Who Speaks for the Poor: National Interest Groups and Social Policy (Politics and Policy in American Institutions)

WHO SPEAKS FOR THE POOR?

WHO SPEAKS FOR THE POOR? National Interest Groups and Social Policy

R.Allen Hays

Routledge New York & London/2001

Published in 2001 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group. This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. Copyright © 2001 by R.Allen Hays All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hays, R.Allen, 1945– Who speaks for the poor: national interest groups and social policy/R. Allen Hays. p. cm.—(Politics and Policy in American institutions) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8153-3075-8 1. Pressure groups—United States. 2. Economic assistance, Domestic— United States. 3. United States—Social policy. I. Title. II. Garland reference library of social science. III. Politics and policy in American institutions. JK1118.H37 2000 322.4’3’0973—dc21 00-044254 ISBN 0-203-90683-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-90761-2 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-8153-3075-8 (Print Edition)

Contents

Acknowledgments Series Editor’s Foreword

vii ix

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

3

CHAPTER 2 Interest Groups in American Politics

19

CHAPTER 3 Poverty and Political Action

39

CHAPTER 4 Interest Groups in Social Policy

95

CHAPTER 5 Interest Groups and the Policy Process

149

CHAPTER 6 Mobilizing the Poor

213

Appendix References Index

237 255 271

v

Acknowledgments

I

would like to thank the Graduate College of the University of Northern Iowa for providing a Professional Development Leave for the completion of this book, as well as several small, but essential, research grants. I would also like to thank all of the busy staff members of the social policy interest groups that took time to respond to my survey. In addition, I would like to thank Lanette Watson, Judy Schreiber, Amanda Brant, Tina Haines, and many others who provided the research and clerical support that were essential to the completion of this work. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Pam, and our two sons, Mark and Michael, for their patience and support during the many hours of work and the mercurial mood swings that accompanied the writing of this book.

vii

Series Editor’s Foreword

T

he series, “Politics and Policy in American Institutions” strives to show the interaction of American political institutions within the context of public policy making. A public policy approach often by definition is all encompassing. Admittedly, my own interests focus on national policy making but the series will also include works on all levels of government. Indeed, I do not want my own specialties to define the series. Therefore, we seek solid scholarship incorporating a wide range of actors, including those outside the usual definition of government actors. The policy concerns, too, are potentially quite broad, with special interests in the policy process and such substantive issue areas as foreign and defense policy, economic and budget policy, health care, social welfare, racial politics, and the environment. The series will publish a considerable range of works, ranging from upper division texts to scholarly monographs, including both hard and soft cover editions. In this innovative fifth volume in the series, Al Hays raises all of the important questions about who speaks for the poor. Some might think that this would be a very short book because the poor seem unrepresented, but Hays effectively illustrates the considerable indirect representation that occurs by interest groups on three sub-issues of social policy: housing, nutrition, and welfare. Who Speaks for the Poor? is a valuable scholarly effort that makes effective use of often elusive data on the role of interest groups in policymaking. Hays provides a provocative study of interest groups activity over twenty-eight years of social policymaking in the U.S. Who Speaks for the Poor? is well grounded in policy and interest group theory and the hypotheses allow for empirical analysis. Hays makes effective use of mailed surveys and interest group testimony before congressional committees. The book provides empirical data on interest group activity, influence, and how representation of the poor could be more effective. He provides invaluable evidence (through descriptive statistics and bivariate correlation and regression) of how the frequency of testimony relates to influence in policymaking. Despite considerable ix

x

Foreword

literature arguing that the poor are unlikely to be politically organized, this volume sees the possibilities for several electoral connections between interest groups and the poor. Al Hays’s important work is an invaluable study that met the promise I saw when Routledge signed this book several years ago. Hays develops reasonable hypotheses and his comparison of five types of interest groups across three sub-issues of social policy shows the value of data disaggregation. Indeed, he finds considerable variation by type of interest group actor and issue-area. Who Speaks for the Poor? is extremely well written, making use of empirical analysis but without being inaccessible. This serious book should appeal to graduate students and is must reading for scholars of interest groups, political behavior, and public policy. Steven A.Shull

WHO SPEAKS FOR THE POOR?

Chapter One

Introduction

T

he central question that this book addresses is, “How do the interests of the poor gain representation in the political process?” The poor are widely perceived as uninvolved and virtually powerless, and there is plenty of empirical evidence that most measures of political participation and influence decrease as socio-economic status decreases. (Scholzman and Tierney 1986; Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980; Scholzman, Verba and Brady 1995). However, the needs of the poor do get attention from policy-makers. The federal government currently spends a substantial, albeit declining, amount on programs directed at their needs. Do the poor speak for themselves in demanding this attention, or do others speak for them? Does government action aimed at the poor flow directly from concern for their needs, or do their needs get met as a byproduct of other concerns? These issues are addressed by examining what might seem to be the most improbable mechanism for the expression of the needs of the poor—the interest group system. Most of the evidence suggests that mobilizing any collection of citizens in an organized group that can exercise sustained pressure on the national government is a formidable task, requiring organizers to amass substantial financial resources and to overcome the potent psychological barriers to participation implicit in what Mancur Olson identified as the “free rider” problem (Olson 1965). Since the poor are, by definition, a group possessing few of the resources necessary for group formation, their lack of representation in the interest group system would seem to be so “over-determined” as to require little investigation. One could safely assume that they have little or no representation and move on to another question. However, even a casual perusal of the abstracts of congressional hearings published by the Congressional Information Service (CIS Index and Abstracts 1970–99) shows that the drafting of major legislation affecting the poor is accompanied by a chorus of voices. Dozens of interest groups testify, and a closer examination shows that most of them are speaking on behalf of programs benefitting the poor. As shall be 3

4

Who Speaks for the Poor?

shown in detail in subsequent chapters, most of these voices are not those of the poor themselves, but there are clearly numerous organizations and coalitions who find it in their interests to advocate for these programs. Many organized voices are raised on behalf of the poor. Even if one acknowledges that numerous groups are expressing the needs of the poor for government action, the question remains whether or not these group activities have any impact on the making of social policy. The term “social policy” commonly refers to programs that have as their principal purpose the amelioration of the problems of those citizens on the lower end of the economic ladder. The formation of such policies is a complex and contentious process, upon which a variety of forces can be observed to act. Therefore, as one observes the activities of these groups one must also address the question of how the demands of organized groups speaking on behalf of the poor fit into the total process by which social policy is formed. A key dimension of the influence of such groups is whether or not their demands are seen as legitimate by other actors in the policy process. It is fundamental to the notion of representative government that groups of citizens can bring their problems to the attention of those with the authority to make decisions, and that they can compel the government to act on those problems if they can convince a majority of the representative body that their request is justified. Citizens back up their requests with the universally shared right to vote, which can potentially be used to remove decision-makers from office. Modern representative governments are constantly bombarded with citizen requests for action on any number of questions, from saving the “unborn” to saving the spotted owl. In an important sense, the requests of the poor for attention to their problems would seem to be a natural and legitimate part of this process. However, requests for action on behalf of the poor encounter serious problems with legitimacy because of another element in American political culture and ideology, the notion that even a government representing the majority of the people should have limited powers to intervene in the society that it governs. The English philosopher John Locke argued that the purpose of government was to secure the natural right of individuals to the enjoyment of their private property, a right which existed in the “state of nature” before government was formed. (Ebenstein 1964; Wolin 1960; Locke 1952). As the capitalist economic system grew alongside representative governmental institutions, and as economists like Adam Smith began to argue for the virtues of a free market operating in the absence of governmental controls, the Lockean paradigm of limited government was interpreted to mean that government should not interfere with the market’s allocation of goods

Introduction

5

and services and should not attempt to ameliorate the substantial inequalities of wealth generated by the market. Followers of Karl Marx argued that the inequality and oppressive control flowing out of the ownership of private property by a few in the economic realm was so great as to render representative democracy a sham, and they saw no relief for the poverty of the workers but total overthrow of the capitalist system (Feuer 1957). However, the actual history of developed capitalist systems has witnessed a series of struggles by those less advantaged by the outcomes of the market system to make claims for amelioration of their condition through the democratic political process. The more privileged members of society have resisted these demands, using the philosophical justification of Lockean limits on the power of government over private property, even though they, too, have sought government interventions in the economy (such as public subsidies for economic development) when it served their interests. In sum, the demands of the poor for the improvement of their condition have been the special objects of controversy because they challenge both the material inequality thought by many to be necessary for the operation of capitalism and because they challenge the limits of government power under the “social contract.” In spite of the resistance of many powerful elements in society to the expansion of government efforts to ameliorate inequality, every advanced capitalist country has developed a collection of social programs designed to do just that, generally referred to by the term “welfare state,” which was coined in Great Britain after World War II. An extensive body of scholarship has established that the emergence of social policy has many similarities across countries, but that the process in each country has its own unique pattern and timing (Wilensky 1975; Skocpol 1995). Therefore, one must view the current activities of interest groups on behalf of the poor in the context of the overall process of the development of social policy, including all of the many forces that have contributed to it. In the United States, social policies emerged later at the national level and currently remain less extensive than in many other countries. In part, this was because there was no strong, unified working class party that could push for these changes. However, in no country has the pressure for social policy development come entirely from working class parties. There have always been more privileged members of society who believed that such programs were necessary for the stability of the whole system. Therefore, in the United States, as elsewhere, one needs to understand the whole collection of social, economic, and institutional factors that have contributed to the current state of such policies. The activities of interest groups flow out of this total context.

6

Who Speaks for the Poor?

DO INTEREST GROUPS MATTER? Much of the literature on social policy has focused on the broad macrolevel changes in politics and economics that spawned major governmental commitments in this area, rather than on the details of the struggle over particular pieces of legislation (Skocpol [1995] provides a comprehensive review). One might draw the conclusion from this literature that careful analysis of the activity of a particular collection of interest groups on a particular measure before Congress is not that important in understanding how social policy emerges. Perhaps these activities only relate to micro-level adjustments in policies that are driven by other forces. However, there is danger in drawing such a conclusion prematurely if one does not actually look at what groups are active and what these groups do. This book aims to fill a gap in the social policy literature by providing a systematic analysis of interest group activity over an extended period of time (28 years) during which several major pieces of social legislation were enacted and some others failed to be enacted, despite great expectations of change. However, before one can draw any conclusions about whether interest groups matter in social policy, one must consider how much interest groups matter in any area of American public policy. Given the beehive of interest group activity that swarms between the K Street Corridor, Capitol Hill, and the various Executive Branch agencies in Washington, D.C., it would seem an obvious conclusion that all this activity must have some impact. Yet the extent of the impact of interest groups has been a matter of extensive debate within the political science literature. Arthur Bentley (1908) helped launch the empirical study of political science in the early decades of the twentieth century with the assertion that by understanding the interaction of groups one could understand the entire political process. Subsequent scholars have reacted by either modifying or rejecting his total reliance on interest groups as the driving force of politics, but a generally agreed-upon paradigm for the overall role of such groups has yet to emerge (Baumgartner and Leech 1998). Although no paradigm has been accepted, this book will attempt to glean from the literature some consistent generalizations about the overall role of interest groups before examining how they might function in the social policy arena. Perhaps a better way to frame the question is not whether interest groups matter but how they fit into the total policy-making process. There are obviously many forces that shape the direction of public policy. New policy demands usually flow out of social and economic changes that put stress on individuals or on whole social strata. Interest groups are spawned by these changes, and the configuration of groups says much

Introduction

7

about the problems that various elements of society are experiencing. However, organized interest groups are not the only result of such pressures. Political parties can be transformed by these same processes, and how they respond determines their relative strength or weakness among the electorate. The specific actions and proposals of organized interest groups emerge within this broader context of electoral coalitions. In addition, governmental actors are not merely passive recipients of interest group pressure, as some earlier models suggested. They take positions that they believe will maximize their influence, and they try to bend and mold both public opinion and interest group pressures to gain support for their strategies and proposals. Historical examples abound in which public officials have, in effect, created the interest groups that then became supporters of their programs (McConnell 1966; Wilson 1982). Decision-makers are also influenced by the shape of the policy apparatus that has emerged from prior decisions. How the federal government responds is often shaped by the responses previously generated by state and local governments or how existing national programs have allocated resources and power among various institutions. Interest groups often find themselves manipulated by public officials or overburdened by the weight of past history. However, none of this means that interest groups lack an important role to play in the policy-making process. They represent the focused energies of various collections of citizens directed at issues of special concern to them. In the rather fragmented decision-making system that exists at the federal level, there are many points at which effective pressure can be exerted. And, as political parties have weakened over the last thirty years, both as organizational engines of electoral success and as objects of loyalty among voters, interest groups have been presented with better opportunities to influence the electoral process directly (Wattenberg 1986). Interest groups rarely get everything they want, but where they are active it is unlikely that their influence is negligible. Closely related to the role of interest groups in shaping the overall political process is the question of how interest groups create a connection between the individual citizen and the polity. In the last fifteen years, there has been increasing concern among scholars and other social commentators about the alienation of the individual from politics and from civic life in general. As voting turnout has declined, and as citizens have expressed higher levels of distrust and cynicism about government and the political process, a variety of voices have spoken out about the need to re-establish a vital connection between citizens and government. (Benjamin Barber [1998] has been among the most eloquent of these voices.) This problem of political connectedness is often viewed in the context of a larger problem of the

8

Who Speaks for the Poor?

engagement of the citizen in the community, or civic life, as a whole. Communitarians decry what they see as the “hyper-individualism” of the current age, which places all human development in the strictly private, personal realm and which ignores the vital role of mutual support, shared obligations, and community involvement in the full realization of human potential. (Bellah et al. 1985; Elshtain 1995; Etzioni 1983) Other scholars, such as Robert Putnam (1995, 1998) and James Coleman (1988), stress the vital role of “social capital,” i.e., the informal network of social relationships of mutuality and trust, in enabling formal institutions to function properly. In the United States, both scholars and the general public have often been sharply divided in their views of the role of interest groups in connecting citizens to government. On the one hand, the pluralist tradition has argued that interest groups are the key to the functioning of democracy in a complex society and to the responsiveness of government to its citizens (Dahl 1971). According to some writers in this tradition, the ability of citizens to create organized groups that represent their interests allows them to make their views heard, while it avoids the dangers of mass participation led by demagogues (Kornhauser 1959). On the other hand, it is a staple of American political rhetoric to denounce interest groups as narrow “special interests” that corrupt the political process by crowding out the views of ordinary citizens and by preventing the development of policies in the more general “public interest.” Many scholars have reached similar conclusions, either by examining the strong class bias in the interest group system (Schattschneider 1960; Scholzman and Tierney 1986) or by looking at the domination of policy areas by narrow, specialized interests (McConnell 1966; Lowi 1979). Most of the historical concerns with interest groups focus on whether or not each individual citizen has a reasonable chance of finding and joining one or more interest groups to formally represent his or her most vital concerns before the relevant decision-makers in an effective manner, especially at the national level. To the extent that this access is unequal, then the outcomes of the policy process will be biased against those left out. However, scholars concerned with community or social capital raise the additional question of whether this mode of representation is capable of creating a vital connection between the citizen, the community, and the polity. Pluralist scholars assumed that citizens wanted to spend most of their time on private matters, and were perfectly content to leave the public representation of their concerns to the activist elites that inevitably form within the groups they belonged to. Scholars concerned with civic engagement offer an alternative model of meaningful citizen engagement in which: (1) the local arena is the most meaningful point of contact between the citizen and the polity because it allows for direct, face to face

Introduction

9

engagement; (2) the concerns of the citizen are expressed in a holistic context of the betterment of the community, not as narrow individualistic concerns about getting a bigger share of the pie; and (3) the citizen develops more fully as a human being through active involvement rather than simply by providing votes and/or financial support to others who make the decisions. From this point of view, the interest group system is pathological not just because it fails to provide a balanced representation of interests but because it stresses narrow, single issue concerns over broader community interests and because it encourages passivity among the vast majority of those citizens that it purports to represent. Whether or not one totally accepts the communitarian/social capital arguments, they do raise important concerns about the role of interest groups. Some contemporary interest groups have active, grass roots components, but in most, the individual member is basically a check writer, who is stirred into parting with $25–$100 by mass mailings citing dramatic statistics on abortions, telling poignant stories of deaths from hand guns, or showing bloody pictures of bludgeoned baby seals. This individual is typically middle to upper middle class, with sufficient education to tune into abstract national issues and sufficient financial surplus to make such contributions possible. In addition, many interest groups do not represent individuals at all, but rather institutions, such as corporations or government agencies, that can utilize their organizational resources or compel contributions from individual employees to support their collective goals. These facts provide a sound empirical basis for serious concerns about the level of representation and engagement for all citizens that national interest groups offer. Nevertheless, policy-making at the national level vitally affects the interests of all citizens, and balanced interest group representation at that level is essential if the needs of all citizens are to be reflected in policy outcomes. If individuals find it more meaningful to participate at the local level, then the issue becomes how those local activities are to be linked to representation at the national level. This is a question of special importance to the poor, who because of their limited resources are even more dependent on local modes of organization than are more affluent, educated citizens. If they are to be mobilized to the maximum effect, it must begin at the local level of politics, because this is the only way that their alienation from politics can be overcome and their limited resources effectively pooled. The data presented in this work do not enable a complete treatment of this issue, but it will be raised in connection with the indirect nature of the national representation that the poor receive.

10

Who Speaks for the Poor?

INTEREST GROUPS IN SOCIAL POLICY In assessing the role of organized interest groups in social policy, the most fundamental questions are “Who?” “What?” and “Why?” First, who is active? What groups do we find that take positions on social policy issues and push those positions vigorously before decision-makers? The existing literature suggests that few organizations directly composed of the poor will be found at the national level but one may glean from this literature five types of groups that may be active on behalf of social programs: (1) groups representing public providers of services to the poor; (2) groups representing private providers of services to the poor: (3) intergovernmental groups representing sub-national units of government; (4) public interest groups composed of middle class citizens concerned about specific problems of the poor; and, (5) groups that have a generalized interest in promoting the government’s role in social policy, including labor groups, religious groups, groups representing the elderly, and groups representing racial or ethnic minorities. In this book, the nature and extent of activities by each of these five categories of groups will be examined empirically, utilizing the testimony of groups before Congress. The question of “Why?” will be answered by examining the reasons why each of these five types of groups might get involved. These reasons can be gleaned from an understanding of the overall position in society of such groups and from their statements about what drives their involvement in these issues. The motives of public and private service providers are the most obvious; their livelihoods and sense of purpose derive from providing assistance to the poor. Intergovernmental groups are motivated by the important role that federal funding plays in resolving their fundamental fiscal dilemma in supporting social programs, namely, that while social problems inflict real costs on states and localities, the ability of the latter to support efforts to alleviate these problems is constrained by: (1) their need to remain competitive in attracting mobile capital and mobile residents; and (2) by the unequal distribution of tax bases across localities. Supporters of public interest groups are motivated by what Wilson (1973) calls “purposive” incentives; i.e, the goal of making the society “better” in terms of some general set of personal values. For a variety of reasons, many middle class citizens have embraced the amelioration of specific problems suffered by the poor, such as poor nutrition or poor housing, as goals that they believe will improve society. Finally, members of “generalist” groups are motivated by two different types of goals. Some, such as religious groups, have embraced an overall purposive incentive of aid to the poor as creating a more just society. Others belong to some larger segment of society that has been disproportionately affected by poverty, such as the

Introduction

11

elderly, the disabled, or people of color. Labor unions also belong in this category because they represent an overall working class interest in reducing the risks of poverty. Finally, there is the question of how these groups attempt to influence public policy. What strategies do they use to influence decision-makers? What alliances to they form? Do these groups constitute a stable policy community, or are they merely a loose collection of entities that shows up when a particular issue is being debated? Answers to these questions will be gleaned from two surveys administered to the most active groups, as well as from the content of their testimony before Congress. In answering all of these questions, it is important not to assume automatically that “social policy” constitutes a single policy arena, with a collection of groups that are active on all issues that might fall within this designation. Different social policies may attract different sets of groups and display different configurations of group activity. Therefore, three distinct areas of social policy will be examined in this work: housing policy, food and nutrition policy, and welfare (cash assistance) policy. The food and housing policy arenas were selected because they involve government assistance in the provision of two of the basic necessities of life, and this assistance has taken the form of in-kind support targeted specifically at food and shelter needs, rather than general cash support. Therefore, this renders each of them a potentially distinct policy arena. Federal cash assistance to the poor (which is what is commonly meant when the term “welfare” is used in American political discourse) has been dominated historically by the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program and has been an especially conflict-ridden area of social policy. It is a matter to be established by empirical observation whether the same or different groups are active in each of these three areas. Simply documenting the types of groups that are active in social policy is an important empirical undertaking that has not previously been done comprehensively in either the interest group or the social policy literature. However, such documentation supports three broader goals. The first is to assess the amount of interest group energy and attention that is given to social policy issues. These data will show the full extent and nature of the mobilization that has occurred around these issues. The second is to assess what influence this mobilization has had. This is a very difficult undertaking and one that is not fully addressed in this work, but some general conclusions will be drawn from case studies of particular policy decisions presented in chapter 5. The third goal is to raise questions about how the representation of the poor might become more effective. Would direct mobilization of the poor improve the effectiveness of the representation of their interests at the national level, and how might such a mobilization occur? These questions are addressed in chapter 6.

12

Who Speaks for the Poor?

RESEARCH DESIGN Interest Groups An important initial step in studying interest group activities is to define what one means by an interest group. Typically, one thinks of an interest group as a group of citizens (or organizations) with shared interests or concerns getting together to form an organization that attempts to influence public policy. However, there are a number of organizational entities that are active in social policy that do not fit this definition. For example, some organizations do not have formal membership rosters; they essentially consist of small, professional staffs that develop expertise in a particular issue area and advocate certain positions. They may derive support from solicitation of funds from foundations and from sympathetic citizens, but they lack a formal membership structure. If an organization carries out research and advocacy on a number of issues, it begins to cross a fuzzy line into the realm of “think tanks,” or independent policy research organizations. Think tanks were originally set up to provide “objective” analysis of complex public policy issues for public decision-makers or other clients. However, at the national level, many of these organizations have come to be identified with particular political points of view; that is, they are thought of as generally liberal, conservative or moderate. This political polarization became even more prominent in the 1970s when a series of avowedly conservative think tanks were set up to counter the perceived liberal biases of existing policy analysts. These organizations do not see themselves as engaged in lobbying or political pressure of any kind, and yet they can be relied upon to present particular points of view to Congress on a wide range of issues. For purposes of this work, the term “interest group” will be broadly defined to include any national issue advocacy organization, regardless of whether or not it possesses a formal membership structure. Specialized advocacy organizations and think tanks do act as representatives of a particular point of view towards public policy and, thus, are voices for broad groups of citizens who share that point of view. They often supply data and other technical support to sympathetic groups that are in a more overt advocacy role. They are a highly visible presence within the “group universe” that surrounds just about any issue. To make the study more manageable, the analysis will be confined to national interest groups. There are certainly many more actors on the national stage in social policy than those groups that explicitly define themselves as national in scope. State and local agencies and associations, private non-profit and for-profit organizations, regional groups, and individual citizens often become directly involved, without the mediation of any national group. Some data will be presented on these actors in

Introduction

13

Chapter 4. However, the participation of these groups and individuals was not consistent enough over time to discern clear patterns, and their inclusion would have generated thousands of additional data points that would have obscured genuinely national patterns of influence. Therefore, they will not be central to this analysis. Hearing Data This investigation of interest group involvement and influence in food, housing and welfare policy has utilized four data sources. The first consists of data from the Congressional Information Service Index and Abstracts (1970–97) on testimony before congressional committees. The purpose of analyzing these data is to establish which groups are most actively involved in each area. It is recognized that, in addition to public testimony, interest groups engage in many activities intended to influence public policy. Among these are informal contacts with legislators and their staffs; informal contacts with Executive Branch officials; participation in research and task forces; campaign contributions; and the use of the media to dramatize issues. Therefore, it must be clearly emphasized that the use of this measure is not intended to suggest that public testimony is the only, or even the most important, means by which groups try to exert influence. Yet, even though testimony is only part of any group’s total effort, it is a good indicator of group activity because it is regularly used to convey group positions to Congress and the public. Since legislators view hearings as an important device for the public to make their case in support of legislation, it is difficult to imagine an active group which would not make use of this forum on a regular basis, no matter how many other methods they also use to exert influence. Schneier and Gross (1993) observe that interest groups believe it imperative to make their presence known whenever Congress invites public input on legislation through hearings. An extensive study of interest groups in health and energy policy by Laumann and Knoke (1987) reinforces this point. They found not only that testimony is a valid indicator of group activity but that it is superior to other indicators such as media coverage, since press coverage of any particular group is infrequent and episodic, whereas testimony is a regular part of the legislative process. Hearing data were examined for the years 1970–97. This long time period was chosen to compensate for short-term fluctuations in interest group activity resulting from the cycles of legislative action in their area. In food policy, those hearings were chosen which had as their primary topic (or as a major topic among others) programs addressing the nutritional

14

Who Speaks for the Poor?

problems of low income persons. These included food stamps, the WIC Program, nutrition programs for the elderly, and child nutrition programs such as school lunches and breakfasts. In housing, hearings were selected which dealt with programs specifically directed at the housing problems of low income persons, including: public housing; Section 8; vouchers; rural housing programs; and housing assistance for the elderly. In welfare policy, hearings were chosen that dealt directly with the structure and financing of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (replaced by the Temporary Aid to Needy Families [TANF] block grant program in 1996) or with various social service programs targeted at AFDC recipients. In most cases, the hearings selected were only a subset of a larger group of hearings dealing with the general topic of housing, food or cash assistance. After identifying the hearing as on the topic of food, housing or cash assistance, a second criterion for selection was employed; namely, whether or not the hearings were focused on programs that directly benefitted a low income clientele. The purpose was to insure that direct benefits to the poor were the principal focus of the hearings selected. Both food and housing programs are handled by the congressional committees which handle other federal efforts to subsidize or regulate the production of these necessities for the society as a whole. In the United States Senate, food stamps, the WIC program and school lunches are under the jurisdiction of the Subcommittee on Nutrition and Investigations of the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee. In the House, food stamps are handled by the counterpart agricultural subcommittee, while WIC and other child nutrition programs are handled by the Education and Labor Committee (renamed the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities in the 104th Congress). Low income housing programs are under the control of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Development of the House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs and of its Senate counterpart. This location in the Banking Committees reflects the crucial role that credit plays in housing production. Basic questions concerning the structure and financing of the AFDC program were most often addressed in the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. The program was placed under the jurisdiction of these two revenue committees because the entitlement status of this program (until 1996) created a financial obligation on the part of the federal government. However, other committees concerned with social policy, such as the House Education and Labor Committee, have also been involved. In no case are these the sole arenas for legislative action. The Budget Committees and the relevant Appropriations subcommittees are important. The House Government Operations and the Senate Government Affairs Committees also exercise important oversight

