by Tom Corbett
The irony was that I, at least, saw a lot of positive things in W-2, which was considered an unmitigated disaster amongst the liberal community. Yes, it did end the entitlement to welfare. It ended welfare as we know it far more completely than anything Clinton could have produced given the normative tensions within his party. Sure, some people would run afoul of the new expectations and we must remain cognizant of their suffering. And I was under no illusion that the jobs most recipients could expect would lift them out of poverty. But as I argued to anyone who would listen, neither would the old AFDC program, which already was facing a “race to a zero-dollar welfare guarantee” given the fears of welfare-induced migration and a general distaste for handing out unfettered cash. Besides, I always thought we could do a better job than we had previously done of integrating low-income women into the labor market.
I always thought the governor deserved credit for two things. While the ideas he pushed were not all that original, virtually every reform idea had been thought up or tried at some time in the past, he proved remarkably successful in making them a reality. Most of his predecessors had failed at that. And second, he invested quite a lot or resources in those welfare clients who played by the rules. He freely confessed that welfare reform would cost money, at least in the intermediate term. Moreover, he backed that belief in many ways. He greatly expanded child care availability, access to health care for those getting jobs that did not provide it, and job preparation opportunities. He nominally supported the “make work pay” ideal that Clinton and Ellwood championed. After some wavering, the Thompson people committed to Food Stamps and the state EITC as necessary work supports and income supplements.
While he got the notion that work should be feasible and that it should pay, the governor was prepared to pull the plug if a client was not willing to play by the rules. He bought into the notion that motherhood was not a disability that warranted automatic eligibility for income supports. In important ways, the feminist revolution had chipped away at that premise starting in the 1950s. Women, including young mothers, began to enter the labor force, a trickle at first that later became a torrent. Work for all women, including mothers, had become the expectation, not a societal anomaly.
The Thompson team deserves a lot of credit for pulling it off, getting W-2 enacted. I must say that doing reform at the state level is easier than in Washington. It is always hard no matter where it is done, make no mistake about that. Washington, however, is a town built around the notion of inertia. Any idea, even the most innocuous, will be met by highly organized and disciplined opposition. You want to honor apple pie and motherhood. Forget about it. The Cherry Pie Institute and various father groups would be all over you within forty-five minutes with a well-funded and sophisticated oppositional campaign. While similar things happen at the state level, the counter weights to any proposal are not so numerous or as powerful though well-funded backers of business interests have been in the ascendancy in recent decades.
In retrospect, I suppose the governor did me another favor in addition to putting me in the good graces of the Joyce Foundation. What If his people had called us to help them with W-2? Where would I have found the time? I was stretched beyond belief including faking at being a halftime tenure track assistant clinical professor of Social Work. One small vignette captured my desperate situation during this period. I received a call from someone in the bowels of the UW bureaucracy. The woman on the other end of the line went on about some issue in a research project. Not only could I not understand the issue, but I had no recognition of the project at all. “How can that be,” she responded to my protests of ignorance, “you are listed as the principle investigator.” Then we are in trouble, I thought.
We still managed to do a lot with W-2. I had many friends in the bureaucracy who did not share the governor’s dark opinion of me or the institute. I conversed with them a lot and sometimes would arrange for secret information drops straight out of the height of the cold war. “Tom,” the would-be traitor would say,” I am calling from a pay phone. I will walk down State Street wearing a red hairpiece and a fake beard that runs down to my navel. I will be carrying the latest draft of the W-2 plan in a plain vanilla envelope. You walk up State Street carrying a similar envelope containing blank pages, so the two packages look identical. When you see me, our code will be ‘the irises are blooming in Copenhagen’ if all is okay. Then pretend to bump into me and we will both drop our packages. In the confusion, we can exchange them and continue walking in opposite directions.” Okay, it was never quite that clandestine, but the state people involved were very nervous about secretly working with us. One state employee was seen walking into the Capitol at the end of the work day and grilled the next day about her intentions. Was she clandestinely meeting with Democratic lawmakers? It so happened that her condo was located on the other side of the square and this was her usual route home in cold weather. Paranoia was everywhere.
What we did with such illicitly obtained information was innocent enough. Since there was a lot of interest in what Wisconsin was cooking up, we published several dispassionate explanations of the plan in Focus. We even had a conference and published a book on how to evaluate a complex reform such as W-2. Jennifer Noyes, who was put in charge of W-2, later regretted that IRP’s evaluation plan was not used to assess the program early on. However, political emotions ran high at that point and such a collaboration was impossible. In reality, we were academics, not advocates. Our primary mission was to understand and evaluate the reform, not push any ideological or partisan agenda, at least as a research institute. Individual academics, of course, were always free to follow the dictates of their opinions but most of my colleagues, as I, were dispassionate observers in the policy arena, not daily partisan nor ideological combatants.
