Blue Collar Conservatives: Recommitting to an America That Works (8 page)

The Clinton-era welfare reform would seem to be a bipartisan success story. But the Obama administration has reversed much of that achievement, particularly the work requirements
²¹
—a bad deal for taxpayers and for the welfare recipients themselves. The best welfare programs are transitional welfare programs, programs that provide incentives and opportunities to work.

Social Security and Medicare, which have essentially eliminated poverty among vulnerable seniors and the disabled, show that government has an important role. But the best welfare provider is not government, whose bureaucrats see bloated caseloads as justification for bigger budgets. No, the best welfare program is individuals, families, and communities helping each other.

Perverse incentives are by no means limited to welfare programs. When I was in Congress, we went after the cozy relationships in the boardrooms of public corporations that resulted in rich rewards for mediocre and even failed executive teams. Executives were often rewarded when they produced short-term shareholder gains at the expense of the long-term health of the enterprise. I had the privilege of serving on the
board of directors of a Fortune 500 company for five years after I left the Senate, and I saw for myself how these measures changed behavior in the boardroom. The regulations weren’t perfect—they were burdensome, costly, and in many areas ineffective—but the attention curbed some of the outrageous abuses when directors were publicly reminded that their duty is to shareholders, and dare I say employees, not the corporate brass.

Nevertheless, the culture of many large companies still encourages a short-term outlook and disproportionate rewards for executives at the expense of shareholders and workers. Business leaders are more richly rewarded in America than in almost any other country, and it’s hard to believe that
that
many of them are
that
good.

Welfare cheats aren’t the only ones who would benefit from a little stigma. A free economic order, like a free political order, requires a certain level of integrity throughout the system. The government can’t police every corporate act. The system relies on the honor and integrity of its participants—investors, directors, executives, and ordinary employees. The short-term, quick-buck mentality and the loose ethics that result from a materialistic “just do it” culture encourage investor scams and corporate malfeasance. Are the wolves of Wall Street responsible for welfare fraud? Yes, in part. In every civilization the elites have always set an example for the rest of society. When the average American sees that the result of
systemic corruption is billions of dollars in Wall Street bailouts of the banks that caused the financial meltdown and the resulting Great Recession, with only a handful of prosecutions, the message is delivered. This is what Pope Francis was referring to in his critique of “trickle-down” capitalism that is practiced in his native South America. Crony capitalism and corruption undermine the trust that is necessary for a free economy to create jobs and economic security.

The growing disparity between rich and poor is part of a broader trend we might call cultural Balkanization. Americans increasingly associate with people of like mind and like income. In the news we follow, the entertainment we consume, the churches we worship in, and the neighborhoods we live in, we tend to see and hear people a lot like ourselves.
²²
In the cities and towns of our country, there were always two sides of the tracks. You came from one side or the other, but you were separated from the people on the other side by a railroad track, not a gated community twenty miles from the other neighborhood. We long ago lost the village where rich and poor lived within walking distance of each other. Now we are separated not just by zoning and planned developments but by fear and envy.

People in a Balkanized society don’t understand each other and don’t have empathy for each other. In the America I grew
up in, the union worker and the lawyer attended the same church, ate at the same restaurants, went to the same doctor and dentist, golfed at the same public course, read the same newspaper, drank Iron City beer, and watched
M
*
A
*
S
*
H
and the evening news with either Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley.

Now the wealthy worship in a superparish or megachurch in the suburbs as the old city churches crumble. How many average-income, working Americans do you see at fancy restaurants or country clubs? Do you read the
Wall Street Journal
or the
New York Times
or just the local paper? Can you afford the craft beers, or do you have a Bud? Do you watch Hallmark or HBO? MSNBC or Fox News? Sure, there were choices in the past, but we are far more segmented now. Many of the divisions are determined by wealth, and that isn’t a good thing.

