The Third Lie

Why Government Programs Don't Work—and a Blueprint for Change

Richard J Gelles

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781611320510
• eBook ISBN: 9781315417035
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"I am from the government and I am here to help you" is one of the three biggest lies, or so the old joke goes. Richard J. Gelles, dean of social policy at University of Pennsylvania, explains why government programs designed to cure social ills don't work in sector after sector…and never could work. He demonstrates how each creates its own bureaucracy to monitor participation in the program, an entrenched administrative apparatus whose needs supersede those for whom the program was designed. Against this, he contrasts universal programs such as the GI Bill, Social Security, and Medicare, the most successful, sustained government programs ever established. Gelles's provocative, controversial proposal for a universal entitlement to replace a raft of lumbering social programs should be read by all in social services, policy studies, and government.

Chapter 1

THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW!

In 1977, I had just become chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Rhode Island. I was thirty-one years old and had the temperament typical of social reformers. My professional focus was the study of child abuse and violence against women, and so by profession and specialty I was already an advocate for the oppressed and disadvantaged.

The department’s offices were on the first and fifth floors of a five-year-old building, the Chafee Social Science Center (named after the former governor and then junior senator from Rhode Island, John Chafee). Legend had it that the Chafee building, with its eight-story office tower, was the tallest building between Providence and New Haven. The tower had two elevators, which had already become the butt of “lowest bidder” jokes because of the cranky functioning and frequent breakdowns. Nonetheless, even those of us who were relatively fit eventually came to use the elevators to go between the offices on the first and fifth floors.

One afternoon, I got on the elevator to go to the fifth floor with a young woman, whom those days before political correctness I would have called a dwarf (now she might be called a “little person”). It immediately became obvious to both of us that she had a problem. The buttons for each floor were positioned vertically on the elevator wall, and she could only reach the button for the second floor. This was a serious inconvenience, since, as she told me, she was headed to the Economics Department on the eighth floor. I pushed the “8” button for her and we began to go up.

In the few moments it took us to reach the fifth floor, it became clear there was a significant obstacle to her education. How, she asked me, could she major in economics if she could not even get to the department office? Walking up eight flights every day would be out of the question.

In my best “champion of the oppressed” voice, I asked her to come to my office and let me help her. There, I quickly called a colleague who worked for the vice president for Student Affairs and asked if she could meet with the woman and help her resolve the problem. My colleague agreed, and I sent the young woman off. When she left, I sat back and grinned smugly, congratulating myself on my gallant act of social justice. I had advocated for an “oppressed” person who had a “personal problem,” and I assumed all would be right in the world.

My smugness lasted less than an hour. The young woman came back, and when she arrived at my door, I assumed she was there to thank me. But instead she had come to tell me what a futile runaround she experienced. The vice president for Student Affairs sent her to the person responsible for students with learning disabilities (per the provisions of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, PL 93–112). The university, because it received federal funds, had set up an office for disabled students. But the head of the Office of Student Disabilities said she was only able to deal with learning disabilities and really could not suggest a solution.

The woman in charge of the Office of Student Disabilities then called the facilities office, which suggested that the young woman purchase a television antenna and carry it in her purse. She could telescope the antenna to push the “8” button on the Chafee elevator. I actually thought that suggestion was reasonably creative and better than putting a footstool in each elevator.

However, the student was neither amused nor empowered by her travels through the university bureaucracy. She was angry that no one seemed to take her problem seriously and realize that her elevator troubles went beyond the problem of getting to the eighth floor. What she had discovered was that the university was simply neither physically nor bureaucratically equipped to accommodate her personal situation.

For what sociologists call a “personal trouble”¹ to become a social issue, it has to capture the public’s attention, generate public concern and controversy, and produce collective action. The demand for change typically occurs when people view a situation as wrong and feel that rights have been violated. The young woman wanted a college education at a state-supported institution and wanted to major in economics. She was blocked because of a decision to install buttons vertically in an elevator. A person in a wheelchair would have also been unable to push the “8” button.

Problems like this are injustices, not merely misfortunes. Thus, when injustices are perceived, there is an effort to bring attention to them and seek a resolution. The rallying cry is often, “There ought to be a law!”

As famously expressed by the late Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill, and often repeated, “All politics is local.” That claim notwithstanding, many complaints about the ineffectiveness of government focus on the federal level. Granted, many state and local policies address personal troubles and social issues. But the wholesale delivery of government assistance in the form of sweeping policies—not to mention the deepest well of funding—exists at the federal level. Even though constrained by the Constitution not to become involved in matters that are the province of the states, the federal government is identified by the provisions of that same Constitution as the ultimate protector of human rights and the ultimate source of redress of personal injustice. The road to good intentions most often starts in Washington because Washington has the deepest pockets and the biggest stick—the U.S. Constitution.

