent on FAP could have participated in Medicaid and received food stamps...
...More important, a sweeping endorsement of service programs leaves little leeway for a constructive response to a nascent conservative offensive...
...The expected 25 million FAP beneficiaries will be a forceful lobby for expanding the program...
...Some who did understand FAP opposed it because they disagreed with its approach...
...The President has repeatedly stated his intention to control Federal spending in a number of areas, including some of the traditional social service programs, and Tyler's perception that the White House is emphasizing an income strategy instead of the pattern of subsidies plus services identified with the welfare state is not to be denied...
...Sometimes the Administration has withheld active support from these efforts-as in the 20 per cent increase of Social Security benefits voted in 1972—yet more often the impetus has come from the same group who formulated FAP...
...The complexity of the Family Assistance Plan also fed the liberals' hostility...
...But somewhere liberals of Tyler's stripe appear to have suffered a terrible loss of perspective...
...Indeed, it was this provision, not that FAP was part of an income strategy, that made it a "quantum leap" in social policy...
Vol. 56 • May 1973 • No. 11