Recently, I debated Howard Dean at Northwestern University. We were asked what America’s greatest virtue is. He answered, “Diversity.” Diversity can be good or bad, but it’s not necessarily a virtue for society; it is, in fact, a challenge. “E pluribus unum,” the motto the Founding Fathers chose for their new nation, expresses something essential for its survival. “Out of many, one”—the United States was a joint venture undertaken by a people representing varied backgrounds. The role of any government is to fashion laws that help us get along with each other so we can reach our full potential—our American Dream.

In America today, the economic elite are clustered in places like Manhattan, Boston, the suburbs north of Chicago, the Bay Area, pockets of Southern California, and Northwest Washington, D.C. These are the places where people who funded the campaigns of both President Obama and Governor Romney live. The people there shop at Whole Foods, listen to National Public Radio, and read the
New Yorker
. If they drink beer, it’s imported or micro-brewed. They may follow the local professional sports franchises, but they’re just as likely to spend their time doing yoga or collecting wine. They are more likely to spend Sunday morning at Starbucks than at church. Their children will have every possible advantage—good schools, the best healthcare, safe neighborhoods, lots of activities, and exposure to many role models and good examples.
²³

Most of America doesn’t live like this, of course. Most of America shops at Sam’s Club, drinks Coors, likes to hunt or fish, and goes to church or the American Legion. In his important book
Coming Apart: The State of White America
,
1960
–
2010
, Charles Murray details the economic and social distress of blue collar Americans at a time when elites are prospering as never before. You’ll find Murray’s “New Upper Class” in places like “Belmont,” the fictional town that represents the suburban enclaves of the wealthy and highly educated. The “New Lower Class” reside in neighborhoods represented by “Fishtown,” the deteriorating home of people with no college
degree who are sliding down the economic ladder. In Belmont, says Murray, the work ethic, families, and community spirit have held up or even improved over the years. In Fishtown they’re all weaker, and the town is caught in a downward spiral. The social problems that result from deteriorating communities—teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, incarceration—get worse with each new generation. If you’re born to a poor single mother who has dropped out of school, the odds are enormously stacked against you.

People like James and Susan Harrison live in Fishtown, of course. The once-proud community of Italian, Polish, and black families has deteriorated with its citizens’ work ethic. They seem to have lost what it takes to hold together a hardworking but secure life. The decline starts with the loss of a job, followed by the inability to send their kids to college, divorce, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, single-mother households, food stamps, and a new generation of children with little potential to achieve anything.

The experience of the Harrisons has been studied in depth, and we know what predicts whether someone will live in poverty. During my campaign for president, I often cited a study from the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank, which found that if you do these three things, it’s very unlikely that you’ll end up in poverty: graduate from high school, get
a full-time job, and wait until you are married to have children. Only 8 percent of the people who do all three end up in poverty.
²⁴
And those who don’t do all three? Seventy-nine percent of them are poor sooner or later. That’s a pretty startling statistic, right? Graduate, get a job, and wait until you’re married to have kids. That’s pretty much what separates the rich from the poor in our country.

But too many kids in communities that have suffered economically are failing to take those basic steps, in part because of a culture that promotes premarital sex and a president whose biggest campaign issue was free contraception to everyone, particularly unmarried young girls. Children of teenage mothers are much more likely to slip into the behavior that keeps them from graduating from high school, holding a job, and getting married. And on and on and on it goes. It’s heartbreaking, yet the president and his party, who will do nothing about the crisis themselves, denounce any attempt to address it as a “war on women.”

The real Fishtowns—the faded communities across America like my hometown of Butler, Pennsylvania—have lost jobs because of foreign competition and offshore labor, bad corporate and union leadership, and neglectful elected officials. To make ends meet, the people in those towns have been left to retail and service-sector jobs that offer fewer hours and no
benefits. Or they rely on public assistance, in some cases becoming permanently dependent.

Since 2009, 14.7 million people have been added to the food stamp rolls, while only a few hundred thousand net new jobs have been created. The staggering fact is that we have added seventy-five new food stamp recipients for every new job.
²⁵
And the burden on taxpayers to fund this expansion of welfare is growing dangerously.