Poverty and welfare: does compassionate conservatism have a heart?

AuthorEdelman, Peter

2001 EDWARD C. SOBOTA MEMORIAL LECTURE(*)

Introduction by Martha Davis(***)

It is a great privilege to introduce Peter Edelman as the Sobota lecturer today. I have known Peter personally for a number of years through our work on economic justice and I've certainly known him by reputation for much longer than that. I don't want to go into detail about the impressive particulars of his career--they're set out in your program--but I do want to point out that Peter is unusual in that he has worked in all three branches of the federal government, as well as in state government. Here in Albany, he was the Director of the New York State Division for Youth in the late 1970s, so he has a connection to this town. Since 1982, he has been a professor at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., with the exception of a stint in the federal government, when he worked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton administration.

As you read Peter's bio in the program, it's striking how many times he has been in interesting places when things of significance are happening. I used to think, "What a lucky guy, he's always at the right place at the right time." And then a light bulb went off and I realized that that doesn't just happen. Nobody is just lucky like that. In fact, Peter is somebody who's making things happen. He's in these places when things are happening because he's the catalyst for thing the rest of us read about in the papers.

The entire nation had a chance to learn more about Peter's character when in 1996, he resigned from his position at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, rather than work on implementation of a welfare reform law signed by President Clinton, which Peter believed would deprive poor children and families of a safety net. Professor Edelman has received deserved recognition for taking this brave stand, along with his colleagues, Mary Jo Bane and Wendell Primus, who also resigned at that time. What is perhaps more important is what he has done since then. The public interest in his resignation gave him a chance to really speak out about this issue. He has taken that opportunity in a very energetic and committed way, that is extremely impressive to those of us in the activist community. Yes, Peter is back at Georgetown, but he is using his own bully pulpit to put forward a more humane vision of government's role in promoting economic justice. He is writing and speaking, and interacting with students, activists, and poor families themsevles. His latest contribution is the book which is mentioned in the program, Searching for America's Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope. I had the chance to look at it and it is an excellent account of the issues in economic justice, how they span the decades, and what we as a society should be thinking about as we try to formulate our goals for economic justice. This is incredibly important work that Peter is engaged in. It is a privilege to have him here and so please help me welcome him.

Peter Edelman

Thank you so much, Martha. I'm glad to be here. I am honored to deliver a lecture in memory of Edward Sobota, especially because such distinguished speakers have preceded me.

Our question here is: does compassionate conservatism have a heart? Almost five years have passed since the 1996 welfare law was enacted. So, we might ask, where are we and where are we going, and even more to the point, what are the prospects for better policy and outcomes on poverty generally? One American child in six is still poor, and the number of families in economic difficulty is much larger than that. That is the context in which we have a new president and a new administration.

Let me start with a little history, both about the welfare law and what has happened since it was enacted. We did need to reform this thing that we call welfare--cash assistance for families with children, what used to be called Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and is now Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF. It was not a satisfactory program. It was not helping families get out of poverty, it wasn't helping parents to find work, and it wasn't protecting children. We needed reform to do all those things, and in my view, we didn't do that. We went in the opposite direction. Nothing that has happened since that time changes my view that this is not real reform and we should not have enacted it into law.

Let me say quickly what this 1996 law did. It used to be the case that if you were a single parent with children and went to a welfare office, anywhere in America, federal law said you had to be afforded cash assistance. It might have been a small amount, depending on where you lived, because it was entirely up to the states how much they would pay, but you had to be helped. The new law changed that. It turned the structure into a block grant, which means each state gets a certain amount of money, and it can basically do whatever it wants, including not having a program at all. And, the :new law says that you can only help, with federal money, for a cumulative total of five years during the span of the upbringing of that mother's children. If she has three children over the space of six years, then we're talking about a period of twenty-four years that those three children are, growing up to the age of eighteen. They can only be helped for a total of five years out of the twenty-four years, even though the mother may go in and out of jobs, there may be need that has nothing to do with an...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT