American Dream

by Jason DeParle

  148 block grant Medicaid: In her memoir, Hillary Clinton wrote: “I made clear to Bill and his policy advisers in the West Wing that if I thought they were caving in . . . I would publicly oppose it . . . I would speak out against any bill that did not provide heath [sic] care through Medicaid.” Living History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 326, 367.Emphasize “the tragedy of welfare”: Rep. Jennifer Dunn, Memorandum to GOP Welfare Reform Working Group, April 24, 1996.

  “We’re not going to give” to “This is nuts!”: Notes from meeting of Ways and Means Republicans, June 12, 1996. A turning point in rank-and-file sentiment occurred on June 21, 1996, at a meeting of the whole House GOP. The Medicaid block grant was still in the bill, but the comments of Rep. Tillie Fowler of Florida brought rousing support for dropping it. She said her constituents weren’t sure what Medicaid was; they confused it with Medicare. “But welfare—that they know! We have to pass that bill!” (Interviews with Tillie Fowler and Dave Camp.)

  What finally swayed: Interviews with Newt Gingrich and Jimmy Hayes.

  149 “We thought we would cause a split”: Interview with Gingrich.“Moot”: Clinton exchange with reporters, Jan. 30, 1996, PPP-1996, vol. 1, 116.

  “good bill”: Clinton remarks to the National Governors Association, Feb. 6, 1996, PPP-1996, vol. 1, p. 177.

  “all any American”: Ibid.

  spokesman criticized: Mike McCurry, White House briefing, Feb. 7, 1996.

  praised a protest against time limits: Clinton remarks in radio address and exchange with reporters, June 1, 1996, PPP-1996, vol. 1, 848.

  called for “tough time limits”: Clinton remarks to the American Nurses Association, June 18, 1996, PPP-1996, vol. 1, 925.

  negotiator uses ambiguity: Speaking to the NGA, Clinton called the latest bill “a real turning point” on July 16, 1996, but reversed himself a week later, dismissing it with a cornpone quip: “You can put wings on a pig but you don’t make it an eagle.” (Clinton remarks to the NGA, July 16, 1996, PPP-1996, vol. 2, 1129; remarks in Sacramento, July 23, 1996, PPP- 1996, vol. 2, 1187.

  149 “Government’s going to have to train everybody”: Clinton interview with Tom Brokaw, NBC Nightly News, Dec. 3, 1993.“build a jobs program”: Ibid.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to say ‘You can stay on welfare two years’ ”: Clinton interview with the New Jersey media in Hackensack, March 11, 1996, PPP-1996, vol. 1, 419. In my 2004 interview with Clinton, he repeated his misgivings about time limits: “I think having a five-year lifetime limit, plus the cutoff after a certain time for able-bodied people, ignores the impact of having a sustained recession.”

  150 “I say ‘tough on work, yes’ ”: Clinton remarks to the NAACP, July 10, 1996, PPP-1996, vol. 2, 1106.“We regret that there will be a certain negative side”: Interview with Clay Shaw.

  “I don’t think it’s a good thing to hurt children”: Clinton interview with the New Jersey media in Hackensack, March 11, 1996, PPP-1996, vol. 1, 419.

  “Bill Clinton just did this for the ninety-six election!”: Interview with Bill Clinton, Jan. 30, 2004. The other Clinton quotes explaining his thinking come from the same interview.

  “We’ve got to rebuild our political life”: Clinton at Georgetown University, Oct. 23, 1991.

  151 “children are blown to the winds”: 104th Cong., 1st sess., Cong. Rec. 141 (Dec. 12, 1995): S 18436.Clinton’s 1993 homily: Clinton at Church of God in Christ, Memphis, Nov. 13, 1993.

  Dick Morris plied him: Interviews with Morris, Bill Clinton, and Leon Panetta.

  country would do more for the poor: Hillary Clinton makes the same argument in her memoir: “We also hoped to persuade the American public, now that the old welfare system had been replaced, to address the greater problem of poverty and its consequences. . . . I hoped welfare reform would be the beginning, not the end, of our concern for the poor.” Living History, 369-70.

  152 “After I sign my name to this bill”: Clinton remarks in the Rose Garden, Aug. 22, 1996, PPP-1996, vol. 2, 1326.three-point deficit, “veto would be a disaster”: Morris, Behind the Oval Office, 596.

  Hillary Clinton’s signals: Interviews with Donna Shalala and Doug Besharov; Morris, Behind the Oval Office, 300; Hillary Clinton, Living History, 369.

  Hillary Clinton was out of town: Hillary Clinton’s role in the welfare bill has been the subject of great speculation and modest mystery. Her one-time ally, George Stephanopoulos, wrote: “In my last few phone calls with the first lady, I could tell she preferred a veto.” All Too Human (New York: Little, Brown, 1999), 419. Joe Klein, a perceptive Clinton watcher, wrote: “Most of the President’s staff, including his wife, were opposed.” (The Natural, 151.) One White House aide told me he got a phone call from her shortly after the president endorsed the bill, in which she said something like: “Those of us who are opposed to it have to keep on fighting.” But Melanne Verveer, her close aide and friend, told me: “If she were writing the bill, she might have nuanced it differently. But she was not opposing.” Verveer said Clinton talked admiringly of a single mother she had met, who worked as an all-night waitress to stay off public aid. Verveer recalls Mrs. Clinton asking something along the lines of “How do you face a woman like that and not have others do the same?” Welfare, Verveer said, was “like a double standard for her.” Bruce Reed said, “I had the sense that she was for it, or at least not against it. I had always been of the opinion that she was much more conservative on these issues than people thought. Her staff wasn’t involved.”

  Certainly, like any politician, she was adept at letting different people hear what they wanted to hear. In 1996 with her liberal allies enraged, she had a motive to seem opposed. Now that she’s an elected official, referring to a popular law, she has a motive to look like she was for it all along. But whether she was actively for it, or merely neutral, there’s no evidence that she tried to stop the president from signing it. Why she lent it at least passive support is a separate question. The interesting thing about the account in her memoir is that it makes no attempts to hide the political considerations. Of critics like her old friend Marian Wright Edelman, she wrote: “They didn’t have to negotiate with Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole or worry about maintaining a political balance in Congress.” (Living History, 369.)

  153 Clinton turned red with indignation: My account of the July 31, 1996, meeting comes from interviews with Henry Cisneros, Leon Panetta, Bruce Reed, Robert Reich, Donna Shalala, and George Stephanopoulos; Reich told me: “I began to suspect halfway through the meeting that it was not a sincere meeting. It was a show meeting. He wanted to show - people he was sincere about their concerns, but he had already made up his mind.” In an e-mail, Elaine Kamarck told me: “I was called in at the last minute by [Vice President Al] Gore personally, who said that Clinton had asked me to be there since he wanted some more people in the room who would argue in favor of the bill. I took it as a sign he’d made up his mind already.”Incensed at the budget cuts: Having agreed to give Clinton a third bill, the Republicans did what they could to maximize the political pain. In a memo to Gingrich, his legislative aide Jack Howard wrote: “I believe the White House will sign just about anything we send them, so we should make them eat as much as we can” (memo, July 25, 1996).

  153 most cabinet members opposed: One surprisingly strong argument for signing came from the Commerce secretary, Mickey Kantor, who had started his career as a legal aid lawyer; he argued to Clinton that the system was doing more harm than good. For the Ellwood op-ed opposing the bill, see NYT, July 22, 1996.

  154 Roosevelt had abolished: The FDR story, which caught Clinton’s notice, was part of the unusual campaign by Mickey Kaus, who was operating in the hybrid status of journalist and policy advocate. Kaus had called Reed from Los Angeles the night before the meeting and told him of FDR’s end-welfare moment, which he had gotten from William Leuchtenburg’s history, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 (New York: Harper & Row, 1963). Reed asked him to fax the relevant pages. Afte
r racing around town in search of a copy, Kaus found one at Borders and got the passage to Reed at about midnight eastern time. It describes Roosevelt’s decision to shut down the Civil Works Administration, a precursor to the WPA that had employed 4.5 million people in the winter of 1933-34. Leuchtenburg writes: “Alarmed at how much CWA was costing, Roosevelt ended it as quickly as he could. He feared he was creating a permanent class of reliefers whom he might never get off the government payroll.” Leuchtenburg quotes Roosevelt telling his aides: “Nobody is going to starve in the warm weather.” (See pp. 122-25.) In calling Clinton’s attention to the story, Kaus said he was trying to make three points: (1) presidents used to do big, bold things; (2) it’s impossible to overhaul welfare while holding every recipient harmless; (3) Clinton needed to “generally harden his heart” and accept that big policy changes toward the poor carry some costs.“I want to sign this bill”: Three Clinton welfare aides resigned in protest: Mary Jo Bane, Wendell Primus, and Peter Edelman, who aired his criticisms in a widely read article in The Atlantic (March 1997) called “The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done.”

