Confessions of a Wayward Academic

by Tom Corbett

  Robert Moffitt, a respected economist from Johns Hopkins and the head of the NAS expert panel on evaluating welfare reform on which I was to serve, once asked me if I believed the results from the observational studies on the effects of welfare reform favored by quantitative social scientists. “Not really,” I responded. He looked crestfallen since his brethren were doing so many of them. “The formal math is fine, I suspect.” I went on to explain, “The problems lie elsewhere.”

  After pausing a moment to collect my thoughts—always an iffy proposition—I continued, “The way I see it you have to make all kinds of simplifying assumptions to make these things work. A state passes a law or regulations saying that they are introducing intervention X. You group that state with others passing what seem to be similar laws and compare them with control states that choose a different route while statistically controlling for hard to observe yet systemic heterogeneity across groups to account for relevant things that might confound the results. You also build in a lag time factor such as it typically takes six months for a state to go from enactment to reality. And then you do some fancy time series analysis. But you never know if the experimental states did what they said they would or did it well or did it in the way they claimed they were or did anything at all. Anyone who has spent time in the real world, like I have, will have large residual doubts. We simply appreciate the messiness of the real world.”

  He sighed, “Well, Tom, if we can’t convince you, then we are in deep trouble.” I tried to assure him that my support would always be available for a modest fee.

  In 1993-94, what we had were a bunch of small to medium-size experimental studies that convincingly showed that most interventions evidenced small, yet often statistically significant, results. Each of these studies generally looked at individual interventions in comparative isolation. What if you did a Job Club, or exposed clients to a certain training program, or a temporary trial job, and the list goes on. Some were a bit more complex, but none (or none that were examined rigorously) rose to the status of changing welfare in any fundamental way. The results we did have simply were not terribly dramatic nor robust. Welfare use might fall a few percentage points compared to the controls and labor force rise a bit. Earnings could be up by 30 percent but from a very, very low base. Things worked but not by much.

  The problem for us was that it looked as if the technologies we had at hand would not push that many of the five million or so AFDC adult clients off the rolls into sustainable private sector jobs. So, when you ended welfare as we knew it, you would have to plan for droves of public sector jobs to catch them as we pushed them off the cliff after reaching their time limit on assistance. You could not wish for a different world since OMB (Office of Management and Budget) or the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) would catch you up. They had access to the same research. Reform was beginning to look way too expensive.

  Finally, let me comment on one last impediment. It always struck me that some of the reform leaders were looking for the perfect solution which, as the adage goes, is the enemy of the acceptable solution. Ellwood, as much as I admired him, was at heart an academic. When he got the ASPE job, he told me that this was the position he always coveted. His father had been a policy wonk as well, working on early forms of the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) concept. Someone mentioned once that David had spent a bit of time at ASPE as a child, looking out over the mall and the U.S. Capitol as his father discussed serious business with the powers that be. Apparently, that is when his desire to sit in the big chair emerged.

  Academics are very sensitive to criticism, however. After all, they are supposed to be the experts. They always want to run the data one more time, think through the results with another twist, try to conjure up all possible rejoinders to critics in advance. I always had the impression that he and others were waiting for that one last data run from the Urban Institute or one of the other available think tanks to finally get it all right. But we were doing policy in the real world. There would never be a final, conclusive data run or the perfect, elegant solution.

  As the work and the group dialogues and the groundhog-day meetings dragged on, I would ponder these conundrums. This often happened as I boarded the first metro of the morning from Arlington’s Courthouse Station into the District. I would get to the Humphrey Building so early that I had to sign in past night security. During the summer months, I would enjoy the first blush of dawn as it framed the Capitol. It could be a beautiful city if you ignored most of the people who inhabited the place. Inspired by this setting, I would screw up my courage to tilt at another windmill by taking a shot at breaking the log jam.

  Fairly early on I wrote a memo to David where I laid out my “perfection is the enemy of progress” fears. Of course, it was much longer and detailed than my introduction above. I also think he saw it since his chief palace guard, a woman he brought with him from Harvard, told me how good she thought it was and would make sure David saw it. Of course, that did not mean he ever read it. In any case, nothing happened as far as I could see. I kept thinking about how to get people on the same page at the beginning of the process. There were too many cooks with too many perspectives. We needed some common definitions and maybe a common direction? I think I read something about this in my Planning 101 course.

  How about we start by defining welfare? Were Food Stamps welfare? How about the EITC? You knew that many Republicans would so argue…maybe a few within our happy family were so inclined. I think I even threw out a starter definition. It went something like this: welfare was a cash assistance transfer to families with little to no assets and income in which we impose marginal tax rates on income and earnings well above what we would dare impose on any other segment of the income distribution. This was not only accurate but eliminated most safety net programs from being considered welfare. Any program, no matter how defensible, once tarnished with the welfare label clearly was at risk of being assigned to some endangered species list. But again, I was ignored.

