Democrats helped build the social safety net. Why are many now opposed to expanding it?

Democrats today see themselves as the party that trusts evidence wherever it leads. This is why they invest heavily in science and technology and set up government weapons to translate this knowledge into action. But despite claiming to prioritize new ways to improve our society, Democrats don’t always act in ways that are rooted in research.

In fact, they are sometimes actively opposed to doing what the evidence says, especially when it comes to implementing policies that give financial benefits to people at the bottom of the totem pole of American society. It’s not always said out loud, but the reality is that some Democrats, and American voters in general, don’t have a high regard for the poor or people of color: there are countless examples of how society is ready to dehumanize them and how politicians struggle to address their needs in a meaningful way. These thinking patterns and misleading representations of marginalized people too often mean that the policies that could help them the most are being thwarted over and over again.

Such opposition, of course, is rarely framed in terms of antipathy or hostility towards a particular group. Instead, it is often framed as “rationality”, such as adhering to “fiscal conservatism”, especially among GOP members, who have long respected the views of small governments. But some Democrats aren’t really different. Consider President Biden’s reluctance to cancel student loan debt, or the federal government’s hesitation to provide a free community college, or West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin’s recent opposition to including the child tax credit in the Build Back Better plan, reportedly on the grounds that low-income people would use the money for drugs. Indeed, politicians across the political spectrum have found a number of scapegoats to use while arguing against expanding the social safety net, including playing on American fears of rising inflation rates. As a result, various programs that would help people, especially the poor and people of color, have become taboo.

What is striking, however, is that if you look at most of the research in the social sciences, you are investing in the social safety net. is fiscally responsible – pays large dividends for both individuals and our collective society. Economists have studied this for decades, finding that anti-poverty and cash assistance programs run both inside and outside the United States are linked to greater labor participation in the workforce, while investing in health benefits. childhood not only children, but the economy and society in general have grown. Additionally, new initiatives such as student debt cancellation could add up to 1.5 million jobs and lift over 5 million Americans out of poverty as well as free many Americans from the debt trap that is contributing to a lagging housing market. and the racial widening wealth gap. Other research suggests that those who are burdened with student loan debt would be more likely to marry or have children if their debts were forgiven.

This is the proof. Yet instead of acting accordingly, there has been a tendency to highlight stories and trophies about people who may be wasting the resources invested in them. And this is often enough to undermine public and political support for these policies. So what we are seeing today from some “moderate” Democrats is likely born of an inherent distrust of what might happen if only to give people’s money or help them through an expanded social safety net.

But if we look back to the not-too-distant past – less than a hundred years ago, in fact – we quickly see that the Democrats have not always opposed the distribution of money to support the welfare of Americans. In fact, former Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched safety net programs like Oprah allegedly gifted her favorite things. In response to the Great Depression, Roosevelt oversaw a massive expansion of the social safety net in the 1930s and 1940s, which included granting grants to states that implemented unemployment benefits, child support, and community funding. entrepreneurial and agricultural. Recognizing the importance of a safety net to protect people from “uncertainties caused by unemployment, illness, disability, death and old age,” the federal government also created social security, which at the time it believed to be vital to economic security. And in the 1960s, long after the Great Depression ended, the government created the Medicare program for similar reasons under former President Lyndon B. Johnson, another Democrat.

What is clear from these examples is that the federal government once understood the importance of a strong safety net for the health, well-being, and wider functioning of our society. The caveat, however, is that this general understanding does not extend to our way of thinking Alles Americans; the government supported these policies when most of the beneficiaries were white. But as people of color started actively using and benefiting from these same programs, they became harder to reach and, in some cases, openly racialized.

This was especially true in the 1970s and 1980s, when conservative and right-wing political candidates slandered Americans about welfare. During his initial presidential run, Ronald Reagan told stories and delivered numerous speeches centered around Linda Taylor, a black Chicago area welfare recipient dubbed a “welfare queen.” To eradicate anti-government and anti-poor resentment among his base, the then-future Republican president criminalized Taylor, repeating claims he had used “80 names, 30 addresses, 15 phone numbers to collect food stamps, social security , veterans’ benefits for four non-existent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare “as a way of signaling that some Americans – namely those of color – were playing the scheme to obtain certain benefits from the federal government. Reagan was not alone, however. Indeed, his harsh stance on alleged welfare fraud and government spending on social programs encompassed the conservative critique of big government liberalism at the time.

Even the Democrats, however, weren’t all that different. Former Democratic President Bill Clinton’s promise to “end welfare as we know it” in the 1990s included provisions such as requiring a certain percentage of welfare recipients to work or participate in vocational training. This helped to foster, in turn, the belief that there were people who obeyed the rules and others who didn’t (namely black Americans). And once politicians started worrying about (black) people taking advantage of the system, the requirements needed to acquire certain social and financial gains became even more difficult to achieve.

But all this implicit rhetoric about reducing government waste by cracking down on marginalized people doesn’t stand up to scrutiny when looking at the evidence. The reality is that fraud among the beneficiaries of social safety nets is extremely rare and far less costly to society than, for example, tax evasion among the top 1 percent. Yet we spend an incredible amount of money trying to catch and penalize the poor instead of helping them.

Furthermore, polls show that Americans, especially Democrats, overwhelmingly want to expand the social safety net. According to a 2019 Pew Research Center poll, a majority of Democrats and Democrats (59%) and 17% of Republicans and Republicans said the government should supply Moreover assistance to people in need. Also this October, at a time when Democrats were negotiating the size of the Omnibus Build Back Better Act, a CNN / SSRS poll found that 75% of party voters (and 6% of Republicans) preferred Congress to pass. a bill that expanded the social safety net and adopted climate change policies.

However, despite many Americans wanting an expansion of the social safety net, it is still often difficult to sell voters on these programs, especially if they are imprisoned in large political packages (e.g. Obamacare) or associated with someone the voters dislike (e.g. . Democratic President Barack Obama). Consider that a late last year Politico / Morning Consult poll found that only 39 percent of Americans who received the child tax credit said it had a “major impact” on their lives. Furthermore, only 38% of respondents accredited Biden for implementing the program.

The fact that many expansions of the social safety net are initially not popular makes it even easier for Democrats to fall back on the stories people tell each other about different groups of people and whether they deserve help. And sometimes, these representations influence the concerns we have about members of those groups and the explanations we generate as to why they experience the results they get in life. As previous expansions of the social safety net show, the US has not always been allergic to giving money to people, but now there seems to be this unspoken idea that the poor and people of color cannot be trusted to spend money. ” free “or good government assistance.

This thinking, however, poses a problem for Democrats because, for years, they have defined themselves as the party that promotes general welfare by promoting racial, economic and social justice. At the same time, they continue to fall short of the campaign’s promises to expand the social safety net despite many poor people and people of color fighting long and hard to put them in charge. The fact that so many Democrats today are still prisoners of old-fashioned clichés about who gets – or deserves – benefits from government is dangerous, because it causes people to push members of those groups out of their “moral circles” – the circle of people. who think they have a moral obligation to help.

Of course, breaking this chain of thinking will not be easy because it would require Democrats to break the long-standing mentality that the poor are in their current situation due to a series of “unfortunate” choices. It would also likely require them to stop worrying about how Republicans might falsely reformulate social safety nets programs as dangerous, especially given continuing concerns about inflation and the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. But at the end of the day, this shouldn’t matter: while the policy may not be immediately convenient and the effects of these programs are not immediately visible, this is not necessarily a reason to postpone implementation. Focusing solely on the short-term effects is not only shortsighted, but dangerous. And Democrats risk losing more of their base support if they refuse to act.

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