The Silence of the Liberals.

• Author: DEPARLE, JASON
• Position: Liberals need to be more active in welfare reform

Conservatives are running the poverty debate. Here's why liberals should join it

If the memoirs of Dick Morris can be at all trusted, there occurred in the summer of 1996 a high-level conversation roughly along these lines: Angry, wavering president, railing at the Senate Majority Leader for placing punitive provisions in the welfare bill: "He loved cutting off children. You should have seen his face. He was delighted that he could savage them, delighted."

Wise adviser, taking the longer view: "If you sign this bill and don't screw up the rest of the campaign, I think you'll win by twelve to seventeen points. Then in your second term, you can ... provide the `opportunity' part of the equation by proposing a massive program of inner-city jobs for people getting off welfare."

Becalmed president, seeing the light: "That's a good point. It's a process, and we're just starting out."

Wise adviser, closing the deal: "I believe that your signing of this bill, coupled with the recent cuts in the crime rate, will usher in a sixties-like era of commitment to helping poor people ... This bill will hasten the process and will make possible a commitment to providing jobs and good schools for the inner city that was not possible before."

Upbeat president, glimpsing his place in history: "You really think this will improve racial attitudes, don't you?"

Wise adviser: "I do, and after you sign it, I think the turnaround will be self-evident."

Deal struck. Bill signed. Old welfare system dies.

What's interesting here is the political forecast. Outside the Oval Office, President Clinton's decision to sign the bill was seen as a watershed defeat for liberalism. Here was a Democratic president ending the entitlement program that had served poor children since the Great Depression (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) and replacing it with a regimen of time limits and work requirements. Morris claimed that the opposite was the case. By ending welfare, he said, Clinton wasn't rejecting liberalism; he was clearing the way for its rejuvenated influence over one of its central concerns, ghetto poverty.

As usual, Morris supported his argument with an exotic array of polls--these alleging that taxpayers would spend generously on the poor in a post-welfare era. He turned to the Dakotas, of all places, to bolster his case. After taking a survey of farm state voters, Morris told Clinton that 80 percent would be willing to surrender the ethanol subsidy to finance jobs for welfare recipients.

It's three years later--so how have things worked out? In some ways, Morris' predictions have proven surprisingly prescient. Just a year after signing the bill, Clinton got a Republican Congress to rescind some of its harshest aspects, particularly the reductions in aid to legal immigrants. He pushed through a $3 billion program to help the most disadvantaged people on welfare find work. And to some extent, as Morris hoped, "welfare" and "poverty programs" are no longer words that automatically turn the average American sour. No one's rushing to the Mall to sing "We Shall Overcome"--it's not that kind of "sixties-like era." But the civic climate has changed. Ten thousand businesses have joined an organization that promotes the hiring of welfare recipients. Church groups across the country are giving job applicants interview outfits. Chambers of Commerce are posting billboards that challenge the "myths" about people on welfare. For the first time in a long while, anti-poverty work seems to have a tailwind.

But the part of the Morris scenario that definitely has not come to pass is the resurgence of the liberal voice in the poverty debate. On the contrary, there's a bad case of liberal laryngitis going around. There was a time, not that long ago, when liberals were full of confident ideas about poverty. Feeding programs! Legal rights! Head Start! Housing vouchers! As recently as the early '90s, the policy journals and think tanks boiled with new ideas, minor and grand. Expand the earned income tax credit! Replicate the South Shore Bank! Bring back the WPA! Support microenterprise! Health security for all! But during the 1996 welfare debate confidence and creativity were replaced by apocalyptic warnings, and the tradition of liberal anti-poverty thought has yet to recover. If liberals still have a voice on this subject, it's a hoarse whisper, warning that the welfare bill may still leave children sleeping on grates.

The silence of the liberals is particularly unfortunate because this should be a moment of opportunity. The poverty rate is falling. Employment is reaching historic highs. Ghetto life, though still steeped in grief, is finally showing signs of improvement. With the deficit gone, there is money to spend for the first time in 30 years. Faith in government is on the rise. The first Democratic president in two generations (whatever his problems) is finishing his second term. Liberalism--whether neo- or paleo-, principled or poll-driven--has finally rejuvenated itself as a political movement, and...