Wildly Out of Control
Shapiro, Walter
Wildly Out of Control by Walter Shapiro There is a certain look and feel to the"books which beq the imprimatur of 'the Brooking's Institution, Washington's most prestigioFs research center.,...
...Within two months the Department had received 200,000 letters of protest...
...Originally, the legislation, like most federal matching ‘grants, had been designed to stimulate the states to provide new social ser: vices...
...Although character development is hampered by the rigidity of the genre, Uncontrollable Spending is sprinkled with little human vignettes...
...Such a detailed account of the ' inner-workings of a federa program is a rare accomplishment...
...The program in question had its genesis in 1962, during the optimistic days of the Kennedy Administration, when it was a cardinal principle of liberal faith that if you hired enough social workers to provide services to the poor, it would somehow reduce the size of the welfare rolls...
...New York’s success triggered a front-page article in The New York Times, implicitly extolling the virtues of what some had begun to call “back-door revenue-sharing...
...were now provided in a.way to maximize federal money...
...Put bluntly, HEW had obligated itself to reimburse the states for 75 per cent of the cost of virtually all social services to current, former, and potential welfare recipients...
...shrewd bureaucratic maneuvers: ‘:Activities that were already being performed...
...The boldness of the Illinois gambit wa~,impressive...
...They were never applied...
...Uncontrollable Spending is not a brief against federal grants for social services...
...Upkeep costs for the state’s prison system were passed on to HEW under the rationale that the jailing of the inmates was “responsible for family breakup which results in the family remaining outside needing to go on the AFDC [Aid for Dependent Children] rolls...
...But if we are going to reform government, we will need more analyses like Derthick's which...
...HEW efforts to belatedly police the administration of the program were entirely thwarted by the political clout of the social welfare establishment...
...Despite Chqles Colson's alleged interest in bombing the building, Brookings seems the least likely place in Washington to arouse a passionate response...
...By the end of 1972, Congress had enacted into law a $2.5-billion ceiling on the entire program, and each state’s share of the kitty was allocated on the basis of population, rather than on the number of reimbursement vouchers sent to Washington...
...We would never have tried anything so outlandish except for him...
...In late 1972 HEW published proposed new regulations tightening the operations of the social services program...
...Wildly Out of Control by Walter Shapiro There is a certain look and feel to the"books which beq the imprimatur of 'the Brooking's Institution, Washington's most prestigioFs research center., Their unadorned covers and their unwieldy titles presage a terribly detailed analysis of a narrow aspect of economics or public policy...
...That's why it is so surprising to discover that the best political book of 1975 was a Brookings study...
...New York promptly submitted a similar proposal...
...That’s why her conclusion, while unobjectionable, is not apt to become a rousing battle cry: “Strengthening the executive agencies of control may slightly reduce the chances that something like it will happen again, but the procedural and organizational constraints that can be introduced through budget and financial management offices...
...California was the first to recognize that the benefits were virtually unlimited: between 1967 and 1’972 California received 25 to 36 per cent of all federa...
...Once Congress had seemingly reformed the program, the whole issue disappeared from the news as rapidly as it had become a national concern...
...California skirted this requirement through...
...Congressional rumblings began to register on the Richter scale of the Washington press corps, and “this government blunder, hitherto obscure, suddenly became news...
...The situation came to a head in the fall of 1971 , when Illinois, faced with a politically unmanageable budget deficit, tried to pass on to HEW sdme of the costs of “state programs dealing with drug abuse, alcoholism, mental illness, mental retardation, and juvenile and adult corrections...
...tell us what government is actually doing...
...8 To make matters worse, Congress had neglected to place a ceiling on how much could be spent under this program...
...The nuances provided by the interviews enhance the entire manuscript...
...A coalition of 16 national welfare organizations joined forces to battle the new regulations...
...There were the middle-level HEW officials who were so delighted to have a functioning program of their own that they were out promoting the matching grants at a time when they should have been trying to put a damper on state claims for reimbursement...
...And that’s where the matter stands today...
...Unlike the authors of most Brookings studies, Derthick recognizes that the history of government programs depends as much on human beings as it does on policy parameters and bureaucratic organizational charts...