Introduction

15

functions over all three sets of programs. Finally, select committees such as the Committee on Aging and the Committee on Hunger and Nutrition have frequently highlighted problems and issues. Nevertheless, most key decisions are made in the subcommittees with substantive jurisdiction. Group Survey In the second phase of the study, a questionnaire was sent to the groups identified as most active by the hearing data. To insure that all relevant groups were tapped by this survey, very liberal criteria for inclusion were used. In food and welfare, testimony on three or more occasions during the 28 year period studied was sufficient to get a group included in the survey. In housing, because of the much higher overall level of testimony, a stricter criterion of 5 appearances was used. There were also groups identified whose activities were spread over all three areas. Mailed surveys were administered to all groups. One section of the survey contained a series of questions concerning the group’s activities in attempting to influence legislation. This section was common to all survey instruments. Another section dealt with their perceptions of the influence of other groups and about their frequency of contact with the other groups. This had the same format in all surveys, but the group list was changed to reflect the policy area in which the group was involved. Both telephone and mailed follow-ups were used, but the overall response rate was a disappointing 49 percent. The length of the survey instrument may have lowered the response rate. In addition, even though the word lobbying was not used anywhere in the survey, some groups seemed very reluctant to be associated in any way with political activities (especially after recent efforts in Congress to restrict such activities by non-profit organizations) and so they refused to return the survey. Nevertheless, the groups responding provide a sufficient cross-section of active groups to get a reasonably accurate view of their activities. The results of this 1998 survey will also be compared to the results of similar surveys administered to groups active in housing and food in 1990. These survey instruments were almost identical to the ones used in 1998. Thus, it is possible to make valid comparisons that will provide a sense of the stability of group activities over time. Group Characteristics To avoid making the survey even more lengthy, questions on group characteristics were not included. Instead, other existing sources were utilized to determine important group characteristics such as the age of the group, the size and composition of its membership, the size of its staff, and its budget. The

16

Who Speaks for the Poor?

most useful source was Gale’s Encyclopedia of Associations, which provides summary characteristics of thousands of voluntary associations, both political and non-political, and which is updated annually. In addition, a significant proportion of the active groups had web sites. These were a useful source for some information omitted by Gale’s Encyclopedia. They were also useful in gaining a general picture of the group’s direction and philosophy, since groups tend to distill and present on the web information that they most want to communicate to the public about themselves. Analysis of Testimony The fact that groups appear before Congress is simply an indicator of the overall activity level of interest groups, but the content of their testimony reveals some of their strategies in making their case for legislative action. Therefore, Congressional Information Service Abstracts were used to sample transcripts of testimony by various types of interest groups at various times during the 28 year period being examined. In addition to oral testimony, witnesses for national interest groups almost always provide the subcommittee with a written document carefully laying out their group’s position. These documents represent a carefully thought-out statement that the group hopes will appeal to members of Congress, so they can be very revealing of the group’s strategy. It is anticipated that a particular group’s approach to testimony will consistently reflect its composition and ideology over time, but that it will also change somewhat in response to the changing legislative environment. Political Context In order to place group activity in a broader political context, a fifth data source has been utilized; the record of congressional and executive branch activity contained in the Congressional Quarterly, Inc. Weekly Reports and Almanac. Reports on legislative activity in all three policy areas were systematically collected for the entire period covered by the hearing data. These provide a time-line of decision-making, and they succinctly summarize the positions of the President and key congressional actors. Even though these three areas are all included under the general category of social policy, there is a unique legislative history attached to each one, and these histories, along with the sampling of testimony, clearly reveal the important variations in the political atmosphere between the three areas. PLAN OF THE BOOK Chapter 2 will place interest group activity on behalf of the poor in the context of general theories of interest group behavior. The evolving

Introduction

17

perceptions of group roles and activities within the political science literature will be reviewed to establish generalizations about interest group activity to which interest groups in social policy can be compared. Part I of chapter 3 will provide an overview of the representation of the interests of the poor in the process of social policy making. The evolution of demands for social policy in the United States will be explored, including the role of organizations representing the working class in general. The more recent process by which the poor have been constituted as a distinct group will be discussed, and the weakening capacity of this group to directly influence the political process will be examined. Part II of chapter 3 will describe the five types of groups that are hypothesized to be active on behalf of the poor. Based on previous studies of social policy-making, it will provide a rationale for the inclusion of each of these types of group among those likely to be involved. In Part III, brief histories of the development of each policy area will be presented, for the purpose of establishing hypotheses about variations in the involvement of each of the five group types across the three policy areas. Chapter 4 will report the results of the empirical investigation of group activity. It will describe the total universe of groups that is active in each area and discuss the overlap of group activity between these areas. It will assess the level of activity of each of the five group types. It will also describe the resources and level of commitment that each of these group types brings to these policy arenas. Finally, it will discuss the degree to which these groups form an interconnected policy network, and which types of groups are most central to this network. Chapter 5 will examine strategies used by these groups to influence policy in each area. Data from the survey suggest which activities the groups think are most important, and the text of testimony before Congress reveals a great deal about group approaches. Case studies of several major policy decisions will place these general data in the context of actual political struggles. They will show how group participation and group strategies evolve in response to changing political conditions. Chapter 6, the final chapter will explore the implications of these findings for the representation of the interests of the poor in the political system. It will raise the question of whether direct representation of the poor might give them a more effective voice and how such direct representation might be achieved. These questions will be addressed in the context of the overall need to revitalize the declining commitment and involvement of citizens of all socio-economic levels in relation to the political process.

CHAPTER TWO

Interest Groups in American Politics

B

ecause detailed, comprehensive studies of interest group activity in social policy are rare in the public policy literature, it is especially important, when undertaking such a study, to establish a clear, analytical framework. It is safe to assume that the patterns of interest group activity in social policy may be anomalous, because of the unique relationship, or lack of relationship, between the poor who benefit from these programs and the political process. However, before any pattern is declared anomalous one must be prepared to say, “Anomalous in relation to what?” What are the typical patterns of interest group activity in other policy areas, or are there any patterns that can be considered typical across policy areas? If interest groups are weak in social policy, are they powerful in other areas, and, if so, what do we mean by “powerful”? Theories of interest group activity are constantly evolving. Political scientists’ views have undergone several metamorphoses since Arthur Bentley (1908) first asserted the centrality of groups to the political process. However, all of the various theories that have been proposed have addressed some of the same fundamental questions, and the answers they provided to these questions have shaped their overall view of the process. These questions can, therefore, be used to compare and contrast various approaches to the study of interest groups and they will help in shaping a theoretical approach that is appropriate for studying interest groups in social policy. The four questions that I will use to compare interest group theories are as follows: 1. What is the fundamental relationship between interest group activity and the outcomes of decision-making on public policy issues? Do interest groups drive the process or do they play a more complex and shifting role vis-à-vis the elected and appointed officials who make decisions? 2. What are the patterns of interest group activity? a. Are public policy processes relatively open to new groups that want to enter the fray, or are they closed systems? 19

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Who Speaks for the Poor?

b. Do the groups active in most policy areas represent all or most of the interests affected by the policy or only one side? c. Are most policy areas characterized by a high degree of conflict or primarily by consensus? 3. What group resources or group attributes are necessary for groups to be successful in influencing the process? 4. What is the relationship between the activities and influence of interest groups specializing in a particular policy area and the broader social, economic and political trends affecting all areas of public policy? Assessing the impact of any actor, or set of actors, on the outcomes of the public policy process is very difficult. There are so many variables, both at the micro and the macro levels, that affect any public policy decision that isolating the impact of any one of them can be nearly impossible. Thus, even though almost all observers would agree that interest groups have a significant impact on policy decisions, the task of isolating their collective impact, let alone the impact of any single group, is daunting. Therefore, it is not surprising that efforts to assess group impact have generated a broad range of theories and approaches. THE PLURALIST MODEL For early group theorists, such as Bentley (1908), Latham (1952) and Truman (1951), the idea that policy outcomes are shaped by a struggle for influence among multiple groups provided a framework within which to look at politics behaviorally and empirically, rather than being bound by the formal institutionalism or “great leader” narratives of earlier political science (Moe 1980; Hayes 1981). As they examined the group struggle for influence, they came to see policy decisions by those in government as a dependent variable, subject to the push and pull of group competition for power. The role of elected officials was, at the maximum, to act as brokers who negotiate compromises between groups or, at the minimum, merely to ratify the outcome of the group struggle through legislative action. These early views of interest groups were closely linked to the pluralist model of American politics that served as the dominant paradigm for political science until the late 1960s. Pluralists believed that the democratic rules of the game guiding American politics made it relatively easy for new groups to form and to enter the political struggle representing particular points of view. Therefore, the group struggle in any policy area was likely to reflect most of the interests affected by the policy and, thus, provide a reasonably fair representation of the citizenry. Because different participants wanted different things, most policy areas

Interest Groups in American Politics

21

were, in this view, characterized by conflict between opposing groups (Truman 1951). With regard to group attributes or resources, the pluralist model of the group struggle stressed that in order to have influence groups must (1) be aware of their interests and (2) be willing to organize around those interests. Unorganized groups could, at best, have only indirect influence, through other actors’ anticipation that they might organize if sufficiently threatened. Pluralists also recognized the importance of intensity of group preferences. Smaller groups with more at stake might be able to win out over much larger groups whose members had less to lose. However, pluralists saw neither of these factors as substantially interfering with the representativeness of the system. Since it was relatively easy and natural for new groups to form, all major interests were likely to be organized. As for the intensity factor, Robert Dahl (1956) argued that it was a legitimate modification of majoritarian systems for smaller groups with more at stake to be able to prevail over less intense majorities that might casually vote to destroy their freedom or livelihoods. There was also a recognition that groups might possess certain resources, such as money, numbers of adherents, or expertise, in unequal amounts, but it was argued that inequalities in the distribution of resources were not cumulative. For example, groups with greater numbers or more expertise could counterbalance an opposing group with more financial resources. They did not believe that the political system represented all citizens with perfect fairness, but they argued that the pluralist group struggle was the closest approximation to democratic representation that could occur in a complex industrial society. The pluralist model emphasized that group influence tends to be limited to specialized areas of immediate concern. This further reduced the impact of whatever inequalities might exist. Corporations might possess substantial resources, but their involvement in government would be to defend their immediate interests, rather than to form a ruling elite, as argued by Mills (1959), Kolko (1962) or Domhoff (1970). Pluralists celebrated the broker roles played by strong elected officials in balancing group interests and moving policy forward (e.g., Robert Dahl’s [1961] description of Mayor Lee in New Haven). However, they were distrustful of mass political movements that might be vulnerable to manipulation by authoritarian demagogues (Kornhauser 1959). They argued against an overriding “public interest” that could be weighed against the particularistic interests of groups, believing that, just as the invisible hand of the economic marketplace insured the greatest productivity and efficiency, so the outcomes of the group struggle represented the most genuine approximation of the public interest (Hayes 1981). Thus, broader economic and political trends would be best registered

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Who Speaks for the Poor?

through the group struggle, rather than being reflected in strong political leadership at the top. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, some scholars reacted to the early group theorists’ extreme emphasis on interest groups as the driving force behind politics, by producing research results that downplayed the importance of interest groups. In their study of interest groups in tariff policy, Bauer, Pool and Dexter (1963) argued that competition between groups gave legislators considerable leeway in choosing whose demands to respond to. They and other scholars such as Lester Milbrath (1963) saw interest groups as struggling to gain access to lawmakers and then acting as “service bureaus,” supplying friendly legislators with information, rather than pressuring reluctant members to support their cause. However, these scholars were still writing within a basic pluralist framework. A stronger scholarly challenge to pluralist assumptions came from another direction altogether. SUBGOVERNMENTS AND “FROZEN PLURALISM” In the 1950s and early 1960s, a series of studies of specialized policy areas called some aspects of the pluralist model into question. Maass (1950), Cater (1964) and others described the capture of key policy arenas by powerful interest groups, which developed close relationships with members of the congressional committees controlling their programs and with the agencies administering them. Instead of a struggle between opposing groups, in which almost all relevant interests had a voice in major issues, this “subgovernment” model envisioned a one-sided mobilization, in which groups favoring the status quo prevailed. Most of the public remained ignorant and indifferent to these outcomes, but active efforts would be made to exclude any organized groups that might take an opposing point of view. The subgovernment model encompassed an active role for public officials, but one that was narrowly self-seeking. Each of the two public participants in an “iron triangle” (as subgovernments have often been called) was actively pursuing its own interests by forming such an alliance. Administrative agencies were establishing close political ties with their constituents (i.e., the persons benefitting from their programs) in order to protect their programs and their budget from unfavorable changes in priorities within the Executive Branch or within congressional leadership, following the strategy described by Norton Long (1949) and Francis Rourke (1969) in their studies of bureaucratic politics. Members of Congress were securing projects and other benefits for their districts, in order to insure their perpetual re-election and to establish their power base within a highly specialized Congress. No one epitomized this role

Interest Groups in American Politics

23

better than Mendell Rivers, a Democratic congressman from South Carolina, who, as chair of the House Armed Services Committee in the 1950s and 1960s, loaded his Charleston district with dozens of military bases and defense plants. In a system dominated by subgovernments, the groups most likely to exercise influence were those that were small, cohesive, and totally focused on a narrow set of policy concerns. Financial resources were important, in that they could be used to reward loyal members of Congress, but expertise in the arcane details of policies about which the public was almost totally ignorant was an equally important group resource. This expertise could be used to define the assumptions under which policy was made in such a way as to maintain a continuous flow of benefits to the established groups. For example, the idea that a dam, or other water project, represented “progress” for the district in which it was placed was accepted without question by the relevant actors in the cozy triangle that once dominated public works policy. Grant McConnell (1966) and Theodore Lowi (1979) described the interweaving of public and private power suggested by the subgovernment model as typical of most areas of governmental activity. Lowi applied the term “interest group liberalism” to this overall model of government functioning. Both he and McConnell attributed very negative consequences to this pattern of decision-making. On the one hand, it made government much less open and much less responsive to demands from new groups outside the established relationships in each policy area. On the other hand, it made it difficult for top elected officials, such as the President, to take bold, coordinated, effective action to deal with problems of national scope, because such action was bound to step on the prerogatives of some subgovernment, and the actors in each one could make it too costly, politically, for the President to challenge them. The system they described was not a ruling elite model, with top down control by large corporations acting in concert with key government leaders. Rather, it was a kind of “frozen” pluralism, that locked the government into constantly feeding special benefits to those interest groups that managed to gain a place at the public trough. The idea of the American political process as a series of closed systems dominated by a few groups received indirect support from another line of scholarship directed at the process of group formation. Mancur Olson’s book The Logic of Collective Action (1965) challenged the pluralist notion that group formation was relatively easy and spontaneous, even in an open political system. According to Olson, while individuals had an obvious interest in the existence of groups that would advocate their point of view, the benefits of the group’s existence and advocacy would, more often than not, accrue to them whether or not they actually joined the group, since

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Who Speaks for the Poor?

their marginal contribution to its existence would be small. Therefore, it was narrowly rational for them to take a free ride by allowing the group to provide this collective benefit to them without paying a share of the costs. Smaller, more cohesive groups would have an easier time overcoming this free rider problem than larger, more diffuse groups, since each individual’s marginal contribution would be larger, and it would be easier for the group to put psychological pressure on potential members to join. In addition, groups would need sufficient resources to offer members “selective benefits”, that is, perks, privileges and discounts that they could not obtain if they were not group members. Therefore, Olson’s logic favored exactly the kind of groups that the subgovernment model said would be dominant in most policy areas. More popularly based groups were not only up against these entrenched groups’ expertise and wellestablished contacts within government, but were fundamentally disadvantaged by the very process of group formation. DYNAMIC MODELS OF INTEREST GROUP ACTIVITY Although Lowi’s book The End of Liberalism (1979) laid out a strong argument for frozen pluralism (interest group liberalism) as the predominant pattern in American politics, another of his oft-cited works, which was actually a book review of Bauer, Pool and Dexter (1963), laid the groundwork for a more dynamic view of the role of interest groups in American politics (Lowi 1964). It did so by raising the possibility that the roles of interest groups might vary, depending on the nature of the public policy outputs they were seeking. In distributive policy areas, where the federal government was distributing benefits to a small number of specialized groups, with the costs spread widely over an indifferent public, the subgovernment pattern would be most likely to prevail. Groups would engage in log-rolling to increase the total amount of resources being allocated, rather than fight over the share each one was receiving. In regulatory policy, in contrast, where the government was attempting to regulate the behavior of private interests for the public good, the pattern of group participation would be more conflictual, with pro and anti regulatory forces lining up against each other. (Of course, capture of the regulatory agency by the interests being regulated might frequently occur, because the public had a short attention span on such issues and could be mollified by symbolic rewards; see (Edelman 1967). Finally, redistributive policies were the most conflict-ridden of all, since they involved the transfer of wealth or privileges between broad groups in society, typically from the “haves” to the “have nots” (Lowi 1964). Thus, interest group liberalism might be a general description of American politics, but policy areas could show considerable variation.

Interest Groups in American Politics

25

James Q.Wilson’s analysis (1973) lent support to the idea that the nature of the costs and benefits imposed or awarded within a policy area determines the pattern of group activity and conflict. He noted that either the costs or the benefits of a policy may be widely or narrowly distributed, thus creating the following four-fold typology of policy arenas: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Quadrant A: Benefits and costs both widely distributed. Quadrant B: Costs widely distributed but benefits narrowly distributed. Quadrant C: Costs narrowly distributed but benefits widely distributed. Quadrant D: Benefits and costs both narrowly distributed.

In Quadrant B, where benefits are concentrated and costs widely distributed, groups that derive immediate material benefits will be wellorganized. In contrast, in groups bearing the costs, the cost borne by each individual is relatively small, thus providing a weak incentive to organize to avoid it. In addition, such groups will have broad, diffuse membership bases, thereby facing serious free rider problems when trying to organize. Where both benefits and costs are widely distributed, as in Quadrant A, programs may be initially difficult to enact, but will become strongly supported once in place, as the beneficiaries come to count on what they receive from government. Where both benefits and costs are narrowly distributed, as in Quadrant D, there may be intense conflict between groups. An example might be two professions competing for the same clientele and seeking licensing from the government. Where costs are concentrated and benefits widespread, as in Quadrant C, there will be great potential for support, but because the beneficiaries are not a small, cohesive group, whereas those experiencing the costs are, the latter may be easier to organize, as is the case with groups receiving concentrated benefits. Lowi’s category of regulatory policy fits in this quadrant, and the regulated groups, as just noted, are often successful in dominating the policy process. Wilson also discusses differences in the types of incentives that draw people into groups. Material incentives involve the obviously powerful draw of direct economic benefits, yet because of the free rider problem, these are most effective where the groups receiving them are relatively small and cohesive. What Wilson calls “solidary” benefits, that is, the satisfactions derived from association and interaction with persons of like interest, are also most easily provided in smaller groups. Larger groups must federate into state and local chapters to provide such benefits, although many groups have a significant subset of members who derive satisfaction and status from their national and international contacts. Finally, people join groups for purposive benefits—that is, the satisfaction of contributing to an abstract principle or cause. Larger groups must often

26

Who Speaks for the Poor?

rely on purposive incentives, because the material stake of each member is small, and it is hard to educate them on the direct economic impact of public policies. Such purposive incentives are subject to the fluctuating mood and interest level of the potential membership and are, therefore, not as reliable as the other types. Large purposive groups can, of course, offer selective material benefits, such as discounted services and merchandise, but this requires substantial group resources. Although Wilson’s and Lowi’s work suggested great complexity in the patterns of interest group involvement and interest across policy areas, their analysis still lent weight to the domination of public policy by interest groups that are cohesive, have considerable resources, and can offer their members a variety of incentives for joining. Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the American interest group universe underwent major changes that appeared to contradict this basic idea. Jeffrey Berry (1977), among others, documented a veritable explosion in the number of interest groups active in the national arena during this period. Initially, many of these groups sprang from the civil rights movement and from the environmental movement. They were composed largely of middle and upper middle class citizens, but they were mostly anti-establishment, and they pushed government towards more activism on issues that had previously been ignored. Most of these groups were built largely on the basis of purposive incentives, and many had no formal membership structure at all, but were, rather, groups of independent professional policy experts soliciting financial support from both wealthy contributors and a mass audience. Some of these new, progressive mass membership groups were successful in challenging seemingly stable and politically unassailable subgovernments. Water projects sponsored by the cozy triangles surrounding the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation were slowed or halted by environmental groups, who turned obscure endangered species such as the snail darter and the lousewort into major factors in the policy process. As described by Baumgartner and Jones (1993) the cozy world of nuclear power development, once dominated by government and private industry experts, was disrupted by protests and lawsuits at every site, to the point that construction of nuclear power plants was, for all practical purposes, halted in the United States. Thus, the types of groups that previous group theories had predicted would be ineffective appeared to wield considerable influence. Plotke (1992) and Scholzman and Tierney (1986) documented the fact that, as some areas of public policy began to take a mildly progressive direction in the mid-1970s, the business community launched an effective counter-mobilization. Both old business peak associations, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and new ones, such as the Business

Interest Groups in American Politics

27

Roundtable, became more active, while the number and activity-level of trade associations increased greatly. Some business leaders also lent financial support to conservative public interest groups, such as the Heritage Foundation, that could challenge what they perceived to be the prevailing liberal bias of definitions of the public interest. However, this development does not necessarily support the earlier idea that business groups, with their natural cohesion and ample resources, would mobilize easily and automatically. Plotke, in particular, suggests that it required effort and leadership on the part of a few key actors to get business managers to take a broader view of their self-interest and to overcome their free rider tendencies enough to join the conservative push. Therefore, the expansion of the group universe, both in progressive and in conservative directions, required a more flexible and inclusive model of interest group influence on public policy. Hugh Heclo (1978) contributed to the development of such a model by suggesting that most policy areas were characterized by complex policy networks, containing multiple and changing participants, rather than the closed iron triangles described by previous scholars. John Kingdon (1984, revised in 1995) developed an even looser image of policy subsystems, describing them as policy communities in which problem definitions and policy proposals float around in a “policy primeval soup” until political conditions are right for their development. Baumgartner and Jones (1993) argued that policy areas are subject to radical paradigm shifts, as new actors change the scope of conflict and challenge the basic assumptions by which policy making has been guided. Of course, none of these scholars was returning to the strictly interest group driven policy models of the early pluralists. Rather, they saw a dynamic and changing interaction between governmental and non-governmental actors in each policy area. The existence of multiple and changing collections of groups does not negate Olson’s basic assertion about the difficulties of group formation. However, the fact that interest groups proliferated challenges a strict interpretation of Olson’s theory, and some scholars have either expanded or directly challenged it, in light of this new group universe. Terry Moe (1980) emphasized the role of policy entrepreneurs in overcoming obstacles to group formation. Entrepreneurs are individuals who can benefit from the formation of groups because they can use the surplus resources thus created to pursue their own goals, whether primarily monetary or more principled abstract beliefs in improving society or both. Ralph Nader comes to mind as the quintessential example of the policy entrepreneur, but the actions of many such individuals have been prominent in the formation of the public interest groups that Berry describes. Paul Sabatier (1992) presented empirical results suggesting that persons can be motivated to

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Who Speaks for the Poor?

form and to participate actively groups on the basis of purposive awards to a much greater degree than predicted by Olson’s theory, and in the more recent study of political activists by Sidney Verba and his associates, the majority of their respondents cited purposive incentives such as “making society better” as their primary motive for involvement in groups and in politics in general (Verba, Scholzman and Brady 1995). These more dynamic views of group involvement appear to fit the current complex environments of public policy issues better than the strictly closed system view of the subgovernment model. However, in moving towards a more fluid view of the group process, one must avoid returning to the naive assumptions about equal and easy access that characterized some of the pluralist writings. Group resources and group attributes still have an important impact on which groups can exert influence, and these resources and attributes often confer cumulative inequality, rather than being widely distributed. Therefore, it is appropriate to recap the most important of these resources and attributes as part of a model of interest group influence: 1. Material resources. Groups whose potential members have larger financial resources are easier to form because they have a surplus available to attract group entrepreneurs and to invest in the group process. Financial resources are fungible, in that they can be utilized to gain other resources, such as expertise through information gathering, and membership, through publicity and solicitation campaigns. They are also vitally important to public officials in their campaigns to gain and hold office. 2. Information resources. Groups that control important information or which can define the paradigm through which the policy is viewed by laying a claim to expertise in the area possess a great advantage in the struggle. The education levels of the potential group members also affect their ability to gather and process information necessary to form the group and articulate its issues. 3. Cohesion. Groups that are of a manageable size, whose members have close, multiple ties to each other, generally have a great advantage over larger groups whose members have more limited opportunities for face to face interaction. 4. Staying power. Groups that are able to establish a long term presence in the policy process, covering a range of related issues, have an obvious advantage over those that form around a particular issue for a limited amount of time. They have the opportunity to develop close ties with decision-makers and detailed knowledge of how to work the political process to their advantage.