POLICY, LAW, AND RESIDUAL SOCIAL POLICIES

Cries that “there ought to be a law!” are typically grounded in the plight of one individual or a group of individuals who have experienced injustice. When physician C. Henry Kempe began to see children admitted to the Colorado General Hospital with fractures and injuries that could only have been inflicted by a caregiver, he was appalled by the medical profession’s lack of response to these injuries. Why weren’t physicians and nurses recognizing them as deliberate attacks on the children? How many such injuries occurred each year and how many were ignored or overlooked by physicians, nurses, teachers, counselors, social workers, and others in the helping professions?

Kempe’s contribution to the field of child welfare was that first he turned a “personal trouble” into a call-to-arms for the medical community to view physical child abuse as a social issue; and then he championed mandatory reporting laws. His goal was to generate collective action to remedy the problem of intentional injury of children. Without the law, Kempe’s research, his articles in the medical journals, and his social advocacy would have produced only minimal social change.

There are many similar stories about personal troubles that led to collective action and ultimately a law. In 1981 John Walsh, when his son Adam was kidnapped and killed, turned his own tragedy into a social issue that led to federal legislation on missing and exploited children. Another social injustice, wife abuse, had been part of the fabric of American families since the seventeenth century. Efforts to address it had waxed and waned for decades. There had been some state legislation, but it was only after the O.J. Simpson case that this kind of crime gained federal attention. When the case burst into the headlines in 1994, Congress quickly enacted the first version of the Violence Against Women Act. When the bill was up for reauthorization in 1996, one of the lead witnesses before the Senate Judiciary Committee was Denise Brown, sister of the slain Nicole Brown Simpson.

The grounding in personal tragedy of calls for social action tends to produce a particular type of policy. There are two main government approaches in the area of social policy and social welfare. The first, and most widely used, is what scholars Neil Gilbert and Paul Terrell call the “residual model.”² This model, which others refer to as “targeted social programs,” evolved in the United States in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. According to Gilbert and Terrell, a “residual model” arises when existing institutions—family, education, the economy—fail to meet individual and family needs. Residual policies are created on the assumption that, although our political, social, and economic institutions generally operate effectively and meet most of the population’s needs, some problems remain that require targeted or residual social policies.³ The “residual model” is a temporary (although it might ultimately become permanent) safety net created by the government. Those who support this model believe government should be small, decentralized, and respond only when absolutely necessary.

In the United States today there is a long list of residual social welfare policies. Federal and state child maltreatment policies, including mandatory reporting laws, respond to residual cases in which parents cannot or will not protect and care for their children. Domestic violence legislation is aimed at the residual families and couples in which the conflict rises to the level of physical and sexual violence. The core residual policies for domestic violence consist in using the criminal justice system, in the form of restraining orders, arrests, prosecutions, and court-ordered counseling, to protect victims and prevent future violence.

Supplemental Social Security (SSI) provides financial resources to older people whose Social Security benefits are insufficient to meet some basic needs. Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was the core welfare residual policy until 1996, when the policy became even more residual—as captured by the new title, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). And last—but for the purposes of this book, not least—the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Individuals with Educational Disabilities Act (IDEA) are residual policies for children whose learning, physical, or mental health disabilities or challenges produce special needs requiring accommodation by schools.

The second government approach, “the institutional model,” views social welfare as a set of permanent and centralized institutions that serve a preventative function. The “institutional model” is not a safety net, does not specifically target programs and services, and does not have a “means test” nor requires a shortcoming or disability to qualify for services and support.⁴

The best example of an institutional social policy is the Social Security program. The key assumption behind Social Security is that the elderly, having retired, need an assured income. This is accomplished by taxing the working population and paying benefits to everyone after a certain age. Currently, people born before 1937 may receive full benefits at age sixty-five; they may receive partial benefits at age sixty-two. Eligibility age for full benefits is higher for those born after 1937—so for baby boomers born in 1946 the age for full benefits is sixty-six. Of course, Social Security benefits are not really universal, since one has to work forty quarters (three months) in order to qualify for them. However, Social Security is obviously universal in that people receive benefits irrespective of whether they have no assets or billions in assets. I will have more to say about the current state and solvency of Social Security in Chapter 3.

FEDERALISM AND SOCIAL POLICY

Most government social policies are residual. The rationale for this is grounded in the Constitution. The United States operates under the governmental principle of federalism. It would be too much of a digression to go through the history and philosophy of federalism and the debates about it that have raged for more than two hundred years. At the core of the issue is the fact that the founders of the United States and the authors of the Constitution set out to create a republic with a relatively weak central government. The federal government is vested by the Constitution with the power to tax, provide for the common defense and general welfare of the nation, borrow money, regulate interstate commerce, manage immigration, coin and print money, set standards for weights and measures, establish post offices, issue patents and copyrights, establish courts, declare war, raise and support a military, and support civil rights. This seems like a long list, but it is actua...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Government Programs: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
• 1. There Ought to Be a Law!
• 2. When Good Intentions Go Bad: The Education of Jennifer Felix
• 3. Programs That Work
• 4. Effective Government Social Programs: A New Blueprint
• 5. Rebuilding Main Street: The Futures Account
• 6. Round up the Usual Suspects
• 7. The Drunk and the Lamppost
• 8. The Emperor’s Wardrobe Consultant
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author