...funds spent on social services grants...
...Rather than finally bringing this $2.5-billion social pork-barrel program under tight administrative control, Title XX gave the states unprecedented latitude in spending their social services allotment...
...Such bureaucratic imagination was the contribution of William Copeland, who had added Illinois to his list of clients...
...Both points, however, are implicit in the material she has assembled to document her case of the lack of administrative control over a major HEW program...
...Then there were private consultants like William Copeland, who, for an appropriate fee, went like a Pied Piper from state to state explaining the iritricacies of federal reimbursement for social services...
...Such are the dangers of deceptive packaging...
...The outcome...
...Derthick’s primary interest is the administration of HEW, not the goals of HEW programs-a subject which would provide enough grist for a score of other authors...
...Nor is Derthick interested in illustrating the shoddiness of most HEW conceptual thinking about strategies to aid the poor...
...California officials . had recognized that when grantsmanship is played with enough sophistication, it is virtually impossible for officials in Washington to distinguish between a new program and an old program with new, brightly colored packaging...
...With its plain brown cover and off-putting title, Martha Derthick's Uncontrollable Spending for Social Services Grants appears to be the kind of Brookings report which will be little noticed by anyone but graduate students in public administration...
...In a year when reforming the federal bureaucracy is every politician’s favorite campaign promise, it is important to maintain a grudging appreciation for the magnitude of the task...
...Yet the story should be dissemhated aS widely as possible because it illustrates the difficulties that the next President-no matter who he is-will face in attempting to tame the HEW bureaucracy...
...she was willing to conduct interviews as well as sift documents...
...Thanks to a complicated legislative maneuver by Illinois Senatbr Charles Percy and the highpriced legal help provided by Covington and Burling, in early 1972 HEW approved the Illinois plan...
...can neither alter the fundamental forces of political life nor forestall human error...
...Her analysis of the failure of OMB is particularly striking: the President’s budget analysts were so taken with the concept of purchase-of-services, an integral part of the federal matching grants, that they were blinded to the flagrant abuses inherent in the program...
...Private charities, which had received only a small portion of the funds under purchase-ofservices agreements with state governments, were particularly energetic in their lobbying efforts...
...In 115 tightly written pages, Martha Derthick has managed to produce the most lucid analysis of the internal workings of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare since the publication of Daniel Moynihan's The Politics of a Guaranteed Income in 1972...
...Small wonder Congress postponed the effective date of the new HEW regulations until 1975...
...Derthick tells the story of an expensive HEW program go'ne wildly out of control...
...Their philosophy was-according to an aphorism which spread through HEW in 1971-1“You hatch it, we match it...
...The program was vague to begin with-“social services” were never adequately definedbut by 1969 state governments began to realize that there were virtually no federal controls on the program...
...Uncontrollable Spending is a history of the social services component of the welfare program, with a particular emphasis on the critical period between 1969 and 1972...
...Even a conservative Republican congressman like Robert Michel of Illinois “had to backtrack a bit” when he learned “that a number of my friends who are involved in all this volunteer work are going to be shut out from doing their thing for the community...
...When Congress finally caught on to what was happening in 1972, Rep...
...Like others in the Brookings mold, Derthick sees herself as a professional writing for other professionals and therefore doesn’t waste time answering open-ended conceptual questions...
...The Times article sparked the interest of Senator Russell Long, who quickly recognized something was amiss...
...A large portion of , Derthick’s monograph describes the process by which various states caught on to the pot‘ential of these social services grants...
...As one state official put it, “We really do have to thank him...
...But this congressional crackdown was an isolated victory...
...Martha Griffiths angrily noted, “Under a potential receiver you can pick up Christina Ford and John D. Rockefeller...
...In 1974 Congress had passed an entirely new law (known as Title XX...
...Walter Shapiro is an editor of The Washington Monthly...
...Given the complexity of the subject, it is difficult to convey all the details without resorting to oversimplification...
...Derthick‘s focus-and here Brookings takes its toll-is on the much narrower question: Where were the HEW comptrollers and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) while the states were looting the federal treasury with matching grants for social services...
Vol. 8 • March 1976 • No. 1