Interest Groups in American Politics

29

5. Social status. Group status can be a positive factor when the group is regarded with respect because of its members’ position in society. Claims to expertise represent status claims as well as control of policyrelevant information. Group status is a negative factor when its members are viewed as outsiders who are not worthy of respectful attention by decision-makers. Along with education, higher status also confers a sense of political efficacy, whereas lower status tends to make potential group members cynical about the potential impact of their participation. 6. Membership base. Free rider problems do not totally prevent larger groups from forming and exerting influence and, when effectively mobilized, size does matter. When groups are composed of large numbers of citizens who are motivated to vote on the basis of the issues the group raises, then elected officials take notice. (The AARP and the National Rifle Association come to mind as examples.) In addition to absolute numbers, the distribution of members is important. Groups that are small enough to be cohesive, yet whose members are spread over many or most congressional districts, are in an excellent position to exert effective influence. The more fluid models of the group process developed in recent years suggest that these group resources are not as concentrated as closed system models might suggest. Loose policy networks are more likely to be composed of groups that bring diverse resources to bear on the process than are iron triangles. Certainly, the new public interest groups that formed in the 1970s were lacking in some of the critical resources just mentioned, such as large, cohesive membership bases (Berry 1977), but they nevertheless had a significant impact on some areas of public policy, through the skillful use of the resources they had. However, viewing the process as somewhat fluid does not require that one disregard the existence of a quite unequal distribution of group resources. Even a loose policy network can still be dominated by a few groups who have multiple, reinforcing resources, in that these groups are able to buy more regular access and to dominate the policy discussion, even if they don’t monopolize it as in the subgovernment model. A perusal of this list of group resources deepens one’s pessimism about the ability of the poor to organize into effective interest groups, for they are lacking in virtually all of the resources mentioned except numbers. The obstacles to participation by the poor will be explored in more detail in part I of chapter 3. Examining this list also alerts one to the fact that, to the extent that there are interest groups actively advocating policies benefitting low income persons, they must be groups that possess one or more of these critical resources and are willing to mobilize them on behalf of social

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Who Speaks for the Poor?

policy issues. In part II of chapter 3, it will be argued that each of the five types of groups that are active in social policy possess different combinations of resources that contribute to their activity and effectiveness in speaking out for people who often cannot speak for themselves. Interest Groups and Citizen Mobilization The issue of the representativeness of the interest group system goes beyond an examination of policy arenas to see if the active groups represent a range of viewpoints and if they represent ordinary citizens as well as corporate or professional interests. A deeper question is to what extent are citizens genuinely mobilized into the political process by interest groups? What is the connection between the involvement and participation of citizens and the interest group system? Most discussions of interest groups assume that the relationship of an individual to an interest group is essentially instrumental. A given citizen wants a certain outcome in public policy, so she or he supports a group that is pursuing that outcome, in order to increase the likelihood of obtaining that outcome. The primary reason for joining the group is to obtain the outcome; like a consumer shopping for a product, the citizen selects the group that is seen as the best instrument for achieving a predetermined goal. The free rider problem arises in the context of this instrumental relationship. Since the individual’s sole reason for involvement is to obtain the outcome, since the outcome is a public good that the individual can’t be prevented from enjoying even if she or he does not contribute, and since the individual sees his or her marginal contribution to group success as negligible, taking a free ride becomes a rational response to the situation. The same instrumental relationship is also at the root of Roberto Michels’ “Iron Law of Oligarchy.” (Michels 1962) A few members who have particularly intense preferences, who derive “solidary” benefits from their interactions with other members or who get material rewards in the form of career advancement assume the leadership of the group. The other members (the vast majority) are quite content to let this oligarchy run the group, as long as the results obtained by the group are satisfactory. This relationship occurs in all groups, but it is particularly likely to occur in organizations of a national scale, where engaging in face to face interactions with other group members takes a special effort. In recent years, however, the validity of such instrumental relationships has been called into question. This is due to the increasing concern among scholars in a variety of disciplines about what is perceived to be the growing alienation of the average citizen from the political process and the loss of a sense of attachment and obligation to

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the community in general. Whether writing from the communitarian perspective (Etzioni 1983), from the civil society perspective (Barber 1998) or the social capital perspective, (Putnam 1995, 1998) scholars who share these concerns have come to focus on the intrinsic, rather than the instrumental, value of citizen commitment to and involvement in public affairs. In the view of these scholars, involvement is intrinsically valuable to the individual because no one can fully develop his or her capabilities as a human being unless he or she is fully engaged in and responsible for the total life of the community. Involvement is intrinsically valuable to the community, because collective problems can be better solved by active, engaged citizens than by passive consumers who wait around for the state or the market to present them with satisfactory solutions. Most of those writing about civic engagement share the assumption that such engagement occurs best at the level of the local community. This is the arena where face to face contacts are most feasible, where problems are often seen as more manageable, and where it may be easier to achieve consensus behind some form of effective collective action. The free rider problem, while certainly present at the local level, will be easier to overcome through face to face pressure to participate. Individuals also have greater opportunities to undergo personal change and development through this form of participation, rather than through voting or financial contributions, which simply express a pre-existing set of preferences. (Barber 1998) One might simply conclude from this emphasis on local action that such intense, personal involvement at the national level is an unrealistic expectation. National government and the national groups that try to influence its decisions are simply too big and impersonal for most citizens to assume anything more than a passive, check-writing role in support of national policy alternatives. Perhaps this passive relationship to national political movements is not so bad, if it is based on policy preferences that have evolved from active, constructive participation in problem-solving at the local level. However, some advocates of the communitarian perspective have gone beyond seeing active national involvement by citizens as unrealistic to the view that the reliance on national interest groups to define issues and the national government to solve problems are both pathological. The national government inevitably produces impersonal, bureaucratic solutions that render citizens as passive clients bound by rigid rules. National interest groups contribute to the polarization of issues by taking dramatic, extreme positions to attract more members, and they fragment the political process by attacking or supporting officials and candidates solely on the basis of the narrow issues that are their focal concerns. In this view, only by

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continuing decentralization of decision-making will true civic involvement blossom. In responding to these concerns, one needs to bring the discussion back to the central issue of empowerment of citizens for effective representation in the political process. There is no doubt that empowerment involves the process-oriented goal of getting citizens actively engaged in the public arena, where decisions affecting their lives are made. Involvement can empower individuals by increasing awareness of issues, by creating a psychological sense of political efficacy, and by fostering a commitment to the well-being of the entire community, not just one’s private well-being. It also produces empowerment by encouraging citizens to utilize legal rights to participation that are distributed on a more or less equal basis to counteract other resources that are distributed unequally, such as wealth and expertise. These modes of empowerment can be especially critical to persons whose limited resources and restrictive life experiences tend to produce the most alienation and the greatest sense of powerlessness, namely citizens of lower socio-economic status. The mobilization of the poor by direct, face to face, grassroots organizing is widely seen by both scholars and activists as the only way they have any chance to influence the political process (Piven and Cloward 1979; Bailis 1974; Alinsky 1971; Stoecker 1997). Such organizational efforts are often bitterly resisted by those in power and often elicit strong sanctions against organizers. They often dissolve under this external pressure or from internal indifference or dissension. Yet, when they succeed, they give the poor leverage that they could not gain in any other way. At the same time, the ultimate test of empowerment is not just involvement in the process but in the results achieved by political activity. The intrinsic value of activism does not negate the fact that politics is interesting and important primarily because it shapes who gets what, when and how. Furthermore, the national government has the power to make decisions about the allocation of resources and the regulation of economic activities that local governments cannot summon, both because of their limited scope and resources and because they are in constant competition to attract mobile capital (Peterson 1981). Therefore, true empowerment of citizens would seem to require the establishment of connections between their participation in local affairs and participation in decisions made by the national government for the national community. Effective mobilization around issues of local concern generally leads to questions about how the national allocation of resources affects these problems, and it leads to demands for policy actions at the national level. National interest groups are a logical mechanism for the formation of such connections, and many interest groups are skillful at utilizing grass

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roots mobilization to support their positions on national issues. Some of what is called grassroots organization is really the mobilization of inherently national networks of professionals or businesses engaged in the same occupation or producing similar products. It is not really grounded in the mobilization of local citizens groups. Other so-called grassroots organization is the solicitation of contributions and political actions from a scattered group of citizens for whom a particular issue is highly salient. Both of these forms of mobilization have been extensively discussed in the interest group literature, and they both require substantial resources, expertise and cohesion on the part of potential group members. An alternative form of grassroots organizing would be a process of building national coalitions from local groups of interested, committed citizens. This kind of mobilization has greater potential for equalizing political influence, because it builds on face to face interactions and the exercise of political rights at the local level by individuals who may not have the resources to acquire influence through other means. This kind of mobilization of citizens by national interest groups has received less attention in the interest group literature, perhaps because it is much less common. While the data presented in subsequent chapters will show that the poor receive representation through other types of interest group activity, it will be suggested in Chapter 6 that the kind of mobilization just described may be critical to their true empowerment in the national political process. The Social and Political Environment Whether one views policy subsystems as rigid iron triangles, bubbling cauldrons of primeval soup, or something in between, one is still left with the challenge of relating activities and outcomes within these subsystems to the broader social, economic and political trends that affect all areas of political decision-making. In the arena of social policy, the fact that interest groups are acting in an environment shaped by larger political forces is particularly apparent, as will be discussed in chapter 5. Therefore, a discussion of the relationship of interest groups to their larger environment is particularly important in setting the stage for the assessment of the impact of social policy groups. As economic structures change, and as social institutions and values change, the relative positions and outlooks of different groups in society change. This in turn generates new demands to which the political system must respond, although the structure of political institutions themselves shapes, to some degree, the kinds of demands that are expressed and heard (Robertson and Judd 1989). If new demands are profound and persistent, they may lead to changes in the relative strength of the two major parties,

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Who Speaks for the Poor?

as when the Great Depression and its aftermath created a majority coalition for the Democratic party that lasted for over thirty years. The shifting strength of the two major parties in Congress has a profound impact on the direction of public policy. Presidential leadership also plays an important role in the response of the political system to these trends. The President must build and hold together a national political coalition behind his policy initiatives. Therefore, the agenda he sets will contain proposals to address these broader trends. The ways in which he responds are, of course, shaped by his party and his ideology. They are also shaped by his relationship to Congress, because, as Mark Peterson (1990) argues, the President and Congress function as a single policy-making system. Presidents tend to have the most success when party strength and/or the strength of an ideological coalition is in their favor. The success of Johnson’s liberal agenda in 1965–1966 and of Reagan’s conservative agenda in 1981 are both clear illustrations of this point. However, Mayhew (1991) argues that even when the executive and legislative branches are controlled by different parties (as has been the case for most of the post-World War II era), the result is not total gridlock, for the legislative record shows that measures addressing important national problems are frequently passed under these circumstances. Implicit in the subgovernment model is the assumption that the bonds of mutual self-interest linking the participants in subgovernments are so strong, and the localized political bases so firm, that subgovernments will be relatively impervious to the broader national trends just described. In this view, whether or not a member of Congress is a Democrat or Republican, she or he has to “bring home the bacon” to the district, and this immediate self-interest will overcome party loyalty or ideology. Moreover, if the President tries to push national priorities that challenge the prerogatives of iron triangle participants, the alliance is strong enough to resist effectively. The complex and fragmented structure of Congress provides members who are involved in a subgovernment with the leverage to block legislation in their area, and even to hold other major initiatives hostage to subgovernmental concerns. Interest groups can also turn up the heat by lobbying the President and other members of Congress. Like a medieval fortress, the subgovernment can pull up its drawbridge and withstand the siege, until the President grows tired of the conflict and moves his forces elsewhere. Kingdon’s (1995) view of the relationship between policy subsystems and national political trends is quite the opposite of the subgovernment view, in that he believes that major change in any policy area cannot occur unless major political forces are lined up with the concerns of the policy specialists in that area. He envisions three streams of activity: problem

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identification, formulation of alternatives, and a political stream composed of major changes in party strength and in the priorities and interests of national leaders. Elected officials choose when and how to deal with problems on the basis of congruence with their political interests, although, of course, some problems generate crises that are too big to ignore. Both problems and solutions can float around in the primeval soup for years before they come to the attention of political leaders who have the ability and desire to act on them. However, despite Kingdon’s radically different view of the relationship of subsystems to larger political changes, his model, like the subgovernment model, still treats the political stream as essentially exogenous to the activities and concerns of policy specialists. In discussing the political stream, he attributes an important role to the balance of forces among major interest groups in creating the conditions in which major legislation can pass. However, on the whole, he views interest groups primarily as specialists focused on their immediate concerns, and relating mainly to other actors in their subsystem. They are always on the lookout for opportunities to hook their concerns onto whatever political trends are emerging, opportunities which he refers to as “policy windows.” This perspective plays down the role that interest groups may have in driving the political stream and the extent to which the patterns of interest group formation and growth are themselves pushed by the political stream. The problems with this point of view are twofold. First, interest groups are spawned by the same social and economic forces that generate large scale political change. They reflect alternative ways besides electoral involvement to express the changing concerns of various social groups. Therefore, the political stream is closely intertwined with the activities of specialized actors within the policy subsystem, and the composition of subsystems will reflect these broader political trends. For example, when the new feminist movement emerged in the early 1970s, it generated some interest groups, such as the National Organization of Women (NOW), pressing for immediate policy changes and others, such as the National Women’s Political Caucus and Emily’s List, whose primary purpose was to shape the electoral process. Similarly, the rise of conservative public interest groups paralleled the conservative resurgence within the Republican Party that ultimately led to the nomination and election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. This is not to say that policy communities do not represent long term configurations around major issues that survive the ebb and flow of political tides. Rather, it is to say that changes in the composition of those communities reflect the political changes that are going on around them. Secondly, many interest groups are heavily involved in directly influencing the direction of the political stream. For obvious tactical reasons, most

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Who Speaks for the Poor?

specialized interest groups maintain a nominally non-partisan stance in their relationships with the legislative and executive branches. In directing the political contributions of their PACs, they will often contribute to the incumbent, regardless of party or ideology, in order to insure access if, as is usually the case, he or she wins. Nevertheless, many groups are vitally concerned with partisan outcomes, because they believe they are much more likely to get a sympathetic hearing from one party than the other. This is especially true for public interest groups, which pursue general, abstract policy goals. It may be less true for groups such as trade associations that are focused on particular government benefits or regulations, although the latter are often far from neutral on partisan outcomes. Underlying this close connection between the political stream and interest groups is the fact that parties themselves are coalitions of broad groups, brought together to win elections. Each of the groups in the coalition has its distinct identity and priorities, yet they share sufficient general interests or ideological orientations that they can work together within the party framework. These are not interest groups in the sense of clearly defined organizations that developed to address certain issues, as are the groups that populate policy subsystems. However, they are collections of citizens—for example, labor union members, ethnic groups, religious groups, etc.—that have common social characteristics and sufficiently articulated interests that candidates will try to address in order to assemble a majority coalition. The relationship between the core groups that make up party coalitions and the strategies necessary to win elections is complex and filled with tension. Groups tend to demand strict allegiance to certain positions on their core issues (e.g., the religious right’s insistence on a pro-life stance by Republican candidates), whereas parties must move to the center and blur their distinct stands in order to win majority support. Also, new issues often arise that split the party coalition and make it hard for them to agree on candidates or platforms. The split that occurred within the Democratic coalition over civil rights issues during the 1950s and 1960s is a classic example. When major groups within the party are pulling in different directions, it becomes extremely difficult for the party to win national elections, especially at the presidential level. Some broad, macro-level theories of the political process suggest that the functions of political parties and interest groups are fundamentally different. Political parties carry out “interest aggregation”—that is, pulling together groups of voters with disparate interests into election-winning majorities. In contrast, the purpose of interest groups is “interest articulation”—that is, insuring that a particular set of concerns on a particular set of issues is expressed. (Almond and Powell 1992) Policy subsystems are primarily aimed at interest articulation, in that their focal

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concerns are quite specialized. Therefore, interest groups are going to be heavily involved in these subsystems, spending much of their energies within these arenas. However, they also exist in dynamic relationship to the interest aggregation activities of political parties, since they are responsive to the same kinds of societal trends. At times interest groups seem focused on adaptation and survival in a variety of political configurations. At other times they may vigorously support the candidates of one party in hopes of making their future political environment more favorable. Increasingly, interest groups are intervening directly in elections, in order to insert issues of national concern into an election that might otherwise be decided on the ability of congressional candidates to appeal to voters in that district (Dreyfuss 1998). This is clearly a case of jumping directly into the political stream, rather than simply waiting for a window of opportunity to open up through which they may assert their concerns. CONCLUSION What, then, can one glean from the changing images of interest groups just described as a general model of interest group behavior with which to approach interest group activity in social policy? The following general propositions about interest group behavior and influence seem to be well supported: 1. In any major area of public policy, a policy community, or subsystem exists, consisting of an array of governmental and non-governmental actors who have specialized interests and commitments in that policy area and who interact with each other on a regular basis. 2. Elected and administrative officials are not passive recipients of group pressure, but rather actively pursue their own goals and interests by manipulating the group environment. The configurations of institutional power given to these officials shape the ability of groups to articulate their interests, thereby influencing the types of interests that can be expressed in the political system. 3. In general, policy subsystems are reasonably open and fluid. It is possible for new groups to enter a policy subsystem and have a substantial impact on it, even to the point of changing the fundamental assumptions upon which policy is based. The closed system, subgovernment model appears to have applied to a few particular kinds of policy for relatively brief historical periods. 4. The openness and fluidity of most policy subsystems does not negate the fact that substantial inequalities in resources, mobilization, and access exist among interest groups. The Olsonian obstacles to group

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formation, while not insurmountable, are serious, and they give the advantage to small cohesive groups that are mobilized around intense interests. Also, the current political environment favors those groups with the financial resources to influence political campaigns through contributions and public opinion through media manipulation. 5. Policy subsystems are long-term configurations of group mobilization around specific issues. Their focal concerns remain fairly stable through changes in the partisan and ideological composition of Congress and through changes in Presidential leadership. 6. In spite of their relative stability, interest group configurations are responsive to the same long-term social and economic changes that affect party strength and presidential priorities. Therefore, the types of interest groups that are active will change in concert with broader political changes. Also, the relative influence of groups within policy subsystems will be affected by changes in the larger political environment. It is against this background of general expectations about interest group activity that the group activities surrounding social policy will be examined. Even though much of what has been said would lead to the expectation that the largely poor beneficiaries of social policy will have little or no representation in the political process, and most especially in the interest group system, it is a fact that advocates for the interests of the poor exist. In subsequent chapters, I will explore the types of advocates that have emerged. It will be shown that their emergence and their relative impact is quite consistent with the general views of interest group activity just presented.

CHAPTER THREE

Poverty and Political Action

INTRODUCTION

M

uch of the literature on social policy-making, both comparative works and those focused on the United States, deals either with case studies of particular legislative battles or with the broad sweep of macro-political changes that have affected social policy outcomes. The U.S. literature aims at an overall understanding of the social, economic and political forces that have produced the American welfare state in its current form. The principal aim of this book is to provide a detailed examination of the activities of interest groups in social policy, but it is essential to show the linkages between these activities and the macro-political environment. In the previous chapter, a general framework for understanding interest group activity in the United States was laid out. In part I of this chapter, the unique political position of the poor, who are the chief clients of the welfare state, will be explored. This exploration involves two elements. First, the situation of the poor as a population base for political organization and action will be discussed. While the disadvantages that the poor face in political mobilization may seem obvious, they need to be carefully explicated in relation to interest group theory. Otherwise, the poor may be simply labeled as hopeless outsiders without understanding the obstacles that they have in common with all popularly based political organizations, as well as their unique difficulties. Second, the history of political advocacy for programs benefitting the poor will be discussed, with particular attention to the relationship between the poor and working class political organizations that are their most likely champions. This discussion will draw heavily on the literature on macro-political trends in social policy just mentioned. In part II of this chapter, hypotheses will be developed as to what kinds of interest groups may, in fact, be active on behalf of programs benefitting the poor. Although the social policy literature does not address in detail the 39

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Who Speaks for the Poor?

interest group activity that surrounds social welfare programs, and there have been no attempts to quantitatively assess patterns of interest group activity over time, a number of scholars have addressed this question from different angles, and their investigations are a useful source of hypotheses about the nature of group activity. These hypotheses will form the basis for the empirical investigation presented in chapter 4. In part III of this chapter, additional hypotheses will be generated concerning possible variations in interest group activity between the three areas of social policy chosen for analysis: food, housing and welfare. It should not be automatically assumed that all social policy arenas have similar patterns of activity, since each area has a unique history. The design and development of the programs in question may very well influence the nature of interest group activity surrounding them. PART I. THE POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT OF THE POOR Organizing the Poor A discussion of the representation of the interests of the poor in contemporary American politics must begin with a general definition of poverty, and a discussion of its relationship to political action. For purposes of this book, poverty will be defined as significant deprivation of the basic necessities of life, as those necessities are defined by the culture in which one lives. In American society, the basic necessities generally include: a nutritionally adequate diet, safe and sanitary shelter, adequate clothing, access to adequate medical care, and access to adequate educational opportunities. Left to itself, the operation of the private market for labor drives certain people’s earnings below a level at which these necessities can be purchased at market prices. Some individuals lack the skills or capacity for work sufficient to earn any income from market sources, or there is a lack of sufficient demand for the skills that individuals do possess. Thus, a class of poor people is created and perpetuated. There is, of course, no absolute line of demarcation between the problems of the poor and the problems of the rest of the population. Some of the deprivations experienced most severely by those in poverty also occur frequently among those just above them in the income scale, and, as in the case of the current availability of health care, the very poor may actually have more access to some services than those just above the eligibility line for various social programs. Since poverty is by definition a state of deprivation, one might expect it to act as a stimulus for direct political action by the poor themselves, especially in a governmental system that is relatively open to demands by diverse groups. If the poor are that group that gains least from the opera-

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tions of the market economy in the absence of public intervention, it could be anticipated that they might turn to political action to obtain the use of public resources and authority to ameliorate their suffering, and one might expect those just above poverty who share some of their problems to join with them in demanding action. However, in the current American political system, there is a strong negative relationship between income and political activity. One of the most consistent findings in studies of voting behavior is that persons of lower income vote in lower proportions than those of higher income (Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980), and they have even less direct representation among the interest groups that struggle for influence in between elections (Schlozman and Tierney 1986). There are many obvious explanations for this lack of activity among the least advantaged, but to comprehend it in more depth, one must explore the complex relationship between personal economic discontent and political action. Based on their study of unemployed workers in the mid1970s, Scholzman and Verba (1979) posit a five step process leading to political mobilization by those experiencing economic problems: 1. The existence of an objective condition of deprivation. 2. The experience of subjective stress concerning this condition. 3. Politicization of the stress through the perception of the relevance of government and the development of group consciousness. 4. Development of specific policy preferences. 5. Political activity to achieve those preferences. With regard to objective conditions, some have argued that what the poor in the United States experience is relative deprivation, rather than absolute deprivation, since one does not usually find the extreme levels of hunger, homelessness, and poor health that can be observed in less developed countries. It is certainly true that each person’s perceptions of deprivation are shaped by comparing himself or herself to others in the surrounding social milieu. However, objective measures showing higher infant mortality, higher adult morbidity, nutritionally inadequate diets, shortened life span, and lack of important educational skills among the poor indicate that poverty induces very real, direct suffering among its victims in the United States. Therefore, the poor would seem to have a valid, objective basis for making political demands on the system (Starr, 1986). The second step towards potential political mobilization, subjective distress, is also much in evidence among the poor. According to Waxman (1983,) being poor carries a social stigma that erodes self-esteem and that contributes to various manifestations of stress and frustration, including higher incidences of mental illness and higher levels of interpersonal violence than are observed in the rest of the population (Waxman

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Who Speaks for the Poor?

1983:10). There is a long scholarly tradition that attributes a unique subculture to the poor, referred to, in the terminology developed by Oscar Lewis (1961), as the “culture of poverty.” Many of the pathologies associated with poverty are attributed to this culture, and it is also seen as a major obstacle to the escape from poverty into a more mainstream, middle class life. However, Waxman (1983) and Katz (1989) cite a significant body of research showing that the poor share the same aspirations as the rest of society, but lack the means to achieve these aspirations without an extraordinarily high level of effort. Most are far from contented with their state of poverty, and it is their frustration and isolation, rather than a unique culture, that create most of their social and psychological difficulties. Therefore, even though many of the poor appear apathetic, there exists an undercurrent of discontent that could be mobilized for political purposes. It is at the third step in the process of the evolution of political action, political mobilization, that the most formidable obstacles to political activity on the part of the poor emerge. Studies of the political attitudes of lower income persons often reveal a deep sense of powerlessness and alienation from the political process (Gaventa 1980). Paradoxically, whereas deprivation might be seen as a stimulus to political action, the lack of a sense of political efficacy among the poor can also be seen to flow directly from their marginal economic status. It is often said that because of their marginal status, the daily struggle for survival commands a great deal of the time and energy of the poor, leaving little or no surplus that can be directed at political activity. However, many higher status persons devote long hours to their economic activities, and yet still take an interest in politics, so this cannot be a sufficient explanation. A more important linkage derives from the fact that the poor typically have little stability in their economic circumstances and little control over their conditions of work. If they are in the labor force, they work in marginal jobs where they have very little autonomy or control over their work processes. In addition, their employment itself is very unstable. Because of the unskilled nature of the work that most low income persons do, they are almost always considered expendable by their employers. Income and employment that are constantly low and unstable contribute to the instability in family life that one finds among the poor, thus lessening their control over the most personal areas of life. Carole Pateman (1970) argues that lack of control in the economic and personal spheres of life is bound to spillover into apathetic attitudes about the political process. Of course, millions of affluent citizens also feel alienated and powerless in relation to politics, even though they may experience more stability and control in their work situation than do the poor. In fact, some have argued

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that people pay more attention to work and family than to politics because these areas of life give them a more direct and meaningful sense of control, or because our “hyper-individualistic” society tells them that private gain should be the center of life (Etzioni 1983). However, the apathy of other citizens does not negate the uniqueness of the sense of powerlessness that comes from a profound lack of control in these “private” areas of life. While most affluent people are politically apathetic, their generally higher levels of participation suggest that it is much easier, psychologically, for at least some of these more privileged individuals to make the jump into political action. Even if a disadvantaged person is able to overcome a personal sense of powerlessness arising from his or her circumstances (and there are many historical instances of poor persons who have—see for example, discussions of the leaders of organizations of public housing tenants; Monti 1993 and Peterman 1993) this person will still encounter formidable obstacles to political action that are imbedded in the dominant values of capitalist society. The ideology of economic individualism is incredibly powerful in American society (Lewis 1978). According to this world view, poverty is the result of the individual’s failure to take responsibility for becoming a contributing member of society. The only legitimate response to poverty is, therefore, an individualistic one, in which the poor person seeks his or her own advancement up the economic ladder through work and educational attainment. To the extent that poor persons internalize this view, they will be reluctant to undertake political action, and such action will often be viewed as illegitimate by others because it is seen as an unacceptable substitute for individual efforts at upward mobility Also, while the extent of available opportunities in American society for upward mobility through economic striving is often exaggerated, they are far from totally mythical. Therefore, a talented lower income person may rationally decide that her or his chances of escaping poverty through individual action are better than through collective action. Other obstacles to the development of group consciousness among the poor have also been noted. First, many lack formal education, and this has been shown to be important in acquiring and processing information about one’s situation and about the potential effects of political action. Wolfinger and Rosenstone (1980) note that, while many scholars have viewed education as enhancing participation mainly by conferring higher income and status, their data suggest that education acts on participation independently of the higher income and social status that it generally confers. Secondly, the poor are widely dispersed geographically and are a very diverse group. Racial or ethnic prejudice may lead them to see other groups of poor people as a threat rather than as potential allies. In

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addition, regional differences in culture may create obstacles to common action, and regional variations in economic growth and prosperity may make the problems of poverty more or less serious in different parts of the United States. The fourth and fifth steps in Scholzman and Verba’s model are the formulation of policy alternatives and the organization of the deprived group for the purpose of political action. As one considers these steps in the process, a flaw in their model becomes apparent. They place the development of individual attitudes and characteristics that are conducive to political action prior to the active organization of the group. In doing so, they tacitly accept the assumption of group theorists such as David Truman (1951) that group formation occurs after a critical mass of individuals has developed both the desire and the capacity to act. Thus, the creation and forward motion of the group depends on the talents and resources that citizens are able to acquire as individuals. In fact, as discussed in chapter 2, the process by which interested and concerned individuals coalesce into a group capable of political action is far from automatic. The free rider problem prevents many potentially influential groups from forming, or it means that a group will typically recruit as members only a small fraction of those sympathetic to its cause. For a group to actually form requires the activities of policy entrepreneurs, who assemble a critical level of initial resources and then go out and actively recruit members. To do this successfully, they must use both information and emotion to arouse potential members, as well as the selective material incentives that Olson (1965) mentions. Therefore, the formulation of attitudes conducive to political action by individuals frequently follows the creation of organized groups, which consciously try to inculcate these attitudes in their followers. Organization for political action and the development of support by individuals for political action may actually go hand in hand in a continuous process of political mobilization. Verba, Scholzman and Brady (1995) note the educative function of group participation in their later work on political participation, which is based on large sample surveys of political activists. Their conclusions reinforce those that Berry, Portney and Thomson (1993) have drawn from an analysis of neighborhood-based participatory structures in five U.S. cities. They view participation and political efficacy as mutually reinforcing variables, rather than treating efficacy as an individual characteristic that “causes” participation. Both of these works emphasize the importance of social structures and norms that lead to individuals being invited to participate. In their interviews with activists, Verba, et al. find that a frequent catalyst to action is simply being asked to participate by others whom one trusts and respects. To the extent that the poor live

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outside informal networks of relationships that invite their involvement, whatever individual inclinations they have to get involved may never result in action. To make this argument is not to deny that individuals may possess, or fail to possess, certain personal characteristics that predispose them to political action, including a modicum of surplus personal resources to attract policy entrepreneurs and to support group activity and sufficient formal education to acquire both group consciousness and the skills necessary to organize successfully. It is also true that these individual characteristics are in short supply among the poor and that this makes organizing them much more difficult than organizing more privileged members of society (Bailis 1974; Piven and Cloward 1979). However, group mobilization is difficult among any stratum of society, given the perverse dynamics of collective action. Therefore, leaders who can educate and mobilize interest in the political process play a critical role in overcoming these obstacles. Because of the critical nature of leadership to the formation of group consciousness and group action, it is also important how receptive the dominant political and economic institutions are to the formation of certain types of groups. Another tacit assumption of Scholzman and Verba’s model is that the American political process is open to organization by disadvantaged persons if they are able to mobilize the political resources to get organized. Certainly there is some empirical basis for this assumption in the relative freedom of citizens to organize in the American system and in the incredible variety of interests that have organized representation in that system. However, this does not negate the fact that the system presents formidable obstacles to organization, particularly for groups like the poor that have traditionally been on the outside. Historically, the poor have been discouraged from participation through both overt and subtle means. At various times, dominant economic and political actors in the United States have openly resisted the organized demands of disadvantaged groups, using both legal and illegal means, and, sometimes, resorting to violent repression. The brutal suppression of strikes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is but one example. In most cases, however, the barriers are more subtle, reflecting, to borrow Schattschneider’s (1960) terminology, the “mobilization of bias” of the political system against such participation. Economic pressure, both direct (i.e., loss of jobs) and indirect (i.e. withdrawal of resources) has been exerted against advocates for the poor who become too militant. Informal networks of influence that are often so vital to getting things done locally or nationally have rarely included persons of lower socio-economic status. And, as noted earlier, negative stereotypes of the poor create a