  One weekend in early fall 1993, Ann Segal (I believe) came up with an exercise to see if we were getting anywhere. We knew whose opinions really counted. So, a few key staff sat down and attempted to identify the salient issues and where each key stakeholder stood. We spent the weekend (to avoid onlookers and loose talk) comparing positions where we could and looking for possible points of convergence and compromise. We had these index cards spread out across a large table. I recall looking at the array at one point and exclaiming out loud, “Haven’t these people been talking to one another at all?” It was going to be a long fall as we tried to end welfare.

  As 1993 ground on, we had another groundhog-day meeting that proved particularly illuminating. For some reason, all the top-level people were elsewhere that day or had to leave early. Still, there was a decent crowd left and many from high up in various participating agencies. As the dialogue slowly ground to a halt, people began to pick up their papers and started moving away from the large table. Then, someone made one last comment about the cliff at the end of the two years of cash assistance. Another participant turned back to the table and said something about not agreeing with that interpretation of “ending welfare.” Then others started chiming in, with more than one claiming to really know what Bill had in mind by ending welfare. Now everyone was returning to the table, all thoughts of lunch were abandoned, and a small free-for-all ensued. It struck me that someone should just ask Bill.

  Later, I ran into David and mentioned what happened. “Damn,” he exhaled with a pained, faraway look in his eyes. In retrospect, I suspect we had a rather civil and polite reform planning process. I recall Eugene (Geno) Smolensky, another former IRP director and by this time dean of the Public Policy School at Berkeley, talking about literally wanting to jump across the table to tear the throat out of his adversaries during the Carter reform days. This seemed out of character since Geno was a laid back, very funny, guy. Though no one seemed on the verge of physical violence this time around, I could see
that it was going to be a long winter as we tried to end welfare.

  By early in 1994, we were on life support. Most energy was drifting toward the Health Care reform being headed up by the First Lady. Some of us from the welfare side were invited to a secret briefing. There was a lot of secrecy in all this. On the welfare side we sometimes would get a numbered draft of a position paper for a meeting that had to be turned in when the session ended. Still, Jason Deparle of the New York Times would have a column on the so-called secret draft two days later. There would be a lot of scurrying around to uncover the source of leaks to no avail. I did see messages from Jason from time to time asking me to call him. I chose to ignore them. After my D.C. days, he and I chatted occasionally about welfare issues, and he acknowledged me in his book on the topic. But I was very careful while in D.C.

  One day, Wendell and I attended a briefing on the progress of the health care reform planning group. There were extensive charts and diagrams and all manner of wondrous details on the emerging proposal. I am reasonably smart, but I know I was getting lost. As I left with Wendell, he muttered something about health care proposal being way too complicated and we better not fall into the same trap. I feared, however, that we might. For me, the bottom line of that briefing was that our companion reform effort also was mired in the complexities of change. Perhaps they would have to focus on one or the other, there might not be enough energy to mount two social policy revolutions at the same time.

  Then the ax fell with surprising swiftness. Welfare reform planning would cease, all bets were on health care. I was enjoying a relaxed weekend knowing the pressure was now off when I noticed that Senator Moynihan was appearing on one of the Sunday morning political talk shows. He was furious. “We don’t have a health care crisis,” I believe he shouted as his face reddened, “we have a welfare crisis.” While I thought we did have a health care financing crisis, his opinion counted, not mine. When I went to work the next day, welfare was back on the front burner.

  I still tried tilting at some windmills. I argued that we abandon any thought of coming up with a national reform. It was taking us too long. When and if we did come up with something, it would look too complicated, too prescriptive, and too inflexible. We risked push back if we came up with a “one size fits all” model. In case no one had noticed, states were already running with reform. They were, as Justice Brandeis once famously noted, the appropriate laboratories of change. States would likely resist the feds now coming in to tell them what to do. Let’s come up with a few competing reform alternatives that reflected the major disagreements holding us up. Then, let the states volunteer to try them out. That way the internal disputes might be tested and resolved in the marketplace for new ideas. By this time, Rebecca Maynard had joined me as an ally in this perspective.

  Rebecca “Becca” Maynard was a UW trained economist who earned a national reputation as a top researcher and welfare evaluator at Mathematica Policy Research Inc. (Mathematica), one of the top three social welfare evaluation firms. By this time, she had drifted into a faculty position at the University of Pennsylvania and was spending two or three days a week as one of the numerous academic-type advisors to ASPE. Like Jennifer Noyes, she also was blond, very attractive, and smart. And very much like Jennifer, Becca also enjoyed squabbling with me though mostly in good fun. At least I think it was all in good fun. When we later served on the NAS evaluation panel together, we squabbled so often that Bob Goerge from the University of Chicago would scold us with “now, now children, time to behave.”