Since I also had occasion to travel around the state talking to welfare officials, employers, and other real people I got a good feel for what was happening on the ground. One vignette has become a talking point for me over the years. It came up during a discussion with the welfare manager in La Crosse County, a medium-size county that borders with Minnesota. The numbers may not be exact (though close, I believe), but the story line is pretty much as she told me:
Here is what we experienced in our county. Before W-2 we had about 1,400 AFDC cases. Even before we launched the program, the caseload began to decline as news about the new program spread. When we sat down with the state to negotiate the block grant structure under which W-2 would operate, we had maybe 800 to 850 cases left. Madison and we agreed that 400, maybe a little more would be a good estimate for the post W-2 caseload. When the smoke cleared, we had 60 cases left. I was not in favor of W-2. I was really concerned that people were suffering out there. So, I sent social workers out to the homeless shelters, the soup kitchens, to look under the bridges. We even went over to Minnesota to see if they had drifted over the border. We found some, but most had just disappeared. It was amazing.
Howard Rolston, head of evaluation for the Administration for Children and Families at HHS, called one day. “What is happening in Wisconsin?” he asked in amazement, “these caseload declines are unbelievable.” He did not say this, but he almost sounded as if he thought they were being faked somehow. Now, Howard is a big supporter of random assignment experiments, which I also defend as the gold standard for evaluating many research questions. What I wanted to say that day, but am not sure I did, is the following:
Most of the welfare reform we have seen over the last decade has been tinkering around the edges. We added something here, took away something there. And when we assessed impacts, we found some effects, but they were seldom, if ever, earthshaking. What you are seeing here is what happens when you change everything at once, when you transform the underlying culture of a program. We had no evidence on what would happen if you did that, thus we are shocked by the results. This story is not over, however. It has only just begun. One thing is certain, however. The face of social assistance has been dramaticall
y altered, and we better start thinking about what we need to do to understand what is happening.
I have skipped over a lot of things that happened during this period, a few of which will be picked up in future chapters. One trip among the many stands out and deserves a quick mention here. I got a call from the Unitarian-Universalist (UU) headquarters in Boston. They are a liberal church with a strong social justice emphasis. They asked if I would come to Boston since welfare reform was such a big topic there. Where wasn’t it in those days?
“You want an advocate,” I protested. “I can give you the names of some wonderful people.” But he stressed they wanted me and that they knew I was not an advocate. I was not totally convinced but I went. I figured with my track record I would be in enough trouble with St. Peter when my time came so maybe this would put a point or two on my side of the celestial score card. Later, it hit me that the UUs don’t believe in any specific creed, so I was never sure my getting involved with them would help in that regard. Given my record in the spiritual department, I was probably beyond hope.
The day turned out to be like a political campaign. It started with a visit to the State House. I expected about a half-dozen sleepy legislative aides sitting around a table gulping down their breakfast. I walked into a large hall with a standing room only audience with many real legislators in attendance. As I gasped, my host whispered that they were voting on a welfare reform bill later in the day. Nice time to tell me, I recall thinking at that moment! Then there were a series of public talks where I was not always quite sure whom I was addressing. After these talks, it was off to lengthy interviews with the editorial boards of the major newspapers.
That evening we went to the studios of WHA, the Boston Public Television station, to film two episodes of a current events show. The format was unique. The panel was carefully chosen to represent opinions that ranged from the ideological left to the right on whatever the topic was for that evening. That night, it would be welfare reform of course. There was no moderator. You just started talking and the three cameras captured the dialogue. I easily fell into the role of peacemaker with my “on the one hand” and “the other hand” style.
I was appalled when I later saw a video of the shows. The dialogue was mildly entertaining though I hate shows with drummed up controversy. What really disturbed me was the camera situated at my back which, to my horror, captured all too well my balding head. It is amazing how infrequently you get to see back there. Darn, I could no longer deny the reality of a creeping hair follicle disaster. Creeping? Hell, my hair was in full retreat. There really are some truths that ought to be kept hidden.
As I dragged my tired body back to the hotel late that evening, I concluded that I should have charged them twice my usual fee. But then I figured that two times nothing is still nothing so what the hell. The epiphany from the day, and the purpose of my telling the story, is the following. In your own home base, you are just another guy they have heard all too often. But when you fly into another state, you suddenly become a brilliant expert again. Good for the ego!
Outside of Wisconsin, in fact, my reputation never suffered such slings and arrows as it did within the Badger State. To the outside world, I was viewed as a straight shooter. Of course, Ron Haskins, the former Republican welfare expert among the Congressional staff and now a Brooking Institute scholar, would always give me grief. He would call me a running dog of the left, and I would return the favor by labeling him a running dog of the right. But we respected one another and enjoyed each other’s barbs. When he sought me out for lunch at a conference once, I asked why he would choose to eat with such a well-known leftist. His response was that he knew he would not be bored. When he would call, or when we ran into each other, he would inevitably ask how those Communists were doing at Moscow-On-The-Lake. By that he meant the University of Wisconsin, or was it only IRP?