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Who Speaks for the Poor?

predisposition to view their demands as illegitimate. In sum, political institutions are not neutral mechanisms waiting to be operated by whoever can get organized. These institutions shape who is or is not able to organize successfully. Because of these barriers, various forms of direct action outside the normal channels of power and decision-making have often been utilized by the poor (Piven and Cloward 1979). These have included civil disobedience, boycotts, demonstrations, and even riots, although the latter are typically spontaneous outbursts, rather than planned political insurgencies. These forms of participation can have a dramatic impact on decision-makers, because they raise the costs of maintaining policies that the poor view as harmful. Therefore, they may achieve results that no amount of peaceful, orderly negotiation could have produced. At the same time, protest by itself does not usually create a stable power base for the poor within the regular political structure. In recent decades, political leaders have more often responded to street protests by co-optation, rather than by repression. Token representatives of the poor are incorporated into decision-making structures and consulted during the policy-making process. However, rather than remaining aggressive advocates for the poor, these representatives frequently become conduits through which top-down policy decisions are legitimized. It is difficult for them to maintain a strong stance without permanent, stable organizations to back them up, and poor people’s organizations frequently evaporate after a particular issue has been dealt with. (Stoecker 1997; McAdam 1982) Despite the personal disadvantages conferred upon them by their position in society, the poor do possess resources that can, under the right circumstances, lead to political organization and action. Most important among these are the political resource of voting and the economic resource of withholding their labor. For example, McAdam (1982) documents the indigenous resources drawn upon by African Americans in the South, as they initiated the civil rights movement. Both he and Tarrow (1998) emphasize the degree of density of social networks within low income communities as critical to the mobilization of these resources. The overall economic and political organization of society is usually biased against political action by the disadvantaged, but there are times when openings are provided for them to exert influence. The remainder of part I of this chapter will show that the current political milieu in the United States is particularly disadvantageous to the efforts of less advantaged persons to organize effectively. The current obstacles can only be clearly understood within the historical context of the changing role of poverty in the capitalist economic system. At various times in the development of this system, differing segments of the population have been

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exposed to poverty, or to specific deprivations or problems associated with the market distribution of resources. The relationship of the group defined as poor to working and middle class citizens has shaped their response to poverty and the kinds of public policies they have supported or resisted. In turn, the way in which the political system has responded to the problems of poverty is intertwined with the response of that system to the demands of working class and middle class citizens. Working Class Organization and the Governmental Response to Poverty Capitalist societies have frequently been divided along class lines both by those seeking to understand them and those seeking to change them. In addition to Marx’s distinction between the few who own the means of production and the vast majority who are dependent on them for employment, there are also various definitions of working class, middle class, or upper middle class based on income, education, type of employment, and lifestyle (Crompton 1998). The complexities of these definitions are beyond the scope of this work, but the concept of “the poor” needs to be situated in relation to the overall stratification system. The working class is generally defined as those persons who occupy jobs requiring low skill levels, and, in many but not all cases, requiring physical, rather than intellectual work. Working class jobs are also typically characterized by repetitive or routine tasks and little control over the timing and conditions of work (Crompton 1998). Because people in these positions typically earn less income than others, poverty has been frequently associated with this working class group. However, as the above definition suggests, the term working class refers to certain functional roles within the system, not just to a particular level of economic well-being. The number of working class people who are “poor” varies, as does the self-identification of working class people with being a deprived or impoverished group. The political and economic demands of the working class address problems of economic deprivation but are often based on their functional position, as, for example, a union fighting for increased pay and employer benefits for certain jobs or for the rights of workers to certain social benefits. Since the working class is often a larger group than those suffering the severe deprivations of poverty, and since they as a group may have more political leverage, part of understanding the political representation of the poor is understanding the complex relationship between the interests of those in poverty and the more general position of the working class in society. During the early stages of industrialization in the nineteenth century, the vast majority of industrial workers were impoverished (by their own standards, as well as contemporary ones), and the middle class was small.

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Karl Marx predicted that the working class (proletariat) would become progressively more impoverished, and that small business owners, craftsmen, and other middle class persons (the petit bourgeoisie) would gradually be absorbed into the proletariat. Marx believed that the increasing impoverishment of the vast majority of the population would be the engine driving the revolutionary organization of the proletariat, leading to the eventual overthrow of the capitalist system (Feuer 1957). The historical record shows that this progressive impoverishment did not occur in developed capitalist economies. Throughout most of the 20th century, with the major exception of the Great Depression, the standard of living of workers increased, while the changing structure of production spawned a growing middle class. (In the period since 1980 in the United States, middle and working class living standards have experienced a modest decline. This development will be discussed later, but it does not negate the overall trend.) The increase in the working class standard of living included both growth in the purchasing power of wages and growth in the provision of various social benefits by governments to protect workers (and the middle class) against the cyclical fluctuations of the market economy and against individual losses of productivity due to age or disability. Different scholars have placed different degrees of emphasis on economic vs. political factors as the main contributors to this process of expanded individual and social benefits. Certainly, the growing productivity of the capitalist system was a major factor. New technologies and the exploitation of new raw materials generated surpluses that could be used to raise the standard of living of workers without fundamentally altering the distribution of wealth. (Census data on the distribution of income by quintiles show that the distribution of wealth has changed little in the last fifty years; U.S. Census 1992, 1975) White collar occupations were increasingly necessary to the production system, and this type of labor could command an even greater share of the surplus. With regard to the collection of social benefits delivered outside the market by the public sector (typically referred to as the welfare state,) scholars such as Harold Wilensky (1975) found that the generosity of these benefits correlates more strongly with the expansion of per capita GNP than with the level of organized political effort by the working class. (See Skocpol 1995 for a review of other scholars taking this position.) Nevertheless, many other scholars have placed greater emphasis on the political organization of the working class as the critical factor in the improvement of their standard of living, through both increased wages and increased social benefits. To be sure, some of the earliest social benefit provisions, such as those advanced by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in Germany in the 1880s, were attempts by the economically dominant class

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to anticipate working class political organization and deflect it by improving the conditions of life for the workers. Other initiatives by progressive business leaders aimed at creatively managing the workforce also have contributed to the development of social policy as well (Quadagno 1988). However, strong unions and working class political parties were formed in most capitalist countries, and these organizations were the steadiest source of pressure to expand both wages and social benefits. Where their political unity was strong, they were able to gain a legitimate role in decision-making and countries where this occurred tend to have higher levels of social benefits than other developed capitalist economies (Esping-Andersen 1985). A number of factors have been advanced as explanations for the variation in the political influence of working class parties and, consequently, in the level of social benefits among capitalist countries. Cultural and attitudinal factors have been emphasized by some scholars, such as, for example, the stronger belief in the possibility of individual upward mobility expressed by workers in the United States than by workers in other countries (Rimlinger 1971). Social factors, such as the existence of regional or ethnic cleavages within the working class have also been offered as explanations for the relative weakness of working class parties in some countries (Wilensky 1975). However, these cultural differences alone do not explain all of the crossnational variation, and, in recent years, a number of scholars have come increasingly to look at the structure of political institutions as an independent factor shaping the impact of working class parties. For example, Skocpol (1995) and Robertson and Judd (1989) stress the fragmented nature of political decision-making in the United States, with a relatively strict separation of powers between the states and federal government and, within the federal government, between the executive and legislative branches, as an obstacle to working class influence. In keeping with the interest group model outlined earlier, such divisions make it more difficult to organize effective mass organizations on a national level, and they make it easier for small, well-organized groups of producers to resist the mass demands of working class groups. In addition, Skocpol stresses the nature and timing of the formation of party organizations in the United States. Political parties grew up in the early nineteenth century as localized patronage organizations, prior to the growth of organized working class demands in the economic sphere. These patronage institutions (e.g., political machines in large cities) were often hostile to class based political organizations, and it was difficult for economic organizations such as unions to become fully integrated into the party structure. As a result, a “true” working class party never developed in the United States. The Democrats came to incorporate many working

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class groups and to adopt some of their agenda after the party realignment that occurred during the Great Depression. However, the pre-existing Democratic party structure in the south was retained as part of their majority coalition, and its main goal was to maintain the south’s racial caste system and to suppress political organization by the white working class as well. Even though the Democrats held a majority in Congress for most of the period from 1932 to 1994, their proposals to expand social benefits encountered resistance from the southerners in their own party nearly as frequently as from Republicans. Finally, other scholars have linked the fate of proposals for change in social benefits to feedback from existing policy structures, as well as to the overall structure of political institutions (Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Pierson 1994). In this view, the initial shape that a particular social policy takes may be the result of the unique historical circumstances in which it forms, but, once that policy becomes entrenched, it becomes harder to propose alternatives that differ substantially from it. For example, the fact that the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program was initially designed so that benefits were allowed to vary greatly from state to state made it difficult later to come up with a program with nationally uniform standards, because no matter at what level the standards were set, the states whose benefits were either substantially higher or substantially lower would experience a threat to the delicate political arrangements surrounding their program. This does not mean that profound, non-incremental changes in such a program can never occur, given the right political circumstances (as is illustrated, in the case of AFDC, by the welfare “reform” measure passed in 1996). However, as initially suggested by Lindblom’s incrementalist model (1992) the policy status quo does acquire considerable inertia, and, thus, it shapes all subsequent political debate on social policy issues. Although the working class may have particularly strong economic reasons for identifying with the needs of the poor, significant numbers of middle and upper middle class citizens also act in ways that reflect sympathy for the plight of the poor. One might expect that the more privileged members of society, from the middle to the upper class, will possess strong negative stereotypes of the poor and be reluctant to share resources with them. The values inherent in the capitalist system support and justify inequality as necessary to the functioning of the system, and individuals come to identify their self-worth with their relative position in the stratification system (Lewis 1978; Waxman 1983). Also, there is the belief that, unless people can earn differential rewards, they won’t be motivated to compete, thereby producing the goods and services the society needs and enhancing its wealth. These views are in fact widespread, (Feagin 1975), but in spite of this large numbers of middle to upper class citizens have devoted significant portions of their lives and resources to

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assisting the poor, both by direct personal service and contributions and by pressuring the government to do more for them. Enlightened self-interest has been one strong motivation. Privileged members of society have argued that some alleviation of poverty is essential, for two related reasons. One is to avoid the immediate social costs, such as crime and threats to public health, that poverty imposes on the rest of society (Friedman 1968). The other reason is that severe deprivation threatens the stability of the overall system, by making the poor receptive to radical leaders who wish to abolish it altogether. A second strong motivation is the Judeo-Christian ethic, which teaches that economic prosperity is a blessing from God, carrying with it the obligation to show compassion for those less fortunate. This has acted as a strong counterweight to the Social Darwinist tendencies inherent in capitalism. For some, this obligation can be discharged by token acts of private charity, but many religious leaders have recognized and advocated a larger societal obligation to improve the lives of the poor. In summary, organizations representing the working class have acted as a major source of pressure to expand social benefits in all capitalist countries, with many middle class citizens also providing support for such measures, for religious or other reasons. However, the working class has varied in its cohesiveness from one country to another. Moreover, working class demands are mediated by political structures in such a way as to make them much more effective in some countries than in others. In general, a more decentralized political structure, containing many veto points that can be utilized by privileged groups to block action, is much more resistant to working class demands than a more centralized structure. The Development of U.S. Social Policy Early Development In the United States, as noted above, a wide range of social, cultural, and political factors combined to produce limited development of social benefits. Substantial provision of such benefits by the federal government began only in the 1930s, during the crisis of the Great Depression. As the American response to this crisis unfolded, the Democratic party assumed a dominant role in policy formation, but its own southern wing resisted any expansion of social benefits that would interfere with the racially segregated, low wage labor system that existed in that region. Republicans also had enough countervailing power to block, or sometimes reverse, more ambitious social programs. As a result, the American welfare state developed several characteristics that were problematic to its long term political support and expansion.

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First, it included few universal benefit programs that could be utilized by a broad spectrum of poor and working class households. Other developed capitalist countries provided housing, health care, cash assistance, and other services as broad-based benefit programs that all below certain incomes were eligible to receive. In the United States, benefits were either (1) targeted to special groups, such as the elderly or disabled, that were seen as more “deserving” than the rest of the poor (Katz 1989); or, (2) limited in scope to the most needy and destitute, rather than spread across a spectrum of incomes (Skocpol 1995). Various initiatives to get more universal benefits enacted were made by liberal Democrats (e.g., proposals for national health care under the Truman Administration), but the opposition of Republicans and southern Democrats was strong enough to defeat them. This political situation led to a clear bifurcation in the political treatment of social welfare programs. Those programs that provided benefits to people with a broad range of incomes were typically set up on a contributory basis, so that the beneficiaries were perceived to have earned the support they received. The broad base of political support that these programs enjoyed made it difficult for critics of social welfare to attack them, although conservatives have recently tried to undermine support for Social Security (old age assistance) by questioning its financial soundness and comparing it unfavorably (and unfairly) to private pension systems. These programs provided major benefits for the poor, but these benefits were hidden within the larger scope of the benefits provided to others. (Brown 1988b) In contrast, programs specifically targeted to the poor enjoyed much weaker support. In public opinion surveys, middle class citizens expressed general support for a government role in helping people meet critical needs for food and shelter, but they strongly associated cash benefit programs, such as AFDC, with aid to people they believed to be undeserving. (Heclo 1988) Second, most of the social programs that were enacted were highly decentralized in both administrative structure and benefit levels. This was based on the American ideological belief that state and local governments are “closer to the people.” (See McConnell, 1966, for a critical examination of this belief.) It was also based on the pragmatic need to mollify southerners, by allowing them to use local control to minimize the impact of these programs in their region. This decentralized structure created wide regional variations in benefit levels, and it prevented the development of a strong centralized administrative structure that could press for gradual program expansion. Despite frequent flourishes of conservative rhetoric about “federal bureaucrats” gaining too much power, the federal social welfare bureaucracy in the United States has always been quite limited in scope compared to most other capitalist economies (Skocpol 1988).

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Third, the provision of social benefits and services was not explicitly linked to macroeconomic policy. Mucciaroni (1990) argues that in the United States, economic planning follows “commercial Keynesianism,” which focuses on expanding investment opportunities and envisions that the benefits of overall economic expansion will “trickle down” to workers, without any conscious planning. The result is that, unlike countries such as Sweden where labor force planning and worker retraining are integral parts of overall economic planning, benefits and training for the unemployed have been seen primarily as welfare programs, directed at the poor rather than benefitting the whole labor force. The closest approach made by the United States to an integrated national strategy of economic planning and labor force development was the proposed Full Employment Act of 1945, but in the face of strong Congressional opposition, it was watered down from a strong planning tool to the weaker, indirect measures embodied in the Employment Act of 1946 (Mucciaroni 1990). The overall effect of these characteristics was to prevent the formation of a mass base of support for most programs benefitting the poor, since persons failing to meet certain rigid standards of deprivation or “deservingness” could not qualify for cash or in-kind benefits, and efforts to retrain and re-employ workers were lumped in with welfare programs. With the exception of Social Security benefits for the elderly, where the universal nature of the benefits within this group and the growing size of the group itself due to longer life spans created a formidable constituency, this design helped keep such programs small in scale and isolated from the mainstream of economic considerations. Developments after World War II served to deepen the divisions between the poor and the rest of society. Social Policy after World War II The first 25 years after World War II were a period of rapid economic expansion in the United States. Many working class households were pulled out of poverty, and the middle class grew larger. During this period the economy was still largely based on manufacturing, and a pattern of domestic production aimed primarily at domestic consumption prevailed. The centralized structure of industrial production, plus the rapid expansion of manufacturing, gave unions representing blue collar workers the leverage to obtain higher wages. Because unions were stronger in this economic sphere than in the political sphere, they also obtained benefits such as pensions and health insurance that they had been unable to obtain as social benefits through political action. Walter Reuther, the head of the United Auto Workers, stated that “There is no evidence to encourage the belief that we may look to Congress for relief. In the immediate future, security will be won

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for our people only to the extent that the union succeeds in obtaining such security through collective bargaining” (quoted in Brown, 1988b, 189). In this context, poverty came to be viewed as a residual problem, experienced primarily by those left behind by economic expansion. In the early 1960s, the discovery of pockets of severe poverty in Appalachia, in the rural South and in inner cities was treated by the media as a dramatic revelation, and the resulting public concern helped to spur action against poverty on the national level. However, poverty was still seen as the fate of a few, which could be ameliorated by bringing them into the mainstream, and the anti-poverty programs of the 1960s were designed according to this assumption (Haveman 1977). Even the concept of “the poor” came to be more of a statistical artifact than an actual social grouping. Mollie Orshansky, a poverty expert working for the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, was asked to estimate the number of poor people, and she came up with an income of three times the minimum food budget established by the Department of Agriculture as a floor below which households could be considered poor. Although she never intended it as such, this statistical measure came to be regarded as the official definition of poverty, with those who fell below it treated as a group (Lynn and Whitman 1981, 89). Unlike the working class, which though divided, complex and hard to define, can still be regarded as a group with some functional relationship to the economic structure, the poor became a group thrown together by an act of measurement. Two other dimensions of the residualization and isolation of the poor affected the post-war political environment. One was the economic position of those left in poverty. Although a diverse group, many of the poor had in common a weak attachment to the labor force. A significant number of them moved in and out of low wage jobs, but a larger proportion were chronically unemployed, or under-employed. Their position thus resembled that of the lumpen proletariat, described by Marx as an impoverished group of surplus workers existing on the fringes of the system. This contributed to the public’s view of the poor, not as hard-working blue collar laborers, but as noncontributors to the economic system—as people not “pulling their weight” economically or morally. Although many labor leaders recognized the intimate connection between these surplus workers and the rest of the working class, and consistently backed expanded programs to assist them, many in the rank and file of blue collar workers came to have very negative attitudes towards the poor as a group. These public attitudes were exemplified by a bumper sticker, widely seen during the initial years of the War on Poverty, which read, “I fight poverty—I work !” The second dimension of the isolation of the poor from the rest of the working class was that of race. While the majority of the poor remaining

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after World War II were white, a disproportionate share were African American. Low wages and racial segregation kept them desperately poor in the South, and the jobs they most frequently occupied, agricultural labor and domestic workers, were deliberately excluded from Social Security and unemployment insurance (Skocpol 1988). Millions of African Americans improved their economic condition by migrating to the cities after World War II, but they still encountered many barriers to full economic and political participation. For many years after their arrival, they were neither welcomed nor incorporated by largely white working class economic and political organizations in the northern cities. Unions refused to admit them, and it took two decades, and the stimulus of federally funded Community Action Programs, before they began to gain serious political representation (Peterson and Greenstone 1977). Rather than being viewed as a new source of political and economic clout for the working class, the influx of African Americans was seen by whites as a threat to their economic and social well-being (Judd and Swanstrom 1998). Nevertheless, organized groups of African Americans served as major catalysts for social change during the 1950s and 1960s. The civil rights movement started with the goal of breaking down southern apartheid, but having succeeded in dismantling the system of laws perpetuating segregation, its attention soon shifted to the economic dimensions of racism, as reflected in discrimination in employment and housing. The Johnson Administration saw the War on Poverty as a way to incorporate both northern and southern African Americans into the Democratic Party coalition, although Johnson also feared (correctly) the eventual exodus of southern whites from the party. The urban violence of the mid-1960s also stimulated more attention to the problems of impoverished African American neighborhoods in northern cities. Unfortunately, the lead role played by African Americans in stimulating public efforts to attack poverty led to further estrangement between many white voters and the expansion of social policy. Working class voters continued to support anti-poverty programs in larger numbers than middle class voters, and their leaders supported the Democratic administrations that pushed these goals (Edsall 1984). However, black demands were seen as threatening by many members of the white working class. The new social programs of the 1960s came to be seen as primarily benefitting African Americans, and social policy came to be seen by whites of modest income as something that would take away their limited resources, rather than making life better for them. This made them susceptible to overtly racist appeals, such as that of third party candidate George Wallace in the 1968 presidential campaign, as well as to the thinly veiled racism of the “law and order” stands taken by the two major parties to deflect Wallace’s candidacy. The addition of racial bias into the mix of attitudes towards

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welfare programs made it easier for many whites to “blame the victim” for his or her impoverished status. In addition to these economic and social dynamics, there was also an unanticipated consequence of the renewed efforts to combat poverty in the 1960s that drove an even deeper wedge between the poor and many working and middle class voters. The 1960s saw the creation or expansion of several major benefit programs to ameliorate poverty, such as food stamps (created in 1964) and Medicaid (created in 1965.) However, the stated intention of the War on Poverty was to enable the poor to escape poverty by becoming productive and participating members of society. They were to be helped in pulling themselves up individually through various education and job training initiatives, while organization through the Community Action Program would help them deal collectively with problems in their neighborhoods. The 1964 report of the Council of Economic Advisors stated, “About $11 billion a year could bring all poor families up to the $3,000 income level we have taken to be the minimum for a decent life. The majority of the Nation could simply tax themselves enough to provide the necessary income supplements…. But this “solution” would leave untouched most of the roots of poverty…. It will be far better, even if more difficult, to equip and permit the poor of the Nation to produce and to earn the additional $11 billion and more” (quoted in Gottschalk and Gottschalk 1988, 60). However, the designers of these programs underestimated the economic and social obstacles to integrating these surplus workers into the economic mainstream. The programs were underfunded in relation to the severity of the problems they faced, and they were not integrated into an overall full employment strategy. Also, local political opposition to federally funded neighborhood organization and agitation led to curtailment of the Community Action features of the War on Poverty (Donovan 1967). Meanwhile, the political activism of the decade increased the awareness of the poor of their ability to make claims on the government for support under those programs designed to ameliorate, rather than eliminate, poverty (Piven and Cloward 1971). Rates of poverty did not change, but the willingness of the poor to take advantage of public programs increased greatly. The result was that the AFDC and food stamp rolls expanded very rapidly in the late 1960s and early 1970s. According to Burtless (1986, 21) AFDC expenditures increased by a factor of five between 1960 and 1973. Many of the marginal workers excluded from unemployment insurance began to take advantage of the only income supplement programs available to them. This expansion of cash and in-kind benefits was quite effective in reducing income poverty, contributing greatly to the reduction of the poverty rate from 20 percent in 1960 to 11 percent in 1980 (Danziger,

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Haveman and Plotnick 1986) Moreover, the total claim made on the national wealth was fairly modest, with expenditures for means-tested income and health assistance expanding from 0.8 percent of GNP in 1967 to 1.6 percent of GNP in 1986. (Gottschalk and Gottschalk 1988:64) However, it enhanced the public perception that the main purpose of the War on Poverty was to enable more low income persons to claim support without working, even though the extent to which welfare and food stamp recipients were totally out of the labor force was exaggerated in the public mind. Opponents of social policy could portray the efforts of the War on Poverty to remove people from poverty as total failures, while decrying the increasing “dependency” of the poor on public support (Schwarz 1983). Social Policy Since 1970 Many of the forces driving deeper the wedge between the poor and the rest of the population came to fruition after 1970, contributing to growing opposition to expanded social benefits (although many specific programs were still seen in a favorable light by majorities of the public— see Hays 1988). In addition, there were new political and economic factors that emerged after 1970 that further contributed to dwindling political support for such programs. One was the decline in the nation’s rate of economic expansion. During the 1970s, for a variety of complex reasons, the United States’ economy began to grow much more slowly than it had from 1945 to 1970. Growing competition from other producers in the global economic system, increasing energy costs, and slower increases in demand for durable consumer goods are often cited as reasons for this slower growth. (Thurow 1981; Reich 1983) Beginning in the mid-1970s, higher inflation rates began to erode real wage gains, while simultaneously pushing households into higher tax brackets, thus increasing the proportional demands made on taxpayers by government programs. Unlike the Great Depression, it was not the kind of acute crisis that would stimulate demands for decisive government action, but rather a slow decline in the rate of improvement in people’s lives that created even more resentment of the cost burden of assisting those lower on the economic scale. From the late 1970s on, there was also a substantial restructuring of the United States economy. Between 1979 and 1989, the percentage of the U.S. labor force engaged in manufacturing declined from 23.4 percent to 18.1 percent (Mishel and Bernstein 1993:174). Employment growth took place primarily in the service sector, broadly defined as any job involving the production of services rather than durable goods. This sector included two segments: highly specialized, skilled service functions, such as in education or finance, requiring advanced education; and lower skilled jobs, such as in retail sales and food services, requiring a high school diploma or less. The

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former were quite well compensated, but the latter generally paid much less than the manufacturing jobs available to people with similar education levels in earlier decades. Meanwhile, wages were also shrinking in the remaining manufacturing jobs. The increased utilization of foreign assembly plants by American corporations, plus the increasing consumption of imported goods by Americans, had the effect of increasing the supply of labor relative to the demand, therefore depressing wages. Mishel and Bernstein (1993:183) estimate that, in 1985, the trade deficit had the effect of increasing the labor supply in manufacturing by 8.2 percent. The net effect of all these changes was to lower dramatically the earnings of new workers entering the labor force. Between 1973 and 1991, the entry level hourly wage for high school graduates declined from $8.69 to $6.48 in 1991 dollars, a 25.4 percent drop! There was also a smaller drop in entry level wages for college graduates, with the result that all workers with less than five years experience were earning 16.2 percent less in 1991 than in 1973 (Mishel and Bernstein 1993:170–171). In terms of the quantitative value of total compensation, these wage losses were partially offset by increasing expenditures for benefits, with hourly benefit costs rising by $1.53 between 1966 and 1992 (Mishel and Bernstein 1993:154). However, as health expenditures buy less coverage, and as more employers opt out of health or pension coverage, the overall trend has been one of decline in the coverage and availability of benefits, such as pensions and health insurance, along with the level of wages. These kinds of losses have ripple effects that spread throughout society, from increased rates of poverty and family break-up at the lower ends of the economic scale, to reduced ability to purchase a home at the middle income levels. The changing employment status of women added an important gender dimension to the economic changes taking place. The increasing employment of women outside the home meant that a larger percentage of the adult population was participating in the labor force, thus further increasing the supply of labor. As wages fell, it became harder for families to maintain an adequate standard of living without two adult workers, thus creating a further incentive for women to seek paid employment. Most women workers moved into the service sector, rather than the manufacturing sector, and women moving into professional and managerial positions were still at the bottom of the ladder. Thus, female earnings remained at approximately 70 cents on the dollar compared to male earnings (U.S. Census 1992). Women were also still expected to be the primary caretakers for children, and increased rates of divorce and non-marriage led to a growing population of households containing children in which the sole breadwinner was female. Given women’s lower earnings, it is not surprising that a large percentage of these households