  We often agreed on the big issues, however. We approached Wendell Primus to make our plea for a different direction. How about proposing several models from which the states might select an approach they might prefer? The fundamental disagreements separating the planners might be captured in the individual models put out for testing. He listened politely with this wry smile he often had when you just knew he did not agree with you. No, he understood what we were saying, but the administration was committed to national reform.

  After a polite passage of time, Becca and I hit him again. This time we pleaded for yet another approach to national reform. Let’s not try to write a totally prescriptive law. Our reform proposal could be national in scope, but let’s lay out a general road map as opposed to detailing every twist and turn on the journey. You can see by now that I love stupid metaphors. I once again saw that wry grin spread across Wendell’s face and immediately knew we were dead in the water. Wendell, for all his goodness and bigness of heart, had been in Washington too long. It seemed to me that he just could not quite come to trust the states. And frankly, I didn’t have total confidence in my own ideas. Perhaps Becca and I were getting desperate.

  President Clinton soon gave his State of the Union address to Congress. He promised that a bill ending welfare as we know it would be submitted to Congress that spring. I should not have been eating while watching the speech. It took me a while to stop gagging from the food caught in my throat. The next day, I bet everyone within earshot that the date on the Bill would be the last day of spring. In fact, it would turn out to be June 21. Is that still technically spring? In any case, I was certain it would be a long spring as we struggled to end welfare as we knew it.

  The reader should realize that, despite all the frustrations it entailed, struggling with reform was great fun. Hey, I had spent two years in rural India in the Peace Corps trying to do agriculture, another topic about which I knew virtually nothing…you think I would have learned to avoid taking on impossible tasks. In the end, I learned much from this impossible Washington situation as well, certainly as much as I had benefited from being a pretend farmer in the deserts of India. After all, it is the hard that makes it great, right? And despite the difficulties, the chase for fundamental reform was exhilarating and a superb learning experience. Besides, there were many good laughs and fun times as well.

  At one of the groundhog-day meetings, which could be almost as deadly as university faculty meetings with one critical exception. The issues in Washington were much more important. One day, the challenge of teen pregnancy was being discussed. One of the eminent economists in the group suggested we condition future eligibility for Pell Grants on the girl avoiding pregnancy during her teen years. You must remember that economists believe that the whole world can be changed with the correct monetary incentives. We had one regular participant from the Labor Department, Roxie Nicholson. Typically, she was direct in her comments, though they could be softened by her Southern accent. After a moment to consider the matter, she spoke up, “Oh sure, I can see it now. Susie and Jim are going at it hot and heavy in the back seat and suddenly Susie is going to shout, ‘Stop! Stop! I will lose my Pell Grant.’” After the laughter died down, we moved on.

  One time I was running around like a crazy man going in three directions at once. I saw one of the young female presidential interns. These PIs, as they were known, were competitively selected from the top public policy schools to serve a couple of years in D.C. while they learned their craft. I shoved a big document in her hands and pleaded with her to make some copies while I dashed off in another direction. I really didn’t notice her gender and would have asked the coat rack in the corner if I thought it would have done any good. But, of course, she gave me great grief for several weeks about this—the male superior asking the female subordinate to do grunt work.

  I liked the PIs and most of them were quite talented. I would help them sharpen their writing and test them on their critical thinking skills by getting them to see the unintended consequences to decisions that looked good to them at first blush. I suspect that they looked upon me as an older, somewhat avuncular figure that ought to be excused for his lapses in political correctness. One day, my offended gal called me a snag. I considered that either her final insult to me as punishment for my earlier transgression, or a great compliment. I was not sure which. It sounded like the latter. Maybe the S stood for sexy or stud. But it stood for sensitive as in sensitive new-age guy
. Not as good as I had hoped but it could have been worse. I did get the last laugh. One day, I had a camera with me and asked her to pose for a picture. As she smiled in my direction I added, “One more thing, could you lift your skirt a little higher.” The paper weight she threw in my direction only missed my head by an inch.

  They got their revenge though. Mary, my wife, came to D.C. many a weekend. When she finally visited my office at ASPE during a longer stay, they sprung a little surprise. As I was showing Mary around, I thought I noticed furtive figures darting in and out of my office. When we finally walked into my sanctuary, we both started laughing. There were pictures of scantily clad women hanging on the walls and on my desk. I think there was a big mug saying, “world’s greatest lover.” And there was a woman’s stocking coming out of one of my desk drawers. In fact, one of the gifts they gave me as I headed back to Madison was a big mug that said, “Tom’s fan club.” It had pictures of several (female) staffers on it.

  One day, Ann McCormick came running up to me late in the day. “Glad I caught you. Would you like to go to New Jersey?”

  “Why Ann,” I responded, “this is so sudden, and we are both married. And besides, I have been there before. It is not so great.”