Calling for a New Framework for the Reform of Welfare Policy

November-December 1993

By Stanley W. Carlson-Thies and James W. Skillen

WASHINGTON, D.C—American welfare policy stands at an impasse. Despite many decades of intense anti-poverty campaigns, poverty persists. In many inner cities, welfare dependency seems entrenched and entangled with severely dysfunctional social conditions. Most Americans want to help people in need, but few are satisfied any longer with government's efforts to assist the poor. Many citizens now believe that welfare programs do more harm than good.

A variety of reforms have been proposed to reverse the failures and to overcome growing skepticism. But a new consensus has not yet been built. Instead, a debilitating polarization has emerged. Liberals urge government to do more for the poor, while conservatives press for an end to the welfare system altogether. Obviously, welfare reform cannot do both at the same time.

Part of the problem, we believe, is government's continuing preoccupation with economic interpretations of poverty. The poorest of the poor lack more than economic resources. They are often demoralized and either unwilling or ill-equipped to fulfill their responsibilities. Typically, they are surrounded by social and moral decay. Current welfare programs are not the sole cause of their distress, and better welfare programs will not provide the entire solution.

In order to break the policy impasse and to deal constructively with the growing crisis of our inner cities, we need a new framework for socio-economic policy, one organized around a better understanding of human nature and of social and governmental responsibility.

THESIS I: Fruitful welfare reform requires a new paradigm both for understanding human nature and for crafting socio-economic policy.

Current policy making tends to assume that: (a) the market corrects its own errors; (b) individuals should be as free as possible from external obligations so they may pursue their own interests as they choose; (c) people are basically behavioral animals whose actions should be channeled not by moral or legal mandates but by stimulus/response penalties and incentives; (d) government's broadest socioeconomic aim should be to promote economic growth and a rising standard of living; (e) economic growth, with some redistribution of wealth, will eventually eliminate poverty; and (f) democratic government adequately fulfills its responsibility by responding to the organized interests of citizens, particularly those interests not satisfied in the marketplace.

We believe that this framework must be replaced by a different set of assumptions: (a) the market, the political order, and other social institutions represent distinct arenas of moral responsibility; (b) humans are norm-responsive creatures whose genuine freedom is realized in the fulfillment of responsibilities for and with one another; (c) humans are not animated solely by incentives and penalties but possess the creative potential and the moral obligation to shape culture and society in keeping with principles of justice, truth, good stewardship, and more; (d) government policy must not be fixated on economic criteria, but instead should take into account the multiple dimensions of human responsibility; (e) dealing adequately with poverty and social degradation requires policies that go beyond the redistribution of wealth and offering benefits to the poor; and (f) government's normative responsibility is to uphold a just structure of society through which citizens may fulfill their diverse obligations and enjoy their varied prerogatives.

THESIS II: The foundations for a new paradigm can be found in the biblical story, which needs to be reappropriated today in a fresh way.

According to the Bible, humans are created in God's image and, as stewards of God, bear diverse kinds of responsibility for one another and for the rest of creation. From this point of view, government has the obligation to recognize and do justice to the multiple responsibilities people have in their families, friendships, schools, businesses, churches, and other institutions and relationships. We believe that this biblical worldview undergirds the new paradigm proposed above.

In recent decades, many Christians and Jews have been reexamining the biblical tradition with renewed interest. But Americans who identify with that tradition also find themselves polarized in the current debate over welfare policy. When we appeal to biblical revelation and a biblical worldview, therefore, we realize that there exists no ready-made consensus about the implications of that tradition for welfare reform. Thus, we both invite and want to promote a serious and fresh contribution from this point of view to the debate over welfare policy, hoping that in the process we can also spark creative thinking within communities of biblical faith.

THESIS III: The crisis of Americas inner cities, which is the most critical focal point of contemporary welfare concern, ought to be interpreted as a comprehensive "responsibility crisis," extending beyond the economic criteria typically used to measure poverty.

The crisis of many of our inner cities displays a new form of human bondage. Too many of the poorest urban residents are unable or unwilling to take initiative, to fulfill ordinary social responsibilities, and to muster the strength to push past the difficult obstacles around them. Not all of the urban poor are hopeless and degraded. But far too many have become disconnected from a normally functioning society—and not always due to their own weaknesses and failures.