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soon fell below the poverty level. This phenomenon came to be referred to as the “feminization of poverty,” although declining male opportunities and earnings capacity contributed greatly to the problem, by making men less willing to commit to stable family relationships (Mare and Winship 1991). One might expect problems such as these to lead to widespread discontent, followed by at least some political mobilization. Even though many of the households affected by these changes did not fall below the poverty line, they might have benefitted from policies serving a broad spectrum of lower income households, such as expanded access to health care and child care. However, the response of many lower income voters was deeper disillusionment with the political process and withdrawal from interest in it, rather than greater activity (Edsall 1984). Such withdrawal can be understood in terms of the general dynamics of political mobilization discussed earlier in the chapter. In addition, some important features of the current political landscape have contributed to what might be called a de-mobilization of voters and these need to be explored. First, given the numerous obstacles to political mobilization, it is extremely helpful if there are existing organizations that can respond to public discontent by utilizing their resources to channel and direct public action. For the working class, labor unions have traditionally played a mobilizing function, acting as political voices even for those workers who are not members of unions. However, during the last 30 years, the very economic forces that have created problems for individual workers have also acted to weaken the influence of labor unions. By 1982, labor union representation had declined to 20.6 percent from a peak of 34.7 percent of the non-agricultural labor force in 1954 (Goldfield 1987:10–11). The increased decentralization and mobility of capital investment is one factor contributing to this trend (Craypo and Nissen 1993). With the emergence of the mode of industrial organization often referred to as “post-Fordist,” manufacturing activities have become more decentralized, the large concentrations of blue collar workers that formed a strong base for union organization no longer exist, and it is easier for firms to move production to lower wage, non-union areas of the United States or to foreign locations. (Crompton 1998). The increase in service employment relative to the traditionally unionized manufacturing sector has also been blamed for union decline, although unions have enjoyed some successes in organizing the service sector. Finally, increased employer sophistication in countering union organization, coupled with the increasingly pro-management posture taken by the National Labor Relations Board since the Reagan Administration, has also contributed to union decline (Goldfield 1987). Unions continued to be major financial contributors to the Democratic party. However, they could no longer reliably mobilize large blocks of

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voters on behalf of Democratic candidates. There was a resurgence of grassroots union political activity in the 1998 Congressional elections, which received some of the credit for the Democratic comeback in the House of Representatives, but its scale and effectiveness were quite limited from a historical perspective. Secondly, the American political party system continued to move away from the direct, grassroots mobilization of voters that used to be a part of its function. Issues were raised, and candidates communicated with the public primarily through the electronic media, bypassing direct political organization. The political parties became national fund-raising organizations, whose function was to obtain large donations from wealthy individuals and corporations in order to sustain their media appeals. Public opinion surveys reflected distaste for the shallow, emotional, and often negative messages that were conveyed through the media, yet these messages appeared to tip the balance among undecided voters in many elections. One explanation for this seeming paradox lies in the fact that more and more voters who dislike such messages dropped out of the political process, so that the remaining electorate consisted of those who tune into and respond to media messages. Trends towards non-participation were apparent among all types of voters, but they seemed particularly to affect younger voters and voters at the lower end of the income scale, whose attachment to politics was weaker to begin with (Rimmerman 1997). Third, generations of voters growing up after World War II lacked the strong party identification based on economic issues that was the basis of party coalitions from the New Deal through the late 1960s. There was a decline in voting based on occupational status in all developed capitalist countries, and it was especially marked in the United States. For example, in 1980, nearly half of households with union members voted for Ronald Reagan (Crompton 1998). On a deeper level, the experience of younger voters was one of disillusionment with both parties. They tended to register independent in large numbers, and their responses to survey questions about the political parties tended towards total indifference (Wattenberg 1986). Those that did bother to vote responded to short term issues and personalities rather than deeper party loyalties. Because of this, voters made different party choices in congressional and in presidential elections, leading to divided government. Paradoxically, as voters became more indifferent to party labels, the ideological divisions between the parties widened, making it more difficult for them to cooperate on “middle of the road” policy solutions that might have broad popular appeal. Ginsberg and Shefter (1990) argue that, out of frustration at not being able to change the direction of public policy through the a clear mandate gained by unified party control, both parties have shifted their competition in the direction of issues of personal honesty and morality, (the politics of

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scandal.) Both Democrats and Republicans have achieved short term gains by weakening or discrediting each other’s leaders, but over the long term, these tactics have led to further voter disillusionment and apathy. Voters perceive both parties as corrupt, and they do not see coherent policy options with relevance to their own lives being debated and enacted. Thus, a cycle has been set in motion that is very deleterious to active citizen involvement, with particularly negative consequences for the engagement of those at the bottom of the income scale. Finally, the business community has become extensively mobilized against the expansion of social benefits, and the positions taken by business groups on government action to aid the disadvantaged have become increasingly conservative since the mid-1970s. Concerned that liberal lobbies were gaining too much influence, and pushing through legislation that increased both government regulation and social spending, business groups began to direct their formidable resources not only to the immediate interests surrounding their particular industry but also to a broad based attack on the more activist government that had emerged out of the 1960s. David Vogel (1989) views the late 1970s as a period of resurgence in business power, after it had reached a low point earlier in the decade. David Plotke (1992) documents the important role of the Business Roundtable in coordinating the efforts of larger corporations. The formation of well-funded conservative think tanks and advocacy groups, such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, also played an important role. There was already a well of resentment against higher taxes and of skepticism about government efficacy among many middle and upper middle class citizens, and these concerns were skillfully tapped by media campaigns against regulation, taxation and social spending. As a result, the mood of the remaining electorate, drawn disproportionately from the better educated and higher income strata of society, became more pro-business, and more conservative political leaders began to be elected. Business interests also began to abandon the modus vivendi they had established with the liberal Democrats that controlled Congress. According to Edsall (1984) they had tolerated the liberal votes of Democrats on social policy issues, in exchange for those Democrats defending their particular trade interests when necessary. This, plus recognition of the power of incumbency, kept business contributions flowing to the Democrats, (though not in as large quantities as to Republicans). As conservative strength grew, many business interests began to see the possibility of electing more ideologically sympathetic members of Congress, and they threw their support behind them and behind efforts to discredit the liberal approach to social policy. These trends contributed to the takeover of Congress by the Republicans in 1994.

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Plotke emphasizes that the business mobilization of the 1970s and 1980s was not just a pragmatic response to particular economic concerns of business. Rather, it involved the advancement of a world view in which less government involvement in redistribution and regulation, and a reduction in the power of working class political and economic organizations, is seen as producing a more efficient and productive market economy. In this view, rather than helping to stabilize capitalism, an active public sector can do little but harm it. Of course, the use of the tax system selectively to subsidize certain industries (e.g., housing), the free or belowcost construction of infrastructure (e.g., logging roads and irrigation systems) to assist others, and the regular expenditure of large amounts of public funds to influence business location decisions (commonly known as economic development incentives) were usually exempted from this critique of “governmental activism,” even though at least some data indicate that such business subsidies have a much more negative effect on economic growth than social welfare expenditures (Friedland and Sanders 1988:32). Nevertheless, this view shapes the way in which public policy has been discussed since the beginning of the 1990s much more than in earlier decades. Michael Brown notes that many progressives have taken satisfaction (and many conservatives, dismay) from the fact that the welfare state suffered only modest retrenchment under the concerted conservative attacks of the 1980s. He argues, however, that while financial losses have been relatively modest, the loss in overall faith in the concept of a societal obligation to provide non-market sources of support to those who do not earning a living wage from market sources has been more substantial. (Brown 1988) While Democrats continue to block, at least in some areas, the drastic retrenchment envisioned by most Republicans, even they feel compelled to sound anti-regulatory and anti-redistributive themes in order to fit within this new mainstream. The Local/National Dimension in the Politics of Poverty Before concluding this discussion of the political milieu in which the interests of the poor get, or fail to get, representation, a brief discussion of one other dimension of the political role of the poor is necessary; that of the local vs. national distribution of decision-making with regard to social policy. It has been suggested in this chapter that the decentralized nature of the American political process has discouraged the creation of large scale social programs: (1) because of the different interests and values of various regions of the country; and, (2) because a system with multiple decision points creates unique difficulties for the creation of strong, mass-based organizations representing the working class or the poor, while giving an advantage to the

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more cohesive and better financed groups representing the interests of the privileged. However, in apparent contradiction, it has been argued that face to face, grassroots organizing is the best way to mobilize the poor for political action. Since such organizing is most effective at the local level, this would seem to support an argument that decentralized decision-making would be most effective in empowering the poor. In exploring this question, one must make a clear distinction between the economic and the political dimensions of decentralization. From an economic standpoint, the smaller a unit of government, the less control it has over its environment. First, smaller units are more likely to be homogeneous in their economic base and, therefore, each unit is dependent on a few key businesses for its prosperity, giving those businesses tremendous leverage in local decision-making (McConnell 1966). Second, smaller units must compete in the marketplace for investment by mobile capital (Peterson 1981). If they adopt policies that compel substantially greater redistribution of wealth than their neighbors, they will lose out in this competition, since businesses and prosperous citizens can avoid these burdens simply by moving a few miles down the road. Third, the fluidity of investment in a capitalist economy means that poverty and prosperity are not distributed evenly among smaller units of government. Some areas are relatively prosperous, while others contain large pockets of the unemployed and the impoverished. Since the local tax base is dependent on economic productivity and incomes, this sets up a situation in which the local resources available to deal with poverty are inversely proportional to the severity of the poverty experienced. For these reasons, it is virtually impossible to carry out any significant governmental redistribution of resources to benefit the poor at any but the national level. The nation can reallocate its wealth among localities, either directly through grants-in-aid or indirectly through the national distribution of benefits to individuals, in such a way that the relative advantages and disadvantages of local jurisdictions are ameliorated rather than exacerbated. Of course, with an increasingly globalized economy, even nation states are put in a problematic position as to how much redistribution they can carry out. Although social benefits can contribute to enhanced national productivity in the long run, there is always the threat that areas with lower wages and social benefits will attract internationally mobile capital, and this has in fact been a global trend. Nevertheless, national governments still have considerably more control over flows of wealth and capital than sub-national units of government. Many studies of American local power structures showed how a few economic notables can dominate a smaller unit of government, effectively preventing any citizen action that does not meet with their approval. (An overview of these studies is provided in Hawley and Wirt 1968.) In a small

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community, systems of stratification can be intensified and ossified by the daily interactions of cohesive groups within each stratum and by the development of long traditions of who is on the inside and who on the outside in community affairs. Thus, it would appear that the will, as well as the capacity to enact policies of benefit to the less advantaged, is lacking at the local level. Nevertheless, many cogent arguments have been made for the superiority of the local level for the effective political mobilization of citizens. The smaller number of participants and the smaller scale of problems provides an opportunity for creative involvement and problem solving by individual citizens that is not present at the national level. Whereas national debates on issues may be driven by rigid ideological splits and ongoing partisan struggles for power, local citizens meeting face to face may be able to work out pragmatic solutions that gain consensual support from across the political spectrum. In addition, as communitarians and other advocates of civic renewal have argued, the involvement of citizens in national issues tends to be limited to the relatively passive acts of voting or contributing money, whereas local involvement enables them to grow in creativity and leadership capacity as they engage directly and personally in the issues affecting the community (Barber 1998; Bellah, et. al. 1985). The question of where the poor fit into this national/local dynamic is vital to an understanding of how they are, or could be, represented in the political process. Because of their lower levels of formal education, and their lack of connectedness to broader social networks that span localities and states, effective organization of the poor usually takes place block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, or workplace by workplace. If it is true that citizens in general respond better to this “retail” mode of political organization, it is certainly even more true of those with the least political resources. Neighborhood groups allow the poor to develop individual and collective capacities for action that no other arena can provide. However, unless these local organizations are able to connect in such a way as to exert influence on the national distribution of resources, the poor are unlikely to get the material resources they need to effectively address their problems. Effective leverage within a community is not of much benefit, unless that community itself can muster sufficient resources to bring about meaningful change, and this typically involves a significant infusion of national resources. The American political system rewards groups that are strategically located geographically, and strong local organizations can provide a solid geographical base for national leverage. Historically, spatially based organization of the poor has often been a substitute for strictly class based organization. Working class voters were able to exercise leverage over the

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national government during the New Deal and post-New Deal political era in large part because they were spatially concentrated in large cities that could determine electoral outcomes in the most populous states. Strong neighborhood political organizations worked to get out the vote for Democratic candidates, alongside union organizations in the workplace. As the electoral impact of large cities declined, so too did the political clout of their working class and poor inhabitants. However, the neighborhood still remains the most important organizational base for the poor. To the extent that the poor have any success in challenging concentrated economic power within their communities, and gaining representation in community decision-making, they usually base this success on strong neighborhood organizations. However, in the current political milieu, it is very difficult to fuse these local efforts into a national movement that can make greater claims on national resources. For the poor and non-poor alike, there is a much higher level of personal activism in community affairs at the local level than at the state or national level. (Verba, Scholzman and Brady 1995) However, much of this activism is viewed as non-political vol-unteerism, rather than engagement in issues that have a larger political dimension at both the local and the national level. Part of the disconnect between voters and the political system is the disconnect between concern with local issues and the formulation of demands on the national government to create policies that are supportive of localities’ efforts to solve their problems. In chapter 1 it was mentioned that national interest groups have sometimes been viewed as exacerbating the lack of meaningful involvement of citizens by soliciting passive representation on single issues over grassroots mobilization on a broad range of issues and then utilizing their resources to “nationalize” local elections through selective contributions and publicity campaigns. However, it is also the case that citizens are unlikely to effectively influence the allocation of national resources without strong organizational representation at the national level. Therefore, one must return to the question of what groups are addressing these issues at the national level. PART II. WHO SPEAKS FOR THE POOR? In an atmosphere of increasing hostility to public sector intervention on behalf of the poor, and in a political process in which poor, or even working class, voters have less and less involvement or influence, what voices are raised on behalf of the poor? Is there a total absence of advocacy on behalf of maintaining or increasing programs that benefit those who suffer economic and social deprivation? The answer is that those voices are present and have consistently been present. In addition to a continuing, though

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reduced, role for working class organizations, a variety of other types of organizations have been involved in social policy-making, particularly since the 1960s. Many of these groups are primarily composed of those who are not poor but who share an interest in the outcomes of programs affecting the poor or that adopt the needs of the poor as their goals for reasons not related to their immediate self-interest. Such surrogate representation is in many respects less desirable than direct representation. No matter how carefully people who are not poor listen to, observe, and assess the needs of the poor, the policy responses they advocate will be colored by their own backgrounds and perceptions. They will not always arrive at the same conclusions as those who are directly experiencing material deprivation. In addition, and perhaps more seriously, these surrogates may have group interests that don’t entirely coincide with the interests of the poor, and they may pursue these interests to the detriment of the poor at the same time that they are supporting their needs in other respects. Nevertheless, the only alternative to these surrogate voices may be virtual silence with regard to the needs of the poor. Later chapters will present considerable empirical evidence that the activities of these types of groups are quite extensive and that they are able to present the needs of the poor to decision-makers frequently and with some clarity. However, before this evidence is examined, a theoretical framework must be presented that classifies the types of groups that might be active in this surrogate role and specifies the motives and perspectives that each type of group brings to the process. A number of scholars have examined the question from different angles, and their investigations are a useful source of hypotheses as to the nature of interest group activity. From these previous studies have been gleaned five categories of groups that may be active in varying degrees in representing some of the needs of low income people or in supporting programs that meet those needs. The categories to be discussed in some detail, along with the scholarly sources of each one include: generalist social policy groups; public interest groups; private sector providers; public sector providers; and intergovernmental groups. The primary focus of this study is interest group support for the interests of the poor. Although some conservatives have made the argument that social programs are contrary to the interests of the poor (Murray 1984), the present work presupposes that the poor will regard governmental assistance as in their interest, although they may recognize some of the short-comings of actual programs and share the desire of middle class people to become self-sufficient. Therefore, the groups that advocate for the poor will generally be in favor of preserving or expanding the government’s role. However, the total network of interest groups active in social policy will also include those taking positions against the expansion of programs and benefits for the poor. Whether because of a self-interested

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desire to avoid the redistribution of personal wealth, ideological opposition to an activist role for government, or both, there will be groups that espouse a different view of what policies are in the interest of the poor and of society as a whole. As a potentially important part of the interest group networks, such groups must be included as part of the total picture. Category I: Generalist Social Policy Groups A generalist social policy group is one that takes a general interest in a broad range of social policy issues, either because of a broad ideological orientation for or against such policies or because of the disproportionate impact that such policies have on members of the group. The relevance of this category is suggested by the work of Ripley and Franklin (1991) who have elaborated upon Theodore Lowi’s category of redistributive policy to create a more thorough description of the political configurations surrounding such policies. They argue that redistributive policies have high public visibility and involve an ideological struggle between broad liberal and conservative coalitions. The high level of controversy means that strong presidential leadership, combined with a Congress with a favorable ideological make-up, is usually necessary to enact major redistributive measures (Ripley and Franklin 1991). Peak Associations In their vision of redistributive policy there is little room for interest groups concerned with particular programs to exert leverage through policy networks like those that exist in other policy areas. However, Ripley and Franklin do allude to the involvement of what they call “peak associations.” Though their discussion of these groups is too brief to give much guidance, one may infer that their definition of a peak association is a broad based group with a generally liberal or conservative orientation that addresses a wide range of social issues rather than specializing in one area. Such groups typically claim to speak for a broad segment of the society, rather than for a group of specialists or citizens whose concerns focus on a single issue (Ripley and Franklin 1991:148–150). But what kinds of groups would fit into Ripley and Franklin’s definition? Their notion of peak associations overlaps, but is not identical with, the kind of direct, high level representation of class interests that characterizes the “corporatism” found in some European countries, in which organizations representing major sectors of the economy negotiate concerning key social and economic policies (Williamson 1989). However, the representation of labor interests is much weaker in the United States than in these corporatist systems, and there is no one organization that can speak for the entire labor movement (Wilensky 1975; Skocpol 1995). Also,

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most interest group studies fail to find business groups in the United States speaking with the same unified voice as in corporatist systems. Nevertheless, the top level labor and business representation which is present in the United States might legitimately be inferred to approximate peak association activity on behalf of redistributive programs, although Ripley and Franklin do not state this explicitly. Since these organizations claim to speak for business and labor in general, their policy concerns will be much broader than those of trade associations representing a particular industry. They will focus on the overall distribution of power between business and labor and between business and government, thus becoming more consistently ideological in their positions. This stance will involve them in a variety of issues, including taxation, regulation and labor laws. However, social policy also affects the overall distribution of wealth, and these generalist business groups will therefore be motivated to oppose the expansion of social benefits. For labor groups, their members are potential beneficiaries of social programs when adverse economic conditions rob them of their livelihoods. Thus, their involvement is a continuation of the basic working class interest in expanded social programs, and, because of unions’ remaining large membership base and still substantial financial resources, their role as an interest group is potentially important even in the present era of weakened labor influence on the political process. The AFL/CIO is the national organization representing the broadest range of trade unions, although not all unions are affiliated with it. It makes major contributions to political campaigns, and it takes positions on a wide range of issues affecting labor. Its focus is, of course, on the bargaining rights of workers and on economic and regulatory policies affecting them. However, material posted on its web site (www.aflcio.org) indicates that it takes positions on issues ranging from civil rights to housing to welfare reform. Large individual unions, such as the United Auto Workers, also formulate their own positions on these issues, and they may be expected to participate in their own right from time to time. In spite of the hostility to the poor felt by many individual union members, their leadership sees it as in the interest of labor to support the expansion of programs benefitting the poor. Typical of the organizations claiming to represent the overall ideological outlook of American business are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), and the Business Roundtable. Each of these organizations represents a slightly different segment of the business community. The Chamber has many smaller businesses as members of its local and state chapters; the Business Roundtable tends to represent larger corporations, and the National Association of Manufacturers, as the name suggests, represents the

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manufacturing sector of the economy. The business community possesses vast resources that can be directed at political influence, but these broader groups have to compete with trade associations and with the attachment of individual businessmen to their own special causes and organizations. They must convince business leaders that they have a unique role to play in the political process in order to attract support. For example, the NAM web site (www.nam.org) promotes the organization’s visibility and credibility with members of Congress. It claims to represent, “the 18,000,000 people who make things in America.” The site includes policy statements on a wide range of issues, from taxation and spending to Social Security reform to controlling Medicare and Medicaid costs. It takes credit for having assembled numerous coalitions that “brought the full weight of the business community to bear on issues of bottom-line importance to our members.” Religious Organizations There are other organizations that are not peak associations in the sense of representing a sector of the economy but which, nevertheless, have broad based interests in social programs. One such category is that of religious organizations. The national offices of a number of Christian, Jewish, and other religious denominations take positions in favor of a broad range of social programs. There are two types of religious groups that get active from time to time on behalf of such programs. First, there are broader denominational organizations, such as the U.S. Catholic Conference or the American Jewish Committee. They spend their energies addressing many issues of broad concern to their particular religious group, such as, for example, United States relations with Israel in the case of the American Jewish Committee; but they also address social issues from time to time. Second, there are religious organizations that specialize in service to the poor. They institutionalize the concerns of a religion or religious denomination with these issues and so are likely to be more active in social policy. Typical of the second type of religious group is Catholic Charities USA. According to its web site, (www.catholiccharitiesusa.org) it was founded in 1910 as the National Conference of Catholic Charities, a federation of local Catholic social service providers. Advocacy for the poor has been a central part of its mission from the beginning. In a September 1996 address posted on its web site, its president, Father Fred Kammer SJ, draws on the Christian tradition of compassion for the poor as the justification for its advocacy role. He explicitly rejects the notion that Christian obligations to the poor can be met by private charity alone. He defends the effectiveness of the government in providing assistance to the poor, and he argues that Christians should willingly pay taxes to support such assistance.

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The political base of such groups is weakened by the fact that their liberal interpretations of the Judeo-Christian ethic are clearly not shared by all members of their denominations. However, the traditional role of religious organizations as the “conscience” of the society confers considerable legitimacy. They have in common with labor and business organizations a general concern for social policy, rather than specializing in a particular policy area, such as housing or health care, although there are other religiously based groups that specialize in one policy area, as, for example, in the case of Bread for the World, which focuses on food and nutrition policy. These more specialized groups will be included in the public interest category. Organized Minorities and Women There is a third type of group that potentially could play a role similar to that of broad-based labor or religious organizations. Due to the relative weakness of class based organizations in the United States, organizations representing disadvantaged groups, such as African Americans, Hispanics and women, have often been observed to represent the whole class of the poor by raising social issues of concern to more than just the members of their particular subgroup. Members of these groups tend to be disproportionately impoverished, because of discriminatory obstacles to full participation in the economy, and therefore they are concerned about assistance to the disadvantaged population in which they are over-represented. However, these groups have affluent, middle class members, as well as impoverished ones, thus making it is easier for them to marshal the resources to maintain a political presence at the national level. Like the poor, they have struggled for greater inclusion and recognition in American society, and have embraced government as an important tool for gaining such inclusion. Typical of this type of group are the National Urban League and the National Council of Negro Women. The National Urban League was founded in 1910, and it bills itself as the “premier social service and civil rights organization in America” (www.nul.org). It addresses issues of civil rights affecting all African Americans, but it also is concerned with social policy issues. The National Council of Negro Women was founded in 1935 by Mary McCloud Bethune, a prominent leader in the movement for higher education for African Americans. It is a federation of many different clubs and organizations for African American women, and the statement of purpose published on its web site stresses assistance to and advocacy for African American women of all classes. In the statement of its history, it stresses the empowerment of women to deal with the problems that confront them, thus tapping overlapping concerns related to race and gender (www.ncnw.com).

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As noted in Part I, the structure of the low wage job market, in combination with the structure of current cash assistance programs, have made poverty into a women’s issue. The most visible segment of the poor are female-headed households, and issues of cash assistance, in particular, have become tangled in the national debate over the proper roles and obligations for women and men within the family structure. Therefore, groups representing women have an incentive to become involved in a broad range of social policy issues, in order to argue for social policies that protect and enhance their vision of the proper economic and social role of all women. The Elderly and the Disabled The elderly, too, can play the role of advocacy for the poor. While poverty rates among the elderly are currently lower than the national average, large numbers of them are dependent on non-market sources of income to maintain their well-being. Therefore, groups representing them tend to argue for a continued strong government role in social policy, even beyond the immediate maintenance of Social Security and Medicare benefits. For example, the largest group representing the elderly, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), uses its web site to advocate a strong governmental role in both housing and health care for citizens of all ages. (www.aarp.org) By a similar logic, groups representing persons with mental or physical disabilities may be drawn into the social policy debate. A major cash assistance program, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), is an important source of income for persons with chronic physical and mental disabilities, as are federal disability payments. Since those with disabilities fall disproportionately below the poverty line, they are also affected by a variety of other social programs as well. The claims for assistance of both the disabled and the elderly have greater legitimacy in the public eye than those of the younger, able bodied poor, plus both these categories contain many middle or upper income persons with considerable resources. Therefore, one might expect them to play an influential role in the overall social policy debate, albeit one that is focused on their special needs. Veterans Groups Military veterans have historically enjoyed a unique role in American social policy, because they have often been seen as more legitimate recipients of government aid than other citizens due to the sacrifices many of them made on the battlefield. Like the other groups mentioned, veterans’ groups contain persons with a wide range of incomes, but many of their members are dependent on various forms of governmental assistance. Because they have special programs directed at their needs,

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administered by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs rather than the traditional social welfare agencies, their political energies will tend to be focused on their special programs, but their energies may also be directed to other programs, as well. For example, veterans have been a highly visible segment of the homeless, and this has called attention to their need for services outside the normal veterans’ system. They are included as a generalist group for the same reason as minorities, the elderly and the disabled; namely, they represent a broad segment of the population with an interest in a range of social policy outcomes. Summary In summary, the main hypothesis suggested by Ripley and Franklin’s discussion is that, when policies are redistributive, a relatively small number of interest groups are actively involved in influencing policy formation. A related hypothesis is that those groups that do advocate expansion of the government’s redistributive role are associations with general concerns about social policies, representing the interests of the disadvantaged on a range of issues. Among these, labor organizations most clearly qualify for the designation of “peak association.” Business peak associations may also be involved in the redistributive arena but generally in the role of opposing expansion of social programs. Other groups with generalist social policy interests include religious organizations and groups representing minorities, women, the elderly, the disabled and veterans. This generalist category is the most diverse of the five categories, but it makes sense theoretically because of these groups’ common orientations. Despite their dismissal of the importance of interest groups in redistributive policy, Ripley and Franklin open the door slightly for involvement of groups not directly representing the poor. They suggest that many redistributive issues are converted to distributive issues by designing programs so that groups other than the poor benefit from them. This is done by combining programs for the poor with programs benefitting more privileged groups, or by allowing such groups to benefit through delivery of services to the poor. This attracts support from groups which are better organized and financed than the poor and thus enhances the chances that programs for the poor will be enacted. This notion of conversion is problematic because it introduces ambiguity into the typology itself. In using it, Ripley and Franklin move away from Lowi’s initial thrust, which, as Spitzer (1983) argues, was to categorize programs by their principal purposes. Most policies are too complex to fit neatly into any of Lowi’s categories, yet they can still be usefully classified by their central goals. A redistributive program which contains features making it attractive to non-poor groups is not the same as a distributive program of which the main purpose is subsidies to more

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privileged groups. If one does find non-poor groups involved, it is more consistent with Lowi’s original typology to expand one’s view of redistributive policy-making to include a broader range of actors than to utilize the conversion notion. Category II: Public Interest Groups If we allow for the presence of other interest groups in redistributive policy-making, we must look to other scholars for hints as to what kinds of groups these might be. Jeffrey Berry forcefully calls our attention to one type—public interest groups. In Lobbying for the People, Berry (1977:7) defines a public interest group as “one that seeks a collective good, the achievement of which will not selectively or materially benefit the membership or activists of the organization.” He notes that their goals fit into Salisbury’s category of purposive objectives, that is, the pursuit of ideological satisfactions or other “nondivisible” goods. (Salisbury, 1969) In other words, public interest groups pursue a variety of goals for the “betterment” of society, among which the goal of social justice for its less privileged members is often to be found. Berry contributes further evidence of their potential importance in his 1984 book on administrative rule-making in the food stamp program. Based on extensive interviews with participants, he attributes considerable influence to what he calls the “hunger lobby”, which was formed in the late 1960s in response to widely publicized findings of hunger in the United States and which consisted almost entirely of public interest groups, such as the Field Foundation and the Food Research Action Council. Through skillful use of expertise, litigation, and publicity, these groups exerted strong pressure on the Department of Agriculture to make its food stamp program more accessible to low income clients (Berry, 1984). One key difference between Berry’s work and that of Ripley and Franklin is that he focuses on the ongoing implementation of a redistributive program and the incremental (but often important) changes which accompany it, whereas they take their examples from major policy initiatives in the redistributive arena. In periods when major new departures are being sought, Presidential leadership may indeed be the dominant political force, and interest groups may play a lesser role. In periods after policies are established, interest group influence may be greater. These periods are not that distinct, but flow into one another, so that groups are likely to be continuously active. However, this distinction shows the importance of looking at the policy process over time, rather than at discrete decisions. From Berry’s work, then, we may glean the hypothesis that, in redistributive policies, public interest groups will be an active and