  9. THE RADICAL CUTS THE ROLLS: MILWAUKEE, 1995-1996159 penalty amounted to 6 percent: Without the penalty, Jewell was getting $517 in AFDC and $340 in food stamps, for a total of $857. The penalty cut her cash to $440 but raised her food stamps to $363, for a total of $803.

  160 makings of a dumb-criminal joke: Interviews with Opal Caples and Jewell Reed, and arrest report, Nov. 3, 1995.

  161 Milwaukee’s economy: From 1990 to 1994, the average unemployment rate in Milwaukee was 6.3 percent; by comparison, it was 12.3 percent in Detroit, 11.8 percent in Cleveland, and 8.8 percent in Chicago.

  161 right-wing idealist: Interviews with Jason Turner; see also DeParle, NYTM, Aug. 24, 1997, and NYTM, Dec. 20, 1998.

  162 “It’s work that sets you free!”: Robert Polner, Newsday, June 28, 1998. welfare article: “How It Pays to Be Poor in America,” USN, Nov. 1, 1965.

  163 robbed at gunpoint: The second robbery occurred in Houston, where Turner was driving a cab on a college break.

  165 the statewide caseload had already fallen: Some key caseload figures are these: 98,300 when Thompson took office (Jan. 1987); 81,300 when Turner arrived (April 1993); 31,500 when the transition to W-2 began (Sept. 1997); 13,400 when the transition to W-2 ended (March 1998); and 6,700 when Thompson left office (Jan. 2001). Turner took a lead role in designing W-2 but left the state government in the spring of 1997, so he played no role in running it.While the caseload declines were extraordinary by anyone’s accounting, these official data do modestly overstate its extent. Through 1996, AFDC included about 10,000 “child only” cases, in which the adult was not part of the case (often, for instance, a grandmother caring for a grandchild). With the conversion to W-2 in 1997, the state shifted those cases into two new programs, separate from W-2. So part of what appears as a welfare decline was really just a reshuffling of the existing caseload. By the state’s official count, the rolls dropped 93 percent during Thompson’s four terms (from 98,300 to 6,700). If one added back the child-only cases (as an apples-to-apples comparison should), the decline would equal 84 percent. For simplicity’s sake (and because the child-only figures are unreliable for certain months), I use the official state numbers throughout the text unless otherwise noted. recipients placed in jobs rose: Jason Turner, “Performance Contracting in Wisconsin” (unpublished paper, circa 1997), 2.

  Oregon diversion program: Interviews with Jason Turner and with Verl T. Long and Sandy Steele, of the Oregon Department of Human Services; AFSelf-Sufficiency (newsletter, Division of Adult and Family Services, Dec. 1993), 6.

  166 case openings fell by a third: Statewide, the annual number of case openings fell from 37,000 in 1995 to 24,200 in 1996. The decline was 21 percent in Milwaukee and 45 percent in the rest of the state. Author’s analysis of DWD data.The Emergency Work Program: Interview with Bill Biggs; testimony of Norman G. Angus, Director of Utah State Department of Social Services before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, Sept. 1985.

  167 Utah caseload fell nearly 90 percent: Frederick V. Jansen and Mary Jane Taylor, “Emergency Welfare Work and Employment: An Independent Evaluation of Utah’s Emergency Work Program,” June 13, 1991, 4. Three months after leaving the rolls, 76 percent of program participants were employed.

  167 Milwaukee’s caseload collapsed: In the two years beginning in March 1996, the Milwaukee caseload fell from 33,700 to 11,500. Outside Milwaukee, it dropped from 29,000 to 2,000. The total number of Milwaukee recipients, as opposed to cases, fell by 60,000 in a city of 611,000 residents. (As noted above, these official figures on caseload decline would look a bit smaller if they properly accounted for child-only cases.)

  168 nearly a third had jobs: John Pawasarat and Lois M. Quinn, “Demographics of Milwaukee County Populations Expected to Work Under Proposed Welfare Initiatives” (UW-M, Employment & Training Institute, Nov. 1995), 33.“pogs”: Scott Sloan, Shepherd Express, July 10, 1997.

  169 sanctions rose a dozenfold: In 1993, Turner’s first year in Wisconsin, Milwaukee sanctioned about 360 people a month. (See State of Wisconsin, JOBS Annual Report, Dec. 1994, 60.) In the spring of 1996, under Pay for Performance, monthly sanctions averaged about 4,200. (Author’s 1997 communication with Eva J. Davis, Milwaukee County Department of Human Services.) The penalties rose not only because of the default mechanism, of course, but also because the program had tougher rules with which few people would or could comply.Congressional investigators: GAO, “States’ Early Experience with Benefit Termination,” May 1997, 7.