One day, Ron, Mark Greenberg, and I were on a panel at the University of Chicago and were to speak in just that order. Ron started his talk as follows:
When Susan (Mayer) set this panel up, she told me that she put the handsomest, smartest, and most articulate speaker first. Then there would be a tiny drop off between the first speaker and the second (Mark). And then, there would be a huge, unbelievable drop off between the second and the third (meaning me).
As Susan (a well-known University of Chicago scholar) tried frantically to signal me she had not said this, I just laughed. It was typical of the banter Ron and I exchanged, but it did hit me that many in the audience who didn’t know either of us well could well be confused. On another occasion, Mark Greenberg once told the assembled audience that the best thing about the conference we were attending was that Tom Corbett did not introduce him. I found this kind of banter a relief. We all were part of a close-knit fraternity. With all the seriousness and angst surrounding welfare and poverty issues, we needed an occasional good laugh.
At the turn of the century, when Washington swung back to the Republican side, Wade Horn was waiting to be confirmed as head of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in Health and Human Services. He was a quite well-known conservative on marriage and family issues, and not a favorite of the left. I personally found him thoughtful and approachable. Howard Rolston, who headed the research and analysis arm of ACF, called one day in a small panic. His national evaluation conference was coming up (where representatives from all fifty states would gather to hear all the latest research on human services worth hearing). It turns out that Wade would not be confirmed by Congress in time. No confirmation, no Wade! “Could I fill in?” Howard asked. “Sure,” I responded. I was always willing to help a friend. It struck me that if I could fill in for a conservative icon, I probably was not seen as Satan’s playmate by everyone. Now that I ponder this, I wonder if Governor Thompson had been confirmed as Secretary Thompson of H.H.S. by this time. If he had, Howard had taken a large risk in tapping me for this public role.
One awkward moment occurred after Thompson clearly had been confirmed. An H.H.S. official I did not know called one day to ask if I would help with some splashy event they were putting on in Washington. This was not an unusual request at all for me, and I was happy to keep federal officials happy. After all, we survived in large part on federal dollars. Whatever the topic was is now lost to memory. I also promised to secure the services of a senior welfare administrator from Iowa since I knew they were doing something relevant to the topic, whatever it was. In any case, the H.H.S. official was most grateful and then she gushed with bubbly enthusiasm, “Oh, I can’t wait to tell the secretary that you have agreed to help us out, with you being from Wisconsin and all.”
My brain froze for a moment and then the call was over. Tell the secretary, tell Tommy Thompson! Oh, the poor woman…this image of Thompson exploding with rage when she told him flashed before me. He did have a temper. Should I call her back? I could just see her next assignment. She would be on her knees cleaning every toilet bowl in the Humphrey Building, where Health and Human Services is located, with only a toothbrush as a cleaning tool. In the end, I let it go, hoping for the best. When I did meet her, I could see no visible scars, so I assume the secretary was never informed of her innocent faux pas.
The cold war between IRP and the state of Wisconsin slowly softened over time as well. I did take advantage of a couple of easy opportunities to communicate to the governor that I was not just another knee-jerk leftist, at least not then. Rather, I was a thoughtful leftist who considered his opinions carefully and would separate myself from any orthodoxy that struck me as ill-advised or unsupportable. Well, I flattered myself that I was such a guy.
On one occasion, I recall being interviewed by National Public Radio along with the Thompson (from separate locations), when he was yet governor. I took the opportunity to agree with him on several points he made. In the puff piece in USA Today where I was named the national “welfare expert,” I also praised the governor’s actions in areas where we agreed. And he (his staff at least) coul
d see that we did not use IRP’s national presence to bash W-2 but merely to inform people what was being tried.
One day, I got a call that the governor wanted to meet with me and my colleague, Michael Wiseman. I quickly perused some catalogues to see how much bulletproof vests cost. The day of the meeting they called again to say the governor had an emergency meeting in D.C., but we should come anyways to meet with the several top officials including a couple of department secretaries. Mike decided that if the governor was absent, it was not worth his time. So, I conned IRP affiliate John Witte, a political scientist and rumored Republican, to accompany me. I wanted a witness in case the rumors of a secret torture chamber where liberals were taken to be waterboarded were, indeed, true.
I quickly relaxed as I sensed that the purpose of the meeting was not malevolent but rather designed to tease out whether the IRP crowd was going to cause trouble as W-2 made its way toward legislative approval. Trouble! I laughed internally. Who in the world listens to a bunch of eggheads? Besides, IRP doesn’t take any positions. Like all university entities, it is a loose collection of very independent academic entrepreneurs primarily concerned with which office they would get and whether their parking space was preferential. In any case, academics could not be told what to believe or do, at least within reason. That was what academic freedom was all about. I mean, you couldn’t root for the Ohio State Buckeyes or be a Chicago Bears fan, now really! Seriously, I had about as much influence over what my colleagues did, or politicians believed, as I had over my wife…by that I mean absolutely none.