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influential force. Since they are composed largely of middle class citizens who are seeking justice for the poor as an abstract goal, they may suffer legitimacy problems in contrast to groups that directly represent their members material interests, in that members of Congress may question for whom they actually speak. Some of them have a further problem of legitimacy because they are not truly membership organizations, even of the middle class, but rather small independent groups of activists funded by sympathetic donors and foundations. Nevertheless, their voices can be important, particularly when the voices of the poor are not being heard directly. Two groups that are typical of the public interest groups to which Berry refers are the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) and the Food Research Action Council (FRAC) (www.nlihc.org; www.frac.org). Both were formed in the early 1970s as advocacy groups for increased public action, the NLIHC for housing and FRAC for food and nutrition issues. However, the organizations differ in important respects. NLIHC is composed of individual members and of agency members drawn from those active at the local and state level on issues of providing affordable housing to low and moderate income persons. When issues come before Congress, NLIHC issues legislative alerts, urging members to contact their representatives. Therefore, it has a strong grassroots component, including some members who are low income, as well as middle class. In contrast, FRAC is a non-membership organization describing itself as a “research and public policy center.” However, its web page also asserts that “[FRAC]… serves as the hub of an anti-hunger network of thousands of individuals and agencies across the country.” This means that even though they lack a formal membership structure, they provide issue analyses and other services to other membership groups. Of course, not all public interest groups are supportive of additional social programs. As discussed in part I, conservative business interests have, in the last 20 years, funded a number of non-profit think tanks that do research and take positions on a variety of social programs, overwhelmingly in the direction of opposing their expansion and/or advocating their abolition. In one sense, these groups may be seen as another type of business peak association, in that they represent the collective interest of affluent businessmen in containing the power and resources of the public sector. However, like other public interest groups, they are also supported by many middle class citizens without a direct, material interest in the outcome of social policy. Therefore, it is legitimate to include them in the public interest category. Perhaps the best known example of this type of group is the Heritage Foundation. On its web site (www.heritage.org) it describes itself as “a research and educational institute…whose mission is to formulate and

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promote conservative public policies based on principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.” It claims the support of over 200,000 contributors. It regularly issues “Issue Bulletins,” such as one on Clinton’s implementation of the 1996 welfare reform legislation, in which it argued that the Clinton Administration was undermining the intent of the 1996 law with the various implementation rules it had proposed. Category III: Private Sector Service Providers Harold Wolman’s book on federal housing policy (1971) suggests two other types of groups which may be active in redistributive policies. One consists of private sector providers of services to the poor. Many programs whose ultimate beneficiaries are the poor channel this aid through private sector providers, either through direct subsidies to these providers or through vouchers that enable the poor to purchase goods and services through the private market. The ideological assumption that the private sector can provide services more efficiently than large government bureaucracies is the major justification for this type of aid strategy. A more pragmatic political reason is that private providers may thus be co-opted into supporting assistance to the poor, since providers, as well as the poor, receive direct material benefits. Wolman notes (as have other sources; see Hays 1995 for a review) that prior to the 1960s, groups representing the private housing industry were virtually unanimous in opposing any form of federal housing aid to the poor, even though they were simultaneously lobbying vigorously for continued federal support for middle class housing through FHA, Fannie Mae and the tax system. This opposition, led by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) was intensified by the form in which housing assistance was given; namely, publicly owned and operated low cost housing, which private providers viewed as “socialist” competition with the private market. In 1961 the first program involving subsidies to the private sector for the provision of low income housing, Section 221 (d)(3), was enacted, and from then on the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) broke with the NAR and supported such programs. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the overall opposition of the industry softened, so that by the late 1970s, most groups supported some federal role in low income housing provision, though not as vigorously as programs that stimulated the housing industry in general. Even though Wolman talked exclusively about housing, private providers are involved in many other areas of social policy as well. Thus, we may hypothesize that, given proper incentives through the structure of federal programs, private industry groups will devote some of their considerable

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resources to lobbying on behalf of programs in which they play the provider role. However, it will be a lower priority than economic and regulatory policy directly affecting the industry. For example, a perusal of the current web site of the NAHB (www.nahb.com) shows that, while they provide information indicating a concern with housing affordability, their main focus is on regulatory issues affecting the building industry. In addition, in examining the role of private providers one must be alert to important differences in degrees of support. If implacable opposition to any government role represents one end of a continuum of attitudes towards federal subsidies, then enthusiastic commitment by private providers to maintaining a flow of federal dollars passing through them as intermediaries to the poor (with such funds constituting an important revenue source) would be the other end. In the middle of this continuum, one might imagine a position involving logrolling. Private producers taking this position support programs for the poor as part of a total legislative package of government assistance to their entire industry. The principal reason they support aid to the poor is because its inclusion in the legislation legitimizes the entire package, rather than because the aid provides large direct benefits to them as producers. One may expect that among producers’ groups, the motives for support are some mix of the logrolling and the intermediary positions. Category IV: Public Sector Service Providers Wolman also notes the importance of interest groups representing public sector providers of low income housing in the formulation of federal policy. In a pattern which is typical of most federal social programs, actual program administration is delegated to state and local agencies. The professional administrators who run these agencies typically organize themselves into national groups which then expend resources to preserve and shape those programs which are their bread and butter. Wolman credits such groups as the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO) with a major impact on the course of federal housing policy, and public provider organizations can be observed to be active in other areas, such as, for example, the role of the American Public Welfare Association (APWA) in influencing federal policies such as AFDC and food stamps. These organizations also typically include professionals working for nonprofit agencies, and these agencies sometimes have their own separate organizations. For purposes of the present analysis, public and nonprofit providers will be included in the same category. The discussion of interest group theory in chapter 2 suggests that these professional groups have both assets and liabilities as advocates for programs benefitting the poor. As Salisbury (1984) has documented,

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interest groups which are “organizations of organizations” have clear advantages over groups composed of individuals. Relative to individuals, member organizations are relatively few, and each makes a proportionately larger contribution to the encompassing organization, a characteristic that discourages the free rider problem. Also, the individuals making the decisions to support national organizations are not solely expending their limited personal resources to join national groups but are utilizing the much more extensive resources of their organizations. There are hundreds of national organizations of public professionals, encompassing every possible speciality within social policy (Gale’s Encyclopedia 1999). Taken by itself, each one might appear to be a narrow group of specialists, that cannot claim to directly represent a broad constituency. However, Piven and Cloward (1988:91) point out that the public and nonprofit social service sector employed 17.3 million people in 1984, making it as large as the unionized sector of the working class. They argue that this gives the welfare state a substantial clientele among the middle class population that helps make up for the lack of strong working class groups backing social policy. In addition to numbers, these organizations can lay claim to considerable expertise on the implementation of social policy and, also, may argue that they indirectly represent their millions of clients. On the liability side, the political base of these groups is still fairly narrow, despite the large number of public and non-profit sector workers represented. Because their livelihoods are based on operating social welfare programs, they are vulnerable to the criticism that their advocacy is merely special pleading that enables them to keep their jobs and expand their agencies. As shall be shown in the case study testimony presented in chapter 5, some conservative groups are prepared to argue that these public officials want to keep the poor dependent on government handouts solely to feather their own bureaucratic nests. Thus, based directly on Wolman and on Piven and Cloward, and supported by the theoretical interest group literature, we may hypothesize that public sector professionals will be actively involved in lobbying for programs providing aid to the poor. It should be noted that membership in these groups will likely overlap with membership in some of the public interest groups included in Category II, but the public provider groups still represent distinct organizational entities with their own agendas. Category V: Intergovernmental Groups Writing in the mid-1970s, Douglas Haider (1974) carefully chronicled the growing involvement of interest groups representing mayors (National League of Cities, U.S. Conference of Mayors); governors (National Governors

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Association); and county officials (National Association of Counties) in shaping federal policy from the New Deal through the Great Society era. The National Conference of State Legislators has also played an active lobbying role on some issues. Later authors dealt with their relative loss of influence in the more hostile environment of the Reagan Administration (Reed, 1983; Levine and Thurber, 1986). Anne Cammisa (1995) has provided a thorough and sophisticated analysis of the more recent activities of these groups in influencing child care, housing, and welfare reform legislation in the late 1980s. Virtually all this literature on intergovernmental relations credits these national groups with an active role as lobbyists at the federal level. Paul Peterson’s seminal work on the political and economic forces shaping local government priorities (1981) suggests that local governments have a strong incentive actively to seek federal aid to deal with the problems of the poor. Poverty imposes certain costs on localities, but Peterson suggests it is not rational for them to create extra burdens on their middle class citizens to deal with these costs, since this will encourage them to move elsewhere, and it will discourage future investment by mobile capital. Therefore, they seek federal assistance as a way to resolve this dilemma. An earlier empirical investigation by this author found that, as Peterson’s theory predicts, social welfare programs are indeed a high lobbying priority for these organizations (Hays 1991). The distinction between intergovernmental groups and public sector provider groups is not absolute, since the latter are part of the intergovernmental system (Cigler 1995). In addition, these two types of groups often have close institutional collaboration. For example, the National Association of Counties (NACO) provides administrative support to various specialized organizations of county administrative officers (Gale’s Encyclopedia 1999). Nevertheless, this is a distinct category, in that the groups included in it speak for top elected officials, who have a perspective that is at times quite different from that of professional public sector specialists. They also possess somewhat different political strengths, in that they represent broader constituencies, and the elected officials that belong to these organizations possess considerable clout within their party organizations. A distinctive feature of these intergovernmental groups is that they include a broad spectrum of ideological beliefs, as well as representatives of both political parties. (This has been less true for the U.S. Conference of Mayors because it represents the mayors of large cities, who have historically been predominantly Democrats. However, as more Republicans like New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani occupy the mayors’ offices in large cities, their diversity will increase.) Because of this diversity, they often have difficulty reaching consensus on issues that are ideologically divisive (Cigler 1995). On the other hand, they share a common perspective as sub-national entities representing spatial

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(geographic) units in which they face practical problems of administering social programs. Their pragmatic approaches are often different from those of national legislators, who are more influenced by personal ideology and partisanship on these issues, even though these office holders collectively represent the same citizens. Thus, intergovernmental leaders are often able to come together on positions on programs for the disadvantaged that represent their common administrative interests in dealing effectively with these problems. Thus, it may be hypothesized that intergovernmental groups will tend to lobby in favor of continued funding for federal social welfare programs, although they will seek maximum administrative discretion in operating these programs, and they will seek to defeat proposals that they view as politically damaging. Policy Networks Even if it can be demonstrated that the types of groups described above lobby on behalf of social welfare programs, questions still remain as to the nature of their involvement. As noted in chapter 2, the notion of tight subgovernmental alliances among specialized interest groups, agencies, and congressional committees has been rejected as too simplistic or too limited to certain kinds of policy arenas by most contemporary scholars. However, it is clear that stable relationships among key actors do exist in most policy areas. Hugh Heclo (1978) expanded the idea of subgovernments into a notion of broader, looser policy networks consisting of those with specialized knowledge and interests surround each policy area. (Kingdon 1995 also reinforces this view). If interest group activity concerning social welfare programs is as insignificant as Ripley and Franklin suggest, then one would expect the involvement that does occur to be somewhat haphazard and episodic, with limited development of policy networks. If it plays a more important role, then the various groups that speak on behalf of these programs are more likely to coalesce into stable policy networks, interacting on a regular basis. Therefore, it is important to assess the degree to which such networks exist in the housing, food and AFDC arenas. It is also important to examine the extent to which policy networks are distinct for each substantive area, as opposed to there being a single policy network for social policy in general. Roles of President and Congress In order to further test the Lowi model of redistributive policy, it is also necessary to examine the role of the President in this legislative arena, and the ways in which interest groups adapt to presidential position taking. The hearing data to be gathered cover the terms of two Democratic

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presidents and four Republican presidents. The former were much more supportive of expansion or maintenance of the federal government’s social welfare role than the latter, although the difference is not absolute, especially considering Clinton’s move to the center on such issues. Therefore, one may predict that interest groups will behave somewhat differently when confronted with presidential leadership in support of expansion of their programs than when the president is arguing strongly for retrenchment. In the former case, they will tend to have more friendly and supporting relationships with federal agencies administering these programs, even though they may be pushing them for even greater expansion, and even though tensions between the federal bureaucracy and local or private service providers are inevitable. In the latter case, they will work to undermine the credibility of Executive Branch testimony and will try to demonstrate the seriousness of the problems that will remain unsolved if presidential budget cuts are enacted. The composition of Congress is also a key variable in interest group behavior. Throughout most of the period studied, the Democrats were firmly control of one or both houses of Congress. Ginsberg, Mebane and Shefter (1995) argue that Democrats in Congress developed close relationships with agencies administering programs to those they viewed as their constituencies, and that this, in addition to ideology, led to strong Democratic support for social legislation. One would expect, therefore, that interest groups testifying before subcommittees led by Democrats would encounter a sympathetic audience for their positions, and that this friendly reception would encourage a large number of groups to testify. This relationship could blunt the impact of presidential hostility to social programs, because both committee members and the interest groups would work together to constantly draw attention to the importance of these problems, even in a situation where Congress is forced to compromise with a Republican president and make cuts in these programs. After the 1994 election, one would expect a quite different atmosphere for interest groups advocating social expenditures. The new Republican leaders have little incentive to encourage groups to talk about these problems, and will provide fewer opportunities for them to argue their case before Congress. These leaders will seek information about social programs from conservative think tanks or other ideologically compatible sources. The amount of interest group activity will drop, or groups will turn their attention to other arenas. The loss of Congress as a supportive arena for the airing of social problems may be a more devastating loss to advocates than the hostility of a presidential administration. Thus, hearing data are hypothesized to show a substantial drop in interest group activity beginning in January 1995, and the composition of the groups testifying will shift in a conservative direction.

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In summary, far from suggesting a policy arena devoid of interest group activity such as that described by Ripley and Franklin (1991), the existing literature on various aspects of social policy making provides a solid basis for predicting the active involvement of five types of interest groups in social policy: generalist, public interest, private providers, public providers, and intergovernmental groups. In chapter 4, it will be shown whether or not these predictions are confirmed by the twenty eight years of data that have been gathered. However, before proceeding with this analysis, it is necessary to examine possible sources of variation between different areas of social policy. PART III. VARIATIONS AMONG POLICY AREAS In the past, many analyses of social policy have proceeded from the assumption that the behavior of public decision-makers with regard to this type of policy was essentially a dependent variable, molded by the social and economic forces that generate inputs into the political process. However, there is a growing body of literature that, while not discounting the importance of social and economic inputs, views governmental structures themselves as having an independent impact on social policy outcomes. That is, you cannot understand the particular direction that social policy has taken unless you understand the nature of the governmental structures that have been called upon to create and administer policy. Some authors stress the impact of more general structural features of American government, such as separation of powers and federalism (Robertson and Judd 1989; Skocpol 1995). They point out that, while there are distinct differences between the United States and those European countries with larger welfare states in terms of some key inputs, such as the power of organized labor or racial and regional differences, these differences would not have had as strong an influence on policy outcomes had it not been for the divided, decentralized nature of governmental decision-making. Skocpol (1995) cites as an example the leverage used by southern senators and congressmen to blunt the impact of New Deal social programs on their low paid agricultural and industrial work force, which had the effect of weakening the overall national effort in this area. Others have put more emphasis on the way in which initial decisions about how to handle a particular social problem (such as housing or health care) generate feedback that shapes future decisions about that problem. For example, Paul Pierson (1994) uses the structures of previous policy solutions as a key variable explaining the different outcomes of retrenchment efforts by the Reagan Administration in the United States and the Thatcher Government in Great Britain in different policy areas. One can also look at the fact that the large differences in benefit levels

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between states that were permitted under the AFDC program made it next to impossible to later establish uniform national standards for welfare benefits, because of the differential effects such standards would have in different regions of the country. On the basis of this notion of policy feedback, one may predict that, while policy-making in housing, food and welfare will have similarities in terms of the types of interest groups that are active, the patterns of activity may vary considerably based on the historical development of the structure of policy-making in that arena. The five different group types may play different roles in each of these three areas. Therefore, an exploration of the unique development of each policy area is important to the development of hypotheses about the patterns of group behavior that we may observe. There are several characteristics of a social policy arena that might influence the nature of interest group involvement: 1. The relationship between the direct interests of private producers and the delivery of the product or benefit to low income consumers. This is affected by (a) initial decisions made about program design and (b) the nature of the product or benefit itself and the way it is produced. 2. The way in which funding for the program is set up—is it an entitlement or a discretionary program? 3. Public perceptions of the importance and legitimacy of the needs addressed by the program. 4. The structure of program administration and the types of public sector providers who administer the program. 5. The importance of the program to state and local governments in terms of cost and political fallout from changes in it.

Food and Nutrition Programs The major program providing food assistance to the poor in the United States is the food stamp program, although another program, Women, Infants and Children (WIC) has assumed increasing importance in terms of dollars expended. The precursor to the current food stamp program was developed during the Great Depression. It involved the purchase by low income families of books of yellow stamps representing their “normal” food purchases, which, in turn, entitled them to blue bonus stamps designed to increase their food consumption, and, presumably, improve their nutrition. This program ended in 1943 and was replaced by the distribution of surplus agricultural commodities to the poor, until a new experimental food stamp program was begun by the Kennedy Administration in 1961. (The program had been authorized as an option by Congress in 1959, but the Eisenhower

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Administration had declined to initiate it.) In this program, participants were given a bonus by being able to purchase a dollar’s worth of stamps for approximately 70 cents (U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture 1985). Participation in the experimental program grew rapidly, and, in 1964, legislation was enacted making it permanent. From 1965 through 1981, the program underwent substantial growth, with participation rising from 633,000 households to 22.4 million households, and expenditures rising from $32 million to $10.7 billion (approximately $4 billion in constant 1967 dollars). The Reagan Administration persuaded Congress to tighten eligibility standards and to freeze cost of living increases in the deductions allowed for various other family expenses. This rendered hundreds of thousands of families ineligible and lowered benefits for many others. However, the growth of expenditures for the program only slowed down, rather than being reversed (U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture 1985). In FY 1996 Congress appropriated $27.6 billion for the program (Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1995:11–8). Role of Private Service Providers From the inception of the Depression-era program until the present, food stamps have been viewed as serving a dual purpose. The program’s most obvious goal is to improve nutrition for families that cannot afford to purchase an adequate diet with their own funds. However, a secondary, yet extremely important, goal is to benefit farmers by increasing consumption of agricultural commodities, which are often in surplus. Both of these goals help to account for the fact that the food stamp program is an in-kind subsidy; that is, rather than providing extra cash income, it provides coupons (vouchers) that can only be used for food. The dual purpose also accounts for the fact that, until 1977, the program was structured to induce increased consumption of food by giving families a bonus only if they first expended their own funds for an amount equivalent to their normal food budget. In 1977, the purchase requirement was eliminated, but the program is still structured to stimulate food purchases through the normal, private channels of food production and distribution. The linkage between farmer (producer) interests and the interests of the poor in receiving food assistance was made even more explicit through the legislative tactics of supporters of the food stamp program. In addition to programs to feed the poor, the Great Depression spawned the creation or expansion of a wide range of programs to cushion the impact of supply and demand fluctuations on the livelihood of farmers. As a result, food stamp supporters were able to induce conservative farm state representatives and senators, who normally might have opposed the program, to vote for it in a trade off for the votes of urban liberal legislators for the various farm bills extending these federal subsidies to producers. In the earlier years of the

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program, this was accomplished by parallel consideration of farm bills with separate bills reauthorizing (and often expanding) the food stamp program. From the late 1970s on, food stamp legislation was actually made a part of omnibus farm bills that were making their way through Congress (Berry 1984; U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture 1985). Thus, the appeal of the structure of the program to producers was enhanced by their need to support it in order to get other important benefits from the government for themselves. The various linkages of the food stamp program to producer interests could affect the level of interest group activity in either a positive or negative direction. On the one hand, it could stimulate private sector lobbying efforts on behalf of the program. On the other hand, the institutionalization of a process of logrolling over a broad farm bill supporting many different programs could reduce the need or desire of private producers to lobby specifically for the food stamp program. Budgetary Status Another fundamental characteristic of the food stamp program has been its entitlement status. The assumption that all individuals who met the eligibility requirements would be served was designed into the program from the beginning. Ordinarily, such a blanket commitment to fund all eligible persons would have led immediately to a very large and costly program, but the initial budgetary impact was cushioned by the fact that local governmental units, mainly counties, were allowed to enter the program gradually, as they chose to do so, rather than all at once. By the time the program grew large, the entitlement principle had been firmly established, and efforts to cut costs were directed at the eligibility standards, rather than at removing otherwise eligible people from the rolls. In 1996, an attempt was made to remove this entitlement status by converting it to a block grant, as was done with AFDC, but this was successfully resisted by the Clinton Administration. In terms of lobbying activities, the entitlement status of the program could influence the level of involvement of various types of groups relative to other social policies in either of two ways. On the one hand, it could give it stability that would reduce the amount of interest group activity. On the other hand, it could provide another point of controversy that would stimulate conflict. This could especially be the case since the 1980s, when “entitlement” became an emotion-laden word connoting out-of-control demands on the treasury by undeserving people. The data presented in the next chapter will show in which direction this factor exerts its influence. Public Attitudes A third characteristic of the food stamp program has been public ambivalence towards it. On the one hand, the perception of hunger

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(especially among children or the elderly) has a direct, powerful emotional appeal to most citizens. It generates moral outrage that induces concerned middle class people to form public interest groups, or mobilize religious organizations, to fight it. At critical times in the program’s history, public interest groups have called attention to hungry people as a way to gain support for the program. In the late 1960s, they brought about dramatic media coverage of malnourished children in the rural south to increase support for making program benefits more generous (Berry 1984). In the mid-1980s, similar groups were able to get Congress to reverse some of the Reagan food stamp cuts by pointing to studies attributing increased levels of hunger to these cuts (Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1985). They were also able to preserve programs directed at nutrition for mothers and children, such as the WIC program (Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1986). On the other hand, the program elicits the same suspicious and resentful responses that other welfare programs do from more affluent citizens. The rapid growth of the program in the 1970s made charges that many undeserving people were abusing it more credible (including, as one of the most inflammatory objects of debate, middle class hippie college students whose parents could, presumably, have supported them). In addition, food stamps were used in a very public manner, at grocery check-out lanes, where middle class customers could make their own judgements (usually negative) about the wisdom and frugality of the purchases made by beneficiaries of the program (Berry 1984). Thus, the emotional character of the hunger issue is very likely to stimulate lobbying activities by public interest groups. On the one hand, it could enhance the influence of the public interest hunger lobby (Berry 1984) Alternatively, it could, at times, make the program more vulnerable to negative publicity from conservative interest groups and lawmakers (Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1990). The investigation in subsequent chapters will show how these conflicting pressures have played out. Public Providers and Intergovernmental Groups Food stamps are administered by the local offices of state human services agencies in most states. Although low income persons not on welfare are often eligible for food stamps, eligibility is usually determined by the same workers or agencies that determine eligibility for AFDC (as of 1996, replaced by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF). Therefore, one would expect to see lobbying on behalf of this program by the professionals that staff welfare programs, both at the state and local levels. Because these officials work with a variety of programs offering assistance and services, the organizations may not totally focus their

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lobbying on the food stamp program, but rather, expend their resources on a number of different programs in which they are involved. With regard to intergovernmental groups, since states and counties are the main units involved in delivering food stamps, one would expect their lobbyists to be more heavily involved in this issue than groups representing city governments, who typically do not have this responsibility (although the latter may have a general interest in programs for the poor). Housing Programs The Great Depression was the time at which the federal government became actively involved in the provision of housing, as well as in providing food assistance. Just as a number of programs were initiated to assist the producers of food, at the same time that low income consumers were being aided, so, too, a significant portion of the federal government’s new activities in housing were directed at producers or at consumers who, while undergoing housing deprivation, were not the most destitute. The establishment of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to insure home mortgages and of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) to buy and sell mortgages on the secondary market were both designed to make home ownership affordable to a broader segment of the population, but the very poorest citizens were unlikely to benefit greatly from either program (Hays 1995). Private Sector Interests The main Depression-era program targeting low income households was public housing, a program in which the federal government provided construction funds for housing units owned and operated by local government entities. This program remained relatively small throughout the 1940s and 1950s, to a significant degree because of the strong opposition mounted by the private housing industry. Under the leadership of its archconservative executive vice president, Herbert U.Nelson, the National Association of Realtors produced virulent propaganda denouncing the program as socialistic, and they provided organizational support for groups trying to defeat local referenda on the construction of public housing (Hays 1995; Judd and Swanstrom 1998). Private producers found it in their interest to allow the government to become thoroughly enmeshed in the financing of middle income housing purchases, not to mention accepting huge subsidies through the tax system, because these interventions had a major impact on demand, particularly in the suburban expansion after World War II. However, direct government ownership and management of housing, even for households too poor to be served adequately by the private market, was seen by private providers as a major threat.