If we are correct that the urban crisis is a consequence of multiple irresponsibilities, then proposed "solutions" to that crisis will have to offer more than the delivery of better government welfare programs. We must consider real people who bear real responsibilities—people and institutions who in one way or another have not fulfilled their responsibilities. We need to ask: In what ways have the poor as well as those who are not poor contributed to this crisis? What about parents who should be raising their children? What about schools that are supposed to offer all children an education that fits them for productive life? What about employers who offer or withhold jobs? What about churches and other communities of fellowship and encouragement?

If the problem that concerns us begins with welfare policies, it cannot stop there. Government's responsibility in a complex and differentiated society can never be exclusive or exhaustive, because it governs people who are always more than citizens. The sources and contexts of a healthy life are families, friendships, schooling, apprenticeships, work, communities of faith, and more. Government's primary anti-poverty strategy, therefore, should be to strengthen and help hold accountable all of these institutions and relationships. Welfare policies should aim to restore people to healthy society rather than try directly to lift individuals out of poverty. The keystones of fruitful welfare policy, we believe, are: the restoration of diverse social institutions to normative functioning; the reconnection of the poor to healthy social patterns and opportunities; and the re-assumption by the needy of their own responsibilities.

THESIS IV: Government's welfare policies ought to be reformed to hold people accountable for the fulfillment of their diverse responsibilities, not to compensate for personal and social irresponsibilities.

Society consists, among other things, of parents nurturing children, people finding meaningful and remunerative work, and neighbors devising means to heal or alleviate one another's injuries. These vital responsibilities make up the original stuff of life; government does not create them. Nevertheless, government has an indispensable role to play in upholding and encouraging the fulfillment of these responsibilities. Government's role, we believe, should be exercised in three ways.

A. The first function of government is to uphold the good order of society. In its routine operations government establishes and enforces the rules that permit people to live together harmoniously. It should maintain the necessary infrastructure—not only roads and water systems, but also police, fire protection, and a financial system. It should fund education and, by means of tax policies and other programs, spread out the burdens of the commonwealth in an equitable fashion, assuring the fair treatment of every citizen. Government must fulfill these—its own—responsibilities.

But in all of this, government must take for granted that parents will raise children, that businesses will employ people, and that teachers will educate students. Government's policies must reinforce this good order of society and not merely try to compensate for failures within it. Thus, for example, government should firmly uphold the parental covenant, requiring fathers as well as mothers to fulfill their obligations to their children.

B. Second, government sometimes must provide emergency relief. When the police race to an accident, or when unemployment insurance temporarily sustains a laid-off worker, an immediate problem is kept from growing into a longterm crisis. Emergency relief works because the people and institutions affected by the disaster are able to fulfill their responsibilities normally as soon as the disaster is overcome. But emergency relief is counterproductive if it is offered to people who are unable or unwilling to assume normal responsibilities, for then it simply encourages long-term dependency and government support of irresponsibility.

C. Finally, government sometimes must engage in long-term reform or regenerative policy. When healthy social functioning is largely absent and not merely disrupted temporarily, a different kind of policy is needed. Inner-city residents who are trapped in social degradation lack more than just money or food. Some never received a decent education or knew a stable home; some cannot work at an entry-level job, or see no point in doing so; some are unwilling to, or incapable of, assuming responsibility for their own children.

What is needed in this case is a longterm, regenerative strategy by which government helps to restore broken institutions—most of which are nongovernmental—to normal responsibility. In today's inner cities, families and schools especially need to be strengthened. Two fundamental reforms seem to us to be indispensable in this connection.

The first is to establish comprehensive school choice. If parents are to be held responsible for their children, they ought to be able to choose the schools their children attend. Choice for poor parents will become possible only when public funds for education accompany students to the school of choice—whether to a government-run school or to an independent (even religious) school. This will help to put the responsibility for child rearing back where it belongs and give parents the means with which to fulfill their responsibility.

A second fundamental reform should be to halt all discrimination in law against religious organizations that serve the poor. There is no legitimate reason why government should ignore or constrain groups whose assistance is inspired by religious convictions. When it comes to giving aid to devastated lives and communities, religious groups often prove to be the most important and valuable contributors to regeneration.

Poverty has many roots, so the fight against it must be conducted on many fronts. The roots of poverty are found in irresponsibilities: wrong choices both by the poor and by those who are not poor; schools that fail to educate; parents who violate their child-rearing covenant; businesses that discriminate unfairly; and, yes, governments that fail to do justice—that fail to uphold and restore the good order of society. The response to poverty, accordingly, should consist of strategies to restore and enforce the fulfillment of all these human responsibilities.

[Dr. Carlson-Thies, a Fellow of the Center for Public Justice, directs the Center's Welfare Responsibility project. Dr. Skillen is the Center's executive director.]