  170 homeless families, Ramon Wagner: DeParle, NYT, May 7, 1997.

  10. ANGIE AND JEWELL GO TO WORK: MILWAUKEE, 1996-1998175 difficult, dangerous work: From 1995 to 1999, an average of 15.4 percent of nursing home workers were injured each year; among coal miners, the number was 7.6 percent (Bureau of Labor Statistics). In 1998, nursing aides earned an average of about $7.50 an hour, while coal miners earned $19.17. (The nursing aide figure is from author’s communication with Joshua Wiener, Urban Institute; coal miners’ data is from BLS.) Data on back injuries and rise in injury rates is from “Caring till It Hurts,” Service Employees International Union, 1997, 2, 5. For turnover rates, poverty rates, and health insurance, see testimony of William A. Scanlon of the GAO before the Senate Finance Committee, May 17, 2001, 12-13.

  176 caregivers’ role and background on nursing homes: Interviews with Judith Feder, Robert Friedland, Robyn Stone, and Josh Wiener.

  178 650 Chicago workers: Timothy M. Smeeding, Katherin Ross Phillips, and Michael O’Connor, “The EITC: Expectation, Knowledge, Use, and Economic and Social Mobility,” National Tax Journal (Dec. 1, 2000).

  180 Bel Air turnover rate: The annual turnover rate among Bel Air nursing aides was 144 percent versus a statewide average of 69 percent. 1999 Consumer Information Report, Wisconsin Department of Health & Family Services, 6.

  182 probation officer noted: J. Mulcrone, pretrial investigation in 93-CR 24020-02, filed Jan. 4, 1994, Circuit Court of Cook County.

  186 the kids’ school absences rose: Kesha’s absentee rate rose from 19 percent when Angie was on welfare to 33 percent after she left the rolls. Redd’s went from 27 percent to 29 percent, and Von’s from 16 percent to 19 percent. The data cover the eight school years beginning in 1991-92; Kesha’s eighth-grade attendance records are missing. (Author’s analysis of attendance records supplied by Milwaukee Public Schools.)

  190 “Leaving welfare is a process”: Toby Herr and Robert Halpern with Aimee Conrad, “Changing What Counts: Re-thinking the Journey Out of Welfare” (Project Match, April 1991), 10.

  191 work despite multiple barriers: One major study of W-2 bore out Herr’s view that people with barriers can work. “Contrary to what one might expect, sample members who had at least a high school diploma were no more likely to have been employed than those who had not graduated from high school.” People with high school diplomas did earn more. Irving Piliavin, Amy Dworsky, and Mar
k E. Courtney, “What Happens to Families Under W-2 in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin? Report from Wave 2 of the Milwaukee TANF Applicant Study,” Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago and Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Sept. 2003, 58.

  192 $8,100: See Maria Cancian and others, “Before and After TANF: The Economic Well-Being of Women on Welfare” (Institute for Research on Poverty, Special Report no. 77, May 2000), table 8. Among former recipients who worked, average earnings were $10,300. But only 79 percent worked. Counting all former recipients, employed and unemployed, lowers the figure to $8,100. (All figures, including Jewell’s, in 1998 dollars.)

  193 Jewell took her in: One peculiarity of the trio’s experiences in the post-welfare years is that they each had a prostitute move in with them. After Ken’s teenage associate left Jewell’s, she stayed with Angie. The girl’s sister, who was also occasionally employed as a sex worker by Ken, stayed with Opal and helped take care of her kids.

  194 two-week manhunt: See MJS, Feb. 11, 12, 20, 21, and 26, 1998.loaded rifle, $400 of cocaine: Arrest report, Sept. 19, 1998, on file in State vs. Kenyatta Thigpen, 98CF005103, Milwaukee County Circuit Court.

  one house arrest per house: Actually, there is no ban on two accused felons sharing a residence on house arrest; decisions are made case by case.

  11. OPAL’S HIDDEN ADDICTION: MILWAUKEE, 1996-1998196 cut Milwaukee’s rolls by a third: The city’s caseload fell from 33,700 in March 1996, at the start of Pay for Performance, to 23,300 in July 1997.more than half the caseload untouched: Of 55,000 cases statewide in June 1996, for instance, 20,400 were enrolled in welfare-to-work activities; author’s communication with Paul Saeman, DWD.