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In the early 1960s, the Kennedy Administration supported a fundamental change in government strategy for providing low income housing. The Section 221 (d)(3) program, created in 1961, was the first major attempt to subsidize private sector production of rental housing for the poor. It was followed seven years later by the Section 236 program, which was, in turn, supplanted by Section 8 New Construction in 1974. Although the subsidy mechanisms of these programs were somewhat different, all had in common the lowering of the cost of housing for the poor by providing assistance to private developers of that housing. As noted in part II, the development of these programs encouraged the National Association of Home Builders to break with the realtors by supporting federal housing assistance, and the realtors later softened their opposition (Hays 1995). It would appear, at first glance, that a process of co-optation of private producers occurred with regard to housing assistance for the poor similar to that in the area of food assistance. In both policy areas, programs were designed with their impact on producers, as well as consumers, in mind. In fact, the process was different, in part because of the way in which these two necessities are produced and delivered to the consumer. In the case of food, federal assistance programs were originally set up to directly benefit producers by taking surplus food items off the market and giving them to the poor. This program was patently unsatisfactory in providing adequate nutrition, because the poor had to take whatever mix of food items was in surplus, rather than selecting food to meet their needs. As a result, it was replaced by the more flexible food stamp program, in which the poor had more choice as to what to buy. However, this new approach made the relationship between consumption by the poor and increases in overall demand for commodities less direct. Concerns about substitution of food stamps for normal expenditures for food were continually raised, even before the purchase price was eliminated in 1977. And, even if food stamps did increase the total demand for food, it would be difficult for producers of any one commodity to see an impact on their livelihood. This could explain why, in spite of the ostensible design of food assistance programs for the purpose of increasing demand, further trade-offs, in the form of logrolling over other farm benefit programs, were necessary to win the support of producer allies in Congress for food stamps. In contrast, the production of housing requires the direct involvement of private firms in delivering the product to a particular set of consumers. Even under the public housing program, private construction companies actually built the housing, and the creation of federal subsidies to private developers made the relationship even more direct. Therefore, there was the potential for groups representing private providers to see a direct interest in programs

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targeted at the poor. This interest was attenuated in the late 1970s when housing programs began to concentrate more on providing certificates or vouchers to low income families occupying existing housing than on subsidizing new construction. Nevertheless, the producer/low income consumer relationship is still more direct than in food. Therefore, one might predict greater involvement by private producers in lobbying for housing assistance to the poor than by private producers in the food arena. Private housing producers are closer to the intermediary end of the continuum of private sector involvement discussed in part II than are food producers. Budgetary Status Federal funding for low income housing assistance programs grew substantially during the 1960s and then, after a hiatus caused by the Nixon Administration’s moratorium on public and assisted housing construction from 1973 to 1974, it grew rapidly again in the late 1970s. However, housing programs never achieved the status of an entitlement, so that the amount of aid has depended on yearly appropriations. (A study by the Harvard Joint Center [1993] estimates that 30 percent of those eligible for housing assistance actually receive it.) As a result, they were vulnerable to deeper cuts during the Reagan years. The number of new units per year was reduced by 70 percent between 1981 and 1983, and it has since remained at that level or lower. As with the variables affecting food stamps, this situation could be hypothesized to cause either more or less interest group activity. On the one hand, the fact that housing has never become an entitlement could reflect a lower level of interest, support and activity by organized groups with regard to these programs. On the other hand, the budgetary insecurity of these programs could stimulate more interest group activity to try to preserve the federal role. Public Attitudes Like food stamps, housing programs cause conflicting reactions among middle class voters. Areas of poor housing are visible symbols of poverty, and the poor conditions in these neighborhoods are typically blamed on the residents (even though it can be argued that disinvestment causes the poor to live there, rather than vice versa). Also, the fact that housing occupies physical space within defined geographical areas, and affects the use of that space by different groups, brings the volatile issue of race into the creation of low income housing, in a direct and powerful way that does not occur with food stamps (although racial stereotypes probably contribute to the negative image of food stamp users as well). At the same time, inadequate housing is an issue that is capable of generating moral outrage and compassion among many middle class

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citizens. When the lack of affordable housing manifested itself in the dramatic condition of homelessness in the 1980s, many public interest groups were organized to deal with the issue, and various religious organizations became very active in providing services to the homeless. Similarly, the linkage of decent housing and home ownership with human dignity is sufficiently powerful to mobilize thousands of middle class citizens through Habitat for Humanity International. Therefore, one may hypothesize a considerable level of activity by liberal public interest groups in the housing arena, just as in the food arena. In opposition, there may be some conservative public interest groups who agree with the 1996 campaign statement of former Senator Bob Dole that public housing is the “last bastion of socialism in the United States,” but even if there is little direct counter-mobilization, conservative politicians are also able to draw the public’s negative image of federally assisted housing and its inhabitants when calling for these programs to be scaled back. Public Sector Providers and Intergovernmental Groups Agencies that provide housing services are typically divisions of city government, or independent local housing authorities governed by commis-sioners appointed by city officials. They tend to be highly specialized in the housing area, and have limited involvement in the delivery of other types of social services. Therefore, relative to other service providers, one may expect to see the lobbying activities of groups representing local service providers focused almost exclusively on housing issues, rather than spread among several programs. Because housing is primarily a municipal function, the intergovernmental groups likely to be the most active in lobbying for housing programs are those representing city governments. However, states have become increasingly involved in low income housing in the last thirty years, albeit in the role of providing financing or pass-through administration of federal Community Development Block Grant dollars, rather than direct service provision. Therefore, one may expect to see intergovernmental groups representing state government taking some interest in housing issues, along with representatives of the specialized state agencies directly responsible for administering state housing finance programs. Welfare (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) Direct cash assistance to poor people has always been a hard sell in the American political arena, in spite of the attraction of its economic efficiency to some libertarian conservatives (M.Friedman 1962). Middle class people generally do not trust the poor with cash, and giving them

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money, rather than services, commodities or vouchers that can only be spent on certain necessities, is always more likely to be seen by the public as strictly a “dole.” Only the elderly and those with physical or mental disabilities have been seen as deserving of cash aid, and even assistance to the elderly had to be given on the basis of age, not income, and set up on a contributory basis in order to maintain legitimacy over the long haul. As a result, the nation’s major program of cash assistance to the nonelderly poor had to sneak in by the back door and become what it was while, in effect, no one was looking. The Aid to Families with Dependent Children program started life as the Aid to Dependent Children program, a seemingly minor addition to the Social Security Act of 1935. Modeled after the Mother’s Aid programs already present in many states, it was designed to enable widowed women to stay home and take care of their children, as was expected of all women in those days, rather than to have to enter the work force (Skocpol 1995). It only became the major form of cash assistance to the non-elderly or non-disabled poor by default, because there was no general cash assistance program available solely on the basis of destitution, as is the case in most developed capitalist countries. As soon as the program began to serve significant numbers of divorced or never-married mothers, it began to be accused of breaking up families, but lawmakers were even more reluctant to make aid available to families containing able-bodied, adult males than they were to support the existing program. (Such aid was only mandated for all states in 1988, and even then with many restrictions.) So the program continued to grow, in spite of its great unpopularity. Then, in the 1970s, when adult female participation in the work force came to be the middle class norm rather than the exception, the program’s female clients began to be denounced as loafers and free-loaders, just as men on relief had been denounced in the past. First work incentives, then mandatory work, and then a fixed time limit on program participation were logical outgrowths of these changing perceptions. The political history of AFDC is one of gradual expansion, with the reluctant support of policy-makers, from the 1940s through the mid1960s, and then rapid expansion in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This period of rapid expansion increased concern and hostility towards the program, so there were subsequent, periodic efforts to reform the program. The first was President Richard Nixon’s proposed Family Assistance Program, which followed the libertarian model of cash assistance but which ran afoul of liberal/conservative divisions over how generous the program should be and over what other in-kind programs (such as food stamps) should be rolled into it. President Jimmy Carter made another attempt at reform in the late 1970s, but like so many of his proposals, it foundered on a divided and skeptical Congress. President

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Ronald Reagan made major cutbacks in the program in 1981, but the only move towards fundamental structural reform came late in his term, and it was really the result of bipartisan consensus in Congress, rather than Reagan’s leadership. The Family Support Act of 1988 mandated job training, provided additional support services to AFDC clients to bring about self-sufficiency, and mandated the inclusion of unemployed fathers in the program. The bipartisan consensus behind this law seemed to portend several years of program stability, while the new provisions were allowed to work. However, the economic downturn of the early 1990s exacerbated the already difficult task of placing long-term welfare recipients in jobs, so that the program’s early impact on the welfare rolls was less than spectacular. Also, continuing middle class resentment of welfare still made it a tempting target for political rhetoric. In 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton was trying to disassociate himself from the liberal, pro-social welfare image of the Democratic party, so he promised a dramatic new effort to “end welfare as we know it,” even though, as chair of the National Governor’s Association, he had been one of the major architects of the 1988 law. As President, his 1994 defeat on health care reform, plus the arrival of a Republican majority in Congress in 1995, rendered him unable to dictate the terms of the welfare reform debate. After vetoing two very drastic alterations of the program by the Republican majority, he acquiesced to an almost equally drastic revision in the summer of 1996, when the prospect of being blasted by Republicans for not keeping his 1992 promise loomed large in the presidential election. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PROWRA) effectively ended the AFDC program as it had existed since 1935, replacing it with block grants to the states and strict five year, lifetime limits on eligibility. Private Provider Support Because it consisted of cash assistance to very poor families, AFDC did not generate a natural constituency of private providers of services or goods to the poor. Although the AFDC grants, in combination with food stamps, Medicaid, and, in some cases, housing assistance, raised millions of families above the poverty line and increased their buying power, there was no group of private producers that could see a direct benefit from this form of aid. In addition, private producers that employed low wage labor could see the option of too generous AFDC checks as direct competition with their efforts to recruit workers. Therefore, one would expect to see little or no lobbying by private sector providers on behalf of the program, and one might expect lobbying against expansion of the program by peak business

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groups or conservative think tanks, especially as conservative attacks on the very concept of the program intensified in the 1980s (Murray 1984). Budgetary Status Until the passage of PRWORA in 1996, AFDC had enjoyed the status of an entitlement program. However, the federal government’s commitment to providing benefits was constrained by two related factors. The most important was the fact that the states contributed up to 50 percent of the program’s benefits, and they varied greatly (by a factor of about 8) in the generosity of their share. Any effort to increase benefits, or even to equalize them across states, encountered stiff resistance because of its impact on state budgets. The second factor was the program’s extreme unpopularity. No elected official wanted to be accused of having voted to increase AFDC benefits, even to keep up with the cost of living. This created the irony that, in spite of all the inflamed rhetoric about the increasing generosity of the American welfare state, the inflation-adjusted value of AFDC payments declined significantly from the 1970s on. As a result, while other entitlement programs were more or less indexed to the cost of living, the entitlement status of AFDC did not keep the real value of its cash benefits from declining. Particulary in the last 20 years, it maintained its entitlement status as much from inertia (and some of the emotional factors to be discussed below) than out of any real commitment to the value of the program. Therefore, we would expect that this status would not affect the level of interest group activity concerning the program, either in a positive or negative direction. Public Opinion It would be difficult to design an assistance program more likely to punch all the negative buttons of more affluent citizens than the AFDC program. Not only did it trigger the public’s innate dislike of cash assistance programs in general, but it also raised issues of morality and family responsibility. In the 1950s, when the program shifted from serving primarily widows to divorced women, (widows and orphans came to be covered under the survivor’s benefit portion of Social Security) women on welfare were seen as immoral or irresponsible for having “allowed” their marriages to break up. Later, as increasing proportions of welfare recipients had never been married, and as more younger, teenage mothers entered the program, it was seen as promoting promiscuity, as well as irresponsibility by and about children. Whether or not the program actually promotes out of wedlock births is a matter of some debate among scholars, with the preponderant view being that it has little independent impact when the other inducements to such behavior resulting from poverty are held constant (Chilman 1992).

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Moreover, a tendency for the middle class to accuse the lower classes of “breeding excessively” predates AFDC by many years. Nevertheless, the program was uniquely suited to become embroiled in the politics of sexuality and debates over differing versions of “family values.” In spite of its numerous liabilities in terms of public support, there are at least two dimensions of the AFDC program that appear to be capable of mobilizing concern among citizens who are better off. One is the fact that the vast majority of individuals served by the program are children, who can hardly be blamed for whatever errors or irresponsible behavior their parents have displayed and who may be condemned to a life of future problems by severe deprivation. A group of public interest groups sometimes referred to as the “children’s lobby” (Cammisa 1995) has grown up to pressure government to do more to rescue children from the effects of poverty. To the extent that AFDC is conceptualized as a children’s issue, rather than an issue of the behavior of adult recipients, one may expect to see efforts on the part of the children’s lobby to protect the children supported by this program and its successor created by the 1996 act, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). The AFDC program may also be seen as a “women’s issue.” It was mentioned earlier that all social policy issues may attract the attention of groups who have been disadvantaged by their race, ethnicity, or gender. However, the AFDC program could have more potential to attract the attention of women’s groups than other types of programs. Other than children, women are the group most affected by the program, and the need of millions of women for welfare may be seen as product of the more limited opportunities and earning power of women in general. Thus, if large numbers of women, especially those without advanced education, are consigned to low paying, unstable service industry jobs, then the periodic reliance of some women on welfare may be seen as a direct result of this restricted opportunity structure. In addition, women of all classes continue to carry most of the responsibility for the care of children in American society, and those with less resources are often pushed onto welfare by the inability or unwillingness of men to assume their share of responsibility for the raising of children. Therefore, one might expect to see feminist groups becoming involved in lobbying to protect what they perceive to be the interests of women in general in the outcomes of the welfare debate. Public Sector Providers and Intergovernmental Groups As is the case with food stamps, AFDC (TANF) programs are typically administered by county offices of state human service agencies. Therefore, one might predict that these service professionals will be involved in trying to influence cash assistance policy, just as they are with the food stamp

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program, albeit with their energies divided between it and the several other types of programs for which they are responsible. Of the intergovernmental groups, state governments have the most at stake with regard to welfare, because their financial contribution is greater to this program than to any other, with the possible exception of Medicaid. The prominent role of the National Governors Association in the passage of the 1988 welfare reform measure has been noted, and one would expect to see continued, active lobbying by them on all legislation affecting this cash assistance program. CONCLUSION The premise of this study is that all five types of interest groups will be active in all three areas, but that activity levels will vary between the three areas. In concluding this chapter, it is useful to briefly summarize the hypothesized roles of the five categories of interest groups in the three policy arenas chosen for study: 1. Private provider groups: They are hypothesized to be very active in housing policy while playing almost no role in welfare policy. They are hypothesized to be active in food/nutrition, but less so than in housing, because of the political dynamics of the policy area. 2. Public provider groups: They are hypothesized to be very active in housing policy, with their activities totally focused on this policy area. These groups are also hypothesized to be active in food and welfare policy, but the groups involved will not be as strongly focused on these areas. 3. Public interest groups: These groups are hypothesized to be very active in all three policy areas. 4. Intergovernmental groups: These groups are hypothesized to be active in all three areas. However, city groups will be most active in housing policy, while state and county level groups will be the most active in food and welfare policy. 5. Generalist groups: These groups are hypothesized to have a significant presence in the housing and food policy arenas, but play a less central role than other types of groups. They will play a much more central role in the welfare policy arena. In chapter 4, data on interest group activity in all three policy areas will be presented. These data will either confirm, or fail to confirm, the hypotheses put forward in parts II and III of this chapter.

CHAPTER 4

Interest Groups in Social Policy

INTRODUCTION

T

he previous chapter has presented a number of hypotheses, based on previous research, about the kinds of groups likely to be found active in the social policy arena. These hypotheses suggest the kinds of groups that will be active, in general, in social policy. They also suggest differences in the patterns of group activity among the three social policy areas chosen; housing, food and welfare. The data on group testimony and the data from the surveys administered to active groups in 1990 and 1998 presented in this chapter will support some of these hypotheses and fail to support others. As was made clear in the discussion of methodology in chapter 1, the use of congressional testimony as an indicator of group activity does not imply that this is the only, or even the most important, activity in which interest groups engage. What is suggested is that active groups will testify when they get the opportunity, and that groups that do not testify are unlikely to be involved in the policy area in other ways. Tracking hearing data over a 28year period allows one to discern stable patterns of activity, rather than drawing conclusions from activity surrounding a single piece of legislation. According to Schneier and Gross (1993), most congressional hearings are held at the subcommittee, rather than the full committee level, although the proportion is much higher in the House (90 percent) than in the Senate (65 percent.) Prior to the congressional reforms of the 1970s, when committee chairs ruled their domains with a strong hand, it was not uncommon for no hearings to be held or for them to be held behind closed doors, even on important legislation. The greater autonomy and importance given to subcommittees by the reforms gave them a greater incentive to hold hearings, and “sunshine” rules forced all hearings to be open to the public except those involving national security issues (Schneier and Gross 1993:159–181; see also Smith and Deering 1990). 95

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Hearings are held for at least three different reasons; (1) to publicize problems or issues that members of the committee wish to get onto the public agenda; (2) to investigate alleged corruption or incompetence on the part of those administering programs; (3) to gather information and assess public reactions as part of the process of drafting or considering major legislation. Whatever the reason for the hearing, it is, according to Schneier and Gross (1993), risky for a federal agency or a national interest group not to be present at the hearing to voice its point of view, since the group’s absence may be interpreted as indifference to the matters at hand. Thus, any group active in a policy area is likely to participate in hearings, and regular participation in hearings reflects ongoing group activity in that area. The data to be presented on hearings will show that, in addition to groups that testify regularly, there are dozens of groups that have testified only once or twice during the 28-year period observed. In hearings dealing with major legislation, there are also a large number of individual witnesses that do not identify themselves as affiliated with any national group. They may be academic experts, clients of the programs, or local officials invited to the hearing by a member of Congress from their district. In some instances, the committee may conduct field hearings in which they travel to a particular area of the country to hear state and local witnesses from that area. Although the major focus of the subsequent analysis will be on the most active groups, it should be noted that appearances by these individuals or by less active groups are not necessarily insignificant in the legislative process. When dozens of witnesses show up, it represents a mass mobilization around the issue that may be influential in its collective impact, even if many of the participants are only there for that one appearance. The sheer numbers of individuals and entities that are desirous of testifying may send a message of concern to legislators that reinforces the more steady influence exerted by the more active groups. Through their influence on the policy agenda, interest groups influence congressional activity and may stimulate committees or subcommittees to hold hearings. Alternatively, some groups may consider it desirable to push in the opposite direction; that is, for the routinization of congressional decisions, so that the publicity and scrutiny surrounding major public debates and legislative revisions (including public hearings) will be avoided. However, in looking at testimony over time, one must bear in mind that it is Congress, not the interest groups, that ultimately controls the frequency of testimony. The brief accounts of policy development presented in the previous chapter show that each policy area has a unique pattern of legislative activity. Even though groups may influence these patterns, their activity primarily follows them. Therefore,

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we must be cautious in drawing conclusions about the interest groups themselves from the differences in overall levels of group activity between the three policy areas. In part I of this chapter, data on the composition of the group universe (and of those participating as individuals) in each policy area will be presented, along with data showing the extent of overlap between the three policy areas. In part II, the role of each of the five types of group outlined in the previous chapter in each policy area will be explored. In addition to examining the data on congressional testimony, the characteristics and resources of the most active groups will be examined, utilizing data from Gale’s Encyclopedia of Associations and from group web sites. Finally, in part III, the extent to which the active groups form a network, in which they interact with each other as well as with Congress, will be explored, utilizing data from the 1990 and 1998 group surveys. PART I. HOUSING, FOOD, AND WELFARE: THREE GROUP UNIVERSES Tables A1–A3 in the Appendix list the groups that testified before any hearing concerning housing, food, or welfare between 1970 and 1998. These lists show the large number and incredible variety of groups that have spoken up at various times on these issues. Some of the one-time appearances may have been by groups brought into the arena by peripheral concerns that happen to overlap with a piece of legislation in the policy area. They are part of the general mobilization but their interest has been transient. Therefore, they are not listed individually in Tables A1–A3. Table 4-1 summarizes the level and distribution of group activity for all three policy areas. Table 4-1: Group Testimony on Housing, Food and Welfare: 1970–1997

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Summary Housing: Mean Appearances Per Group: 5.9 Total Hearings: 615 Mean Groups Per Hearing: 4.6 Food: Mean Appearances Per Group: 3.0 Total Hearings: 218 Mean Groups Per Hearing: 3.2 Welfare: Mean Appearances Per Group: 2.6 Total Hearings: 246 Mean Groups Per Hearing: 4.3

This table reveals a substantial variation in the number of groups that testified at least once and a very large variation in the frequency of group appearances among the three policy areas. Housing had the largest number of groups, and a much greater frequency of testimony than the other two areas, with the number of appearances exceeding the food area by a factor of 4 and welfare by a factor of 2.7. The housing policy area has a core of 56 groups that have testified more than ten times, with 10 of these having testified more than 50 times in 28 years. This set of core groups has made 66.5 percent of all appearances. Food policy has only 12 groups that have testified over 10 times and none that appeared over 50 times. The core groups in this area account for only 34.0 percent of all testimony, while 38.4 percent of the appearances were made by groups that testified less than three times during this long period. In welfare policy, there were only 23 groups that testified more than 10 times, with none appearing over 50 times. These 23 core groups accounted for 39.4 percent of all appearances, while 44.1 percent of appearances were made by groups that testified less than three times. As noted earlier, groups can’t testify if no hearings are held, and a great deal of the variation in the number of group appearances can be accounted for by the number of hearings. A total of 615 hearings were held on housing issues during this 28 year period, whereas 246 were held in welfare policy, and only 218 were held in food policy. However, these different levels of hearing activity only partially account for the different numbers of group appearances. The average number of group appearances per

Fig. 4-1: Housing Testimony by Category, 1970–97

Fig. 4-2: Food Testimony by Category, 1970–97

Fig. 4-3: Welfare Testimony, 1970–97

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hearing was highest in housing, second highest in welfare, and lowest in food policy, although the variation is not nearly as great as in the total number of appearances. Obviously, congressional activity fluctuates over time in any policy area. When programs must be re-authorized, and especially when proposals have been made for substantial revision of programs, there will typically be a series of hearings that attract a flurry of group activity. Figures 4-1 through 4-3 show the variations in the number of group appearances over the 28 year period examined. Each graph shows peaks of activity in the year or so preceding the passage (or attempted passage) of major authorizing legislation: for housing in 1973–74, 1989, and 1997; for food in 1976; and for welfare in 1970, 1977, 1988 and 1995. In addition, all three figures show a marked increase in group activity in the early 1980s, when the Reagan Administration was proposing spending cutbacks (accompanied by programmatic changes) in all three areas. However, these figures show more definite spikes in activity for the food and welfare areas than for housing. Congress is steadily involved in housing issues and holds fairly frequent hearings, even when major legislation is not under consideration. This gives groups greater opportunities to make their pitches before the relevant committees. In contrast, food and welfare policy appear to attract little congressional attention in periods between major reform efforts, so that groups are mobilized to testify at fairly infrequent intervals. The reasons for these variations in the level and consistency of legislative activity are complex. In chapter 3, it was hypothesized that budgetary status might explain these variations. Food stamps is an entitlement program, and welfare was until 1996, whereas housing programs have never had entitlement status. Therefore, less time would be allocated to appropriations hearings in the first two areas, since in an entitlement program the funding amounts are dictated by the number of eligible households rather than decided each year through the appropriations process (Collender 1996). However, Table 4-2, which shows the distribution of hearings by committee, suggests that the higher level of hearing activity in housing is not driven by a larger number of appropriations hearings. In fact, appropriations hearings are a smaller percentage of all hearings for housing than they are for food and welfare. In all three areas, the appropriations bills in which funding for the major programs is included cover a wide range of other programs, as well, so that there is less time available for groups concerned with any one set of programs to present their concerns than there is before committees dealing with legislation authorizing those particular programs. Rather than more appropriations hearings, the larger number of housing hearings is due (1) to a higher level of activity on the part of the House and Senate committees principally responsible for housing than by those concerned with food and

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welfare, and (2) greater involvement by a variety of other committees in issues and programs affecting housing than in food or welfare. Table 4-2: Hearings by Committee

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As noted in chapter 3, the House and Senate Agriculture Committees were extremely reluctant to get involved with the food stamp program from its very beginning. The vast majority of their time was devoted to the concerns of agricultural producers, and they tended to avoid dealing with hunger issues at all, unless forced into it by threats from urban legislators to block their cherished farm commodity programs. In both chambers, legislators concerned about feeding the poor tried to bypass the agriculture committees by creating Select Committees on Hunger. In the Senate, this Select Committee (later renamed the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs) was considerably more active than its House counterpart in holding hearings to call attention to these issues. However, neither generated sufficient activity to make up for the relatively small number of hearings held by the committees directly responsible for food programs. The AFDC program was placed under the jurisdiction of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee early in its history. These committees have tended to be more concerned with managing fiscal policy and with handing out tax breaks to various wealthy constituencies than with calling attention to the needs of the poor. They have typically been chaired by conservative Democrats or Republicans, whose goal was to keep program funding under tight control (Lynn and Whitman 1981). Had the AFDC program been placed under a more liberal committee, such as Education and Labor in the House or Labor and Human Resources in the Senate, there might have been more committee attention devoted to the issue of cash support for the poor. Because welfare is a controversial issue, and one with the potential to make substantial demands on public resources, it is safe to assume that the assignment of the program to committees that would give it little priority was an intentional conflict-suppressing strategy on the part of congressional leaders. Some other committees have been active in this area, but it is these two committees that have held the preponderance of hearings in response to major welfare reform proposals from the Executive Branch. The House and Senate Banking Committees initially took charge of federal efforts to help the middle class with its housing needs because those efforts were mainly directed at housing finance and were channeled through the banks and savings and loans traditionally under these committees’ jurisdiction. Programs providing housing assistance to the poor were also placed under their control, as a natural extension of these interests. However, these programs were never marginalized by these committees in the same way that food programs were by the agriculture committees, perhaps because housing assistance flowed more directly to the producers of housing than did food assistance (especially after private

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housing subsidy programs were developed in the early 1960s). Housing cost issues affecting all classes of people tended to be of concern to these committees, and housing assistance for the poor was included alongside other programs for the middle class in most housing legislation. Therefore, it is not surprising that these committees have been much more active than their coun-terparts dealing with food and welfare. In addition, there are specialized housing programs for certain key groups that have stimulated activity by other committees in Congress. Housing for the elderly has always been a special concern of the House and Senate Committees on Aging. In contrast, nutrition for the elderly has claimed some, but not nearly as much of their attention, while these committees showed little interest in AFDC because most of the elderly are covered by Social Security or Supplemental Security Income (SSI). (Even though the SSI program was spawned by Nixon’s welfare reform effort in the early 1970s, the two have become separated, politically.) There are also specialized housing programs for veterans, in which concerns for middle and lower income veterans have traditionally overlapped, and these programs are handled exclusively by the House and Senate Veterans Affairs committees. Finally, abuse of private subsidy programs by for-profit developers has from time to time attracted the attention of the House Government Operations Committee and the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee (as in the case of the HUD scandals uncovered during the latter years of the Reagan Administration; see Hays 1995), and fair housing issues have periodically involved the House and Senate Judiciary Committees in the housing policy arena. Non-Affiliated Witnesses To complete the picture of testimony before Congress in each area, it is also necessary to look at testimony by individuals who were not identified by the CIS Abstracts as affiliated with an national group. It is recognized that some individual witnesses may have been encouraged or sponsored by national groups, but did not list their affiliation at the time of testimony. Concealing its sponsorship of a witness might have some advantage for a group trying to show a “spontaneous mass movement” in favor of its position, but it is safe to assume that most groups who bring witnesses want committee members to know which group they represent and that the committee members and staffs that set up the hearings would not tolerate too much “game playing” with regard to sponsorship of witnesses. Therefore, individual witnesses would appear to be another distinct collection of actors speaking out on policy issues. Table 4-3 displays data on these witnesses.

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Table 4-3: Witnesses Not Affiliated with National Groups

1

Number of hearings at which at least one witness in this category appeared.

2

Average number of witnesses in this category appearing per hearing.

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One striking finding from Table 4-3 is the frequency with which members of Congress appear as witnesses at each other’s hearings. The committee system reflects the desire of senators and representatives to specialize in particular policy areas, with a certain degree of reciprocity in deferring to each other’s areas of expertise. However, members apparently can’t resist the opportunity to make public statements concerning issues that they perceive as of concern to the public or to their constituents. In addition to speeches on the floor, an appearance as a witness gives a member the opportunity to enter into the official record positions on issues outside their specialized committee assignment that they want their constituents to know about. It also provides an additional opportunity to engage in dialog with their colleagues on the committee. However, this practice may reduce the overall responsiveness of the process, because the time consumed by representatives and senators on the witness stand is not available for interest groups and individual citizens to present their arguments. Even though state and local government officials, both elected and appointed, are represented by a variety of interest groups, they apparently take frequent advantage of opportunities to appear before Congress as individuals. Government agency officials appear much more frequently as individuals than do elected officials, and representatives of local non-profit agencies are also fairly frequent witnesses. Because members of Congress always want to appear concerned about their constituents, there is no doubt that they encourage these direct appearances. It also gives them an opportunity to see whether national groups are accurately reflecting the opinions of officials in their particular districts or states. In addition, when the hearings are field hearings held in one of the subcommittee members’ districts, their interaction with local witnesses allows them to project an image of concern and expertise directly to people in their districts. Also of note in Table 4-3 are frequent appearances by individual citizens. Although the status of each individual citizen who testified was not coded, a fair number of these individuals were the clients of the programs being debated. Appearances by clients may be choreographed and sponsored by state or local interest groups, but this kind of testimony often provides an alltoo-rare opportunity for members of Congress to hear directly from lower income persons. A final group of non-affiliated witnesses that bears mentioning are those from academia. Scholars at various universities that are not affiliated with any national think tank are fairly frequently called upon to provide background or expert analysis of the issues. Again, one suspects that these appearances are arranged by individual members of the committees who happen to be in contact with a particular campus or department. The data in Table 4-3 were analyzed to see if any relationship exists between the policy area and the proportion of different types of individual

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witnesses appearing at hearings. The policy type was treated as the independent variable, and the categories of individual witnesses were collapsed into state level, local level, individual citizens, and academics. The Chi-Square statistic for this collapsed table was not significant at p=.05. One may conclude, therefore, that while there are slight variations in the proportion of each type of witness among the three policy areas, a similar overall distribution of individual witnesses is found in all three areas. In sum, national interest groups do not have the floor entirely to themselves at committee hearings. Testimony by individual agency heads, clients and scholarly experts serves to broaden the base of knowledge that is available to the committees. It also has the emotional impact of firsthand testimony, and, thus, it may help to stimulate action. Overlap among Policy Arenas Before moving on to a discussion of the activities of the five categories of interest groups, some attention must be given to the degree of overlap in total group activity between these three areas. Although scholars often refer to “social policy” as a single area of governmental concern, a cursory examination of the lists of interest groups provided in Tables A-1 to A-3 in the Appendix reveals a somewhat different set of interest groups involved in each of these three social policy domains. Figure 4-4 provides a more systematic look at the degree of overlap. This figure shows that most of the groups that appear in one area do not make any appearances in either of the other two areas. There is more overlap between welfare and the other two areas than between food and housing, but the proportion of groups involved is still small. Out of the hundreds of groups testifying, only 39 groups have put in appearances in all three areas. Thus, these data suggest that each area is a distinct policy arena in terms of the overall universe of groups likely to express themselves before Congress. Of the thirty nine groups that testified in all three areas, five were in the intergovernmental category. This is not surprising given the broad range of these groups’ interests. These groups, plus two in the generalist category (the AARP and the AFL/CIO) were the only ones that testified a relatively large number of times in all three areas. A much more typical pattern for these groups is to be very active in one area, often ranking in the top twenty most active groups in that area, while only making a few appearances in the other areas. This suggests that, once a group becomes active in communicating to Congress about one issue, this activity may occasionally spill over into other issues. Very few of the overlapping groups were drawn from the Public Interest category or from the Public Sector Provider category, again because of these groups greater level of specialization. In sum, the three policy arenas are quite distinct, containing only a small common

Fig. 4-4: Group Overlap in Housing, Food, and Welfare

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cast of active participants. PART II. INTEREST GROUP TYPES IN SOCIAL POLICY In the previous chapter, five categories of groups that are likely to actively attempt to influence social policy were identified: public providers, private providers, generalist social welfare groups, public interest groups, and intergovernmental groups. In this section the data on group appearances before Congress will be broken down by these five categories, to see whether the roles hypothesized for these five group types are, in fact, reflected in these data. Overview of Group Categories The discussion will begin with an overview of the groups and activities present within each of the five categories. Three tables will be presented that permit gross comparisons of the activities of each group type in each area. Then, a more detailed examination of the activities of each group type will be presented. Number and Consistency of Appearances Table 4-4 classifies all of the interest groups appearing in each of the three policy areas into the five group types outlined in chapter 3. It shows the overall number of appearances and the average number of appearances per group for each of the five categories in each of the three policy areas. It also provides a quantitative measure of the consistency of group activity over time, in the form of the standard deviation of the number of appearances per year, and, as a means of comparing categories with wide differences in the absolute numbers of appearances, the ratio of the standard deviation to the mean number of yearly appearances for each category in each policy area.

Interest Groups in Social Policy Table 4-4: Group Testimony by Category: 1970–1997

Source: Congressional Information Service, Inc. Index and Abstracts 1970–1997

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This table shows that all five types of groups are active in each of the three policy areas. However, there is considerable variation in the relative level of activity of each of the five types from one policy area to the other. A comparison of these data with the projected roles of the five categories outlined in chapter 3 suggests that the hypothesized patterns are borne out by the data on interest group testimony. The variations in the activities of the five categories will be discussed in greater detail below. Group Specialization Also of potential importance to the nature of the involvement of each type of group is the degree to which the groups within in each category in each policy area specialize in that policy area. The CIS Index catalogs all of the testimony of a group on any topic, and some groups have testified on many different topics over the time period examined. The degree to which they have focused on any of the three social policy areas examined reveals the extent to which those policy areas are central or peripheral to their concerns. Assessing this level of concentration is made more complicated by the fact that the issue areas have been defined fairly narrowly in this analysis. Since the main focus of concern is assistance to the poor, the hearings chosen for examination are those concerned with the most clearly redistributive programs, such as food stamps, housing vouchers and AFDC payments. Many of the groups that testify on these particular programs also testify on a wide range of programs in the general policy area. For example, some of the food groups (such as the Community Nutrition Institute) have testified on the safety and nutritional content of food for the general public as well as on food assistance to the poor, while others (such as Bread for the World) are concerned with international as well as domestic food issues. Thus, they are food specialists, even though they are not totally focused on the domestic redistributive aspects of food policy. In contrast, other groups testify on a myriad of distinct issues, from food to health care to worker safety, etc. These latter groups truly spread their time over a variety of issues and are therefore likely to be less intensely focused on any food or housing or welfare issue. Table 4-5 provides data indicating the degree of group specialization. For each policy area, the first column shows the median percentage of total testimony in each group category represented by those hearings coded as primarily focused on assistance to the poor. The second column under each policy area shows the median percentages of the groups’ total testimony devoted to the general area of food, housing, or welfare. To make the task of tracking group specialization more

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manageable, only the most active groups, that is, those accounting for approximately three fourths of the total appearances in each policy area, were included in this part of the analysis. Typically, a group had to testify at least 2 to 4 times on one of the three issues to make it into the top three fourths. Table 4-5: Specialization of Interest Groups in Social Policy Areas

Source: Congressional Information Service, Inc., Index and Abstracts, 1970–1997

The relative levels of concentration shown in Table 4-5 are what one would expect for the five group types, with the testimony of generalists, intergovernmental groups and private providers less concentrated and the testimony of public interest and public provider groups more concentrated. In addition, the level of concentration of activity is greater for housing that for the other two policy areas. Not only do public providers, private providers and public interest groups devote more of their testimony to low income housing, but they tend to be more highly specialized in the general area of housing. This is, of course, influenced by the larger number of hearings held, but the contrast is still striking between the greater degree of focus that housing groups have than the groups in the food and welfare areas. The fact that both public and private providers in food and welfare are less specialized was predicted in chapter 3, based on the structure of these policy areas. The fact that generalist and intergovernmental groups are spread thin across a wide array of issues is also amply demonstrated by these data. Group Resources As a third aspect of the overview of the five types of groups, Table 4-6 presents a summary of the resources and characteristics of the most active two thirds of the groups in each policy area. Table A-4 in the Appendix shows the data for individual groups. In chapter 2, various resources that are important to group influence were discussed. Financial resources and a membership base were two of the most important, although mobilization of both of these resources is dependent on a level of group cohesion and intensity of interest sufficient to at least partially overcome the free rider problem. Staying power is also an important group characteristic, and this

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can be approximated by looking at the age of the groups. All three of these factors can be assessed utilizing published data on the groups. The most important source for such data is Gale’s Encyclopedia of Associations. Other important pieces of information can be gleaned from group web sites and from self descriptions provided in group testimony before Congress. Table 4-6: Overview of Interest Group Resources by Category

Source: Gale’s Encyclopedia of Associations, 1998 (supplemented by data from group web pages.)

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Looking at age first, one finds that most of the groups have been around for a substantial period of time, with mean ages ranging from seventy years for private providers to thirty six years for public interest groups. The lower age for public interest groups, and the median starting date of 1970 for these groups is consistent with several observations in the interest group literature concerning the proliferation of these groups in the late 1960s (Berry 1977; Scholzman and Tierney 1986). However, even these groups are not fly by night organizations that exist for only a few years. The number that have become defunct since 1970 is higher in this category than in the other categories, but it is still less than 10 percent of the total (5 out of 56). Data on group resources are more difficult to assess, for a number of reasons. With regard to membership, some groups are non-membership groups that don’t have formal rosters of members or collect dues (although they may be supported by contributions from thousands of people). Groups that identified themselves in this way are excluded from the membership counts. However, even among the groups that list formal members, weighing the significance of these numbers is difficult. It is the nature of some groups, such as organizations of public professionals, to have smaller memberships, since their potential membership base is smaller. Based on their summary descriptions published in Gale’s Encyclopedia, it appears that most of these groups do not exclude from membership people without the official credentials of the profession, yet the group is going to be of most interest to those few thousand persons employed in that profession. There are also groups most of whose listed members are actually other membership organizations—for example, Catholic Charities USA or the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Again, most of these groups also welcome individuals as members, but their focus on organizational membership will reduce the size of their rosters. Although smaller membership might be thought to create less concern about the group’s position among members of Congress, the prestige and strategic position of the members is also going to be important in its perceived strength. For example, a group that is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential in social policy—the National Governors Association—has, by definition, only fifty five members. (It includes the fifty state governors plus five territorial governors.) In addition, an organization of organizations is going to be perceived by members of Congress as speaking for many more people than are listed on its roster and as representing a substantial mobilization of society’s resources around a particular problem. Given these complexities, it is not surprising that the distribution of membership in every category of group except intergovernmental is

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positively skewed, as indicated by means that are considerably larger than the medians. Each category has a few groups with thousands or millions of members, but the bulk of the groups in the category have more modest memberships. However, the overall impression is not one of a few elitist middle class “do gooders” mobilized on behalf of social policies, as has been suggested by some conservative critics. Rather, there are many groups representing substantial segments of the population and the economy that are at least concerned enough about these issues to show up when critical pieces of legislation are considered, and a smaller cadre of groups that commit time and energy to these issues on a regular basis. The most direct measures of the level of financial resources available to these groups are their published budgets. However, it would appear from the large amount of missing budget data in every category except intergovernmental that many groups are reluctant to publish budget figures, either in Gale’s Encyclopedia or on their web pages, As with membership figures, the groups that report their budgets show a highly skewed distribution, with means two to three times higher than medians. Not surprisingly, the generalist groups and the private providers show the highest level of resources, although those will tend not to be focused on social policy as much as those in other categories, and some of these groups will be arguing against the expansion of programs for the poor. Public providers and public interest groups show much more modest levels of resources, although there are some quite substantial organizations within these categories. Also, they tend to concentrate the resources that they do have more exclusively on these issues. Another measure of group resources is staff size. This distribution may be more representative of the resources of the groups as a whole, because there are considerably less missing data. Again, the distribution in staff sizes is quite positively skewed, although not as much as the budget distribution, since employees of public interest groups are often willing to work for lower salaries and with fewer organizational resources. The generalist and private provider groups have the largest staff sizes, while the other three categories report substantially smaller staffs. A more difficult group resource to measure directly is control of information, or expertise. Jeffrey Berry (1977) suggests that public interest groups are often able to overcome their small or non-existent membership base by developing a reputation for expertise on the policy issues they deal with. On the other hand, private providers can develop similar reputations but with much larger amounts of resources to back them up, and generalist groups can often spend modest portions of their larger budgets to do expert analyses of particular issues. In the subsequent chapter on group strategy, the various approaches of these types of groups will be further explored.

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Group Categories: A Closer Examination Private Sector Providers The greatest variation in involvement in the three policy areas is among private sector providers. They are very active in housing policy, making 31.1 percent of all group appearances. They are only modestly active in food policy, comprising 11.3 percent of all appearances. In welfare policy they are hardly active at all, making 6.0 percent of the group appearances. These levels of activity confirm the hypothesized role of private sector providers set forth in chapter 3. Private producers have the most incentive to be active in housing policy, since federal subsidies are applied directly to the provision of housing for lower income, as well as middle and upper income persons. Also, the proportion of housing production, particularly rental housing, accounted for by federally subsidized units has been quite large at various times during the last 30 years (Hays 1995). The two most frequent witnesses from the private sector are the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), and these two groups are also the most frequent witnesses of all housing groups combined. Table A-4 shows that both of these groups have substantial resources to bring to bear on their legislative activity. As noted in chapter 3, their involvement, and that of the third most active group, the National Association of Realtors (NAR), reflects a significant shift in the posture of the private housing industry that took place in the late 1950s, from total, categorical opposition to any form of federal assistance for low income housing, to qualified support for government intervention on behalf of the poor. For obvious reasons, these groups tend to support subsidies to the private sector to build low income housing more strongly than pubic housing (i.e., publicly owned and operated units). Historical accounts of the early 1960s suggest that the shift to private sector subsidies was critical in getting the NAHB to break ranks with the rest of the private housing industry and support federal programs (Wolman 1971; Hays 1995). However, during the 1960s, even the NAR gradually dropped the virulent opposition to government involvement in housing for the poor that had characterized its positions from the 1930s through the 1950s, and it began take a more accommodating stand towards a federal role in the provision of low income housing (Hays 1995). The Mortgage Bankers Association represents lending institutions that specialize in home mortgages. These institutions have a long history of close association with the FHA, because much of the work of making FHA insured loans was delegated to these private sector intermediaries. The lending practices of the FHA and its private partners contributed greatly to

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racial segregation and to the deterioration of inner city neighborhoods during the post-World War II construction boom (Judd and Swanstrom 1998). However, new federal legislation in the 1960s required them to get more involved in making loans to low income buyers, through the Section 235 program, and mortgage lenders were involved in financing multi-family housing under the Section 236 and Section 8 programs. These partnerships between the government and the private sectors experienced some notable failures, but from a political standpoint, it gave private mortgage lenders something of a stake in federal assistance to low income housing. If one simply looks at the very large number of appearances by these groups, one might be led to overstate the intensity of their support for federally assisted housing for the poor. Most of the housing legislation since the 1960s has packaged housing assistance for the poor with the reauthorization and revision of the FHA, the tax code, and other programs supporting middle and upper income housing. As shall be shown in more detail in chapter 5, much of the testimony of these private sector groups is directed at preservation of, or desired modifications in, these higher income market interventions. Nevertheless, all of these groups typically weigh in with support for the entire bill, thus lending their influence to the low income assistance provisions. In addition, the NAHB nearly always makes specific, favorable mention of public housing and the Section 8 program in its testimony. In both its testimony and in its public statements (i.e. on its web page, www.nahb.com) this organization often conceptualizes the problem as a general one of maintaining “affordable housing” for many groups in American society, including middle income home purchasers and low income families under the same umbrella. Thus, of the three private sector positions described in chapter 3—opposition, logrolling, or intermediary—the stance of the major private industry groups on housing programs for the poor is closer to the logrolling position than to the intermediary position, although many of the members of NAHB and MBA have benefitted directly from these programs as intermediaries, by constructing low income housing subsidized by various federal programs. The many other private sector groups that weigh in on these housing bills tend to do so from one of three perspectives. Some groups, like the American Institute of Architects, have some financial interest in increasing housing construction, but their vision clearly goes beyond this. They see it as part of their professional mission to promote better housing for society. Another set of groups has a particular specialized niche to fill in the housing industry, and wants to make sure their interests are protected. The clearest example of this type is the various groups representing manufactured housing, which has lower income families as its primary market but is on the defensive because “trailer parks” are often given pariah status in local communities. (A significant proportion of manufactured housing consists not of mobile

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homes but of dwellings closely resembling “stick built,” that is, on-site constructed, housing. However, it all suffers from a similar stigma.) Another set of groups consists of those that have appeared only once or twice, when a particular feature of housing legislation affected them directly. Typical of this might be various banking groups concerned with the general credit features of housing legislation. They are not really an integrated part of the housing policy community, but they are a part of the total mobilization of groups around housing issues. As noted in chapter 3, private food producers have some incentive to be active in food assistance for the poor, because it does increase overall demand for their products. However, the impact of the programs on their production and profits is much less direct than in housing, and their overall level of testimony is much lower than in housing policy. The potential impact of a program’s direct, as opposed to indirect, impact on private production is shown by the fact that the most active private group is the National Milk Producer’s Federation, which is primarily concerned with the school lunch program, with its built-in distribution of surplus milk, rather than with food stamps. Not all of the subsidies involved in the school lunch program are targeted specifically at lower income children, but the program has a disproportionate impact on them, so it was included in the testimony selected for analysis. The expenditures for this program are much lower than those for food stamps, so that its overall impact on food consumption is much less. However, milk producers directly benefit from this particular device for disposing of their chronic surpluses, and so they periodically testify in its defense. The second most frequent witness from the private sector is the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). With regard to food policy, this group does not fit into a strict definition of a private provider, that is, a group through which federal assistance is funneled to the poor. (They might be viewed as playing such a role vis-à-vis Medicaid, but that program is outside the scope of this book.) However, pediatricians are largely employed in the private sector, and it is readily apparent from their web site (www.aap.org) that this group has adopted strong public advocacy on a wide range of children’s health issues as a central feature of its professional identity. Even though more unhealthy children would, in a cold, direct sense, increase the business of pediatricians, such a position would be contrary to their values and those of society. Therefore, like other health professionals, they can best reinforce their own sense of integrity and enhance their profession’s public image by becoming advocates for the improved health of their clients. The AAP’s web site contains a long list of issues that it considers relevant to children’s health, including everything from nutrition to gun violence to car safety. The fact that it has not testified even more on food issues is, perhaps, related to the length of this list.

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Another category of private providers that has testified occasionally on food stamps, and other nutrition programs, consists of organizations representing retail grocers. Since they are the businesses that participate directly in the administration of food stamps and WIC by accepting and redeeming these vouchers, they have a strong interest in how the program is structured. Congress has periodically become concerned with fraud in the food stamp program, both on the part of participants and of grocers, and various regulatory schemes have been proposed to deal with it. Grocers have resisted some of these regulations as too burdensome and time consuming. In effect, they are supporting the smooth flow of assistance to lower income persons, out of a self-interested concern that they not bear the burden of policing the program. To the extent that their resistance contributes to an ongoing perception of the program as “full of cheaters” they may be weakening its political support. However, even though fraud has been a genuine problem in the food stamp program, public perceptions of cheating in this and other welfare programs are more related to overall negative views of the program than to the actual rates of cheating, so that reducing fraud would not necessarily have a positive impact on attitudes. Thus, the involvement and concern of grocers with regard to the food stamp program is probably, on balance, a political plus for the program. Table A-2 in the Appendix shows that a number of other farm groups besides the milk producers have, from time to time, testified on behalf of food programs, but their involvement has been very limited. The typical farm bill is a smorgasbord of commodity programs, affecting everything from beekeeping to leather goods. The food stamp program has often been included within this massive array of programs (although other legislative vehicles have also been used to alter it, such as the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996). Commodity groups are understandably focused on their particular sections, and are willing to go along with the ruralurban logrolling that is implicit in the inclusion of food stamps in the bill, without feeling compelled to testify on behalf of food assistance. Thus, in both housing and food, subsidies to the poor and non-poor have often been blended together in the same legislation, but the structure of the programs, and of the industry, dictates different lobbying behavior on the part of private sector interest groups. Table A-3 in the Appendix reveals the short list of private sector groups that have testified on cash assistance. Since cash assistance confers little or no direct benefit to any particular group of private businesses, there is no material incentive for them to be involved in welfare policy. Therefore, the few private sector groups that do testify on cash assistance legislation tend to be professional groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics, which include a concern with these programs in their broader definition of their

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professional role. In the discussion of the role of public interest groups which follows, the framing of welfare policy as a “children’s issue” will be looked at in some detail. Suffice it to say, here, that some of these private professional groups have participated in this conceptualization of the issue and that this has guided their testimony. Most of the private business groups listed have testified only once, at a point where some feature of welfare legislation crossed into their other major areas of concern. For example, housing groups were at various times concerned with proposals to “cash out” housing assistance as part of a guaranteed income program, and they testified against such proposals. In sum, the extremely peripheral role of private groups in cash assistance confirms the overall hypothesis that the directness of the receipt of subsidies by private groups, and the linkage of assistance to the poor with government assistance in other aspects of the affected business, determines their level of involvement in the making of social policy legislation. Table 4-4 shows higher degree of fluctuation over time in the activity of private sector interest groups than of other group types in all three areas. This fits with their very low level of specialization in social policy shown in Table 4-5. The ratio of the standard deviation to the mean is highest in welfare policy (1.41), reflecting the very peripheral involvement of the few groups that do testify. Although appearances by private provider groups are nearly as infrequent in food policy as in welfare, the variation is less (standard deviation/mean ratio=0.95), reflecting the fact that at least some private groups are consistently interested. The much higher testimony rates in housing policy also vary less over time, showing a standard deviation to mean ratio of 0.80. Private providers are clearly very consistently mobilized and concerned about the impact of public policies related to low income housing on their industry. Public Sector Providers Table 4-4 shows that public sector providers are significantly involved in all three areas. In housing policy, there are 60 public provider groups which are quite active, making an average of six appearances each over the period examined. The table also shows that public providers maintain a more consistent involvement over time in housing than in the other three areas, with a standard deviation to mean ratio of .69 for yearly involvement. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that public providers of housing will make more frequent appearances due to their greater degree of specialization in the housing field. However, the proportion of the total testimony in housing presented by public providers is smaller than in the other areas, due to the greater activity of the private sector.

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By far the most active public provider group in housing is the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO). It was formed in 1933, as the National Association of Housing Officials, at the very beginning of the federal government’s involvement in housing, and it has been credited with an important role in most of the housing legislation since that time (Wolman 1971; Friedman 1968). On its web site, NAHRO states that its purpose is to be “the leading housing and community development advocate for the provision of adequate and affordable housing and strong, viable communities for all Americans, particularly those with low and moderate incomes….” (www.nahro.org) The historical roles of NAHRO’s members show the potential contradictions of the role of administrators as advocates for the poor. Since the early 1950s, it has also included in its membership officials that are concerned with urban renewal and community development, and many scholars correctly view these programs as having been very harmful to the housing conditions of the poor, especially during the first two decades of their existence. (Judd and Swanstrom 1998) Thus, this group’s advocacy of the interests of its urban renewal administrators was, doubtless, at odds with what many observers would consider the interests of the poor. In addition, public housing managers have often pursued policies that were not in the long term best interests of their residents, such as the concentration of the poor in high density developments, and the record of these managers in providing honest, effective or responsive administration is far from perfect (Monti 1993; Meehan 1979). However, the administration of both the urban renewal program and the public housing program, as well as their various successors, has always been heavily constrained by strong local and national political forces. Many of the worst effects of both urban renewal and public housing stemmed from policy decisions made by elected officials at both the national and the local levels, not from decisions taken at the administrative level. Program administrators were compelled to adapt to these political constraints, whether or not their professional or personal values led them to agree with the resultant policy outcomes (Hays 1982). Therefore, the organization representing them could still have a basic thrust towards the expansion of federal housing assistance for the poor, even if the ways in which such assistance was administered at the local level did not produce the best housing or neighborhood outcomes. Without exonerating local administrators for the ways in which they may have contributed to the problems of the poor, one can still see their national organization, in the long view, as a force for expanding housing assistance to the poor. National housing advocacy involving the direct voices of the poor might have produced more humane policies, but such was not available.

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The second most active public provider, the National Council of State Housing Agencies, is of much more recent vintage, having been founded in 1971. Its emergence clearly illustrates how the changing roles of governmental units affect interest group activities. Prior to the early 1970s, state governments had almost no role in housing policy. However, with the creation of new private sector subsidy programs (Section 235 and Section 236) by the Housing Act of 1968, there was great need for additional financing mechanisms for private developers who wanted to get involved in these programs. In addition to the direct subsidy of a federal mortgage interest buy down (from the market rate to 1%) and to the indirect subsidy of favorable tax treatment of depreciation, the federal government encouraged the formation of state housing finance agencies that would provide another indirect subsidy by issuing tax exempt bonds to finance these projects. During the early 1970s, states that did not already have housing finance agencies quickly formed them, so that, by the end of the decade, the vast majority of states had such agencies. The National Council of State Housing Agencies thus became the organizational vehicle for them to influence the federal legislation that had helped bring them into being. This organization evolved into a strong advocate for the federal provision of low income housing. The third most active public sector group, the National Leased Housing Association illustrates the dilemma of trying to categorize interest groups in an arena like housing policy, where the interests of the public and the private sector are closely intertwined. According to its web site (users.worldweb.net/~hudnlha) this organization represents both public and private entities that operate Section 8 assisted housing. The Section 8 program, created in 1974, provides housing assistance payments to families living in dwellings owned by the public, private non-profit, and private for-profit sectors. Owners of large developments constructed specifically for this program (Section 8 New Construction) have contracts directly with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, while Section 8 certificates and vouchers are typically administered by a local government agency, even though households utilize the vouchers to obtain existing privately owned housing. Therefore, both public and private entities have similar (though not always identical) interests in issues surrounding the administration of this program and in future directions that the program is taking. Because of the predominantly public nature of the administration of this program, the National Leasing Housing Association was placed in the public sector provider category, but it is certainly not a “pure” public provider group. Such an intermingling of public and private sector has potential political advantages in generating a constituency for housing programs, although it has not prevented drastic cutbacks in the Section 8 program over the last fifteen years.

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The two groups that are the next most frequent witnesses illustrate the tendency of public sector provider groups to fragment into highly specialized organizations, following the complex divisions of labor within public programs. Both the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities and the Public Housing Authority Directors’ Association have memberships that substantially overlap that of NAHRO, but, because NAHRO is an umbrella for a wide variety of housing and community development organizations, these groups were motivated to form separate organizations with a more exclusive focus on their needs and interests. The larger public housing authorities are some of the most troubled in the United States, and they have received the most negative publicity. The need to defend their image and the desire to advocate assistance for their acute problems served as strong motivators for the group’s formation. As for the Director’s association, a perusal of Gale’s Encyclopedia and the CIS Indexes suggests that it is not uncommon for public sector professions to generate a separate national organization for top administrators. Even though they share with their employees and clients a common interest in basic agency goals, the division of labor within agencies gives the top managers unique perspectives and problems that they want to see reflected in a separate organization. This fragmentation of public sector groups suggests that some of the Olsonian obstacles to group formation are not as strong with these types of groups as with groups that have a larger mass of ordinary citizens as their base. First, the public sector professionals in a particular policy area are a relatively small group that is intensely committed to these programs as their livelihood. Secondly, they need these organizations for selective benefits, such as networking, training, and career advancement that come only with group membership. (These benefits combine both the solidary and material rewards suggested by Wilson 1973.) Finally, the financial resources that they contribute to these groups often come from agency budgets, rather than their own pockets. All of these factors combine to reduce the free rider problem and to make group entrepreneurship a rewarding undertaking. In welfare policy, the proportion of total testimony provided by public sector providers is not substantially greater than in housing, despite the much lower activity level of private sector providers. The number of groups that have testified is approximately equal to that of housing, but each group has testified much less frequently. Their role in welfare policy is considerably less than that of the public interest or generalist groups. In addition, their involvement fluctuates more over time than does that of the housing providers. This is consistent with the lower level of professional specialization of public sector providers in cash assistance programs. Since the members of the more active public provider groups

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are involved in delivering a range of services to the poor, they may be expected to turn their attention from one service area to another, depending upon which is more salient at any given time. In food policy, the public providers are more active, making almost a fourth of all appearances and averaging four appearances per group. Their activity is also somewhat more consistent over time, as indicated by a mean/ standard deviation ratio of 0.84, in contrast to 0.94 for public providers in the welfare arena. Again, lower levels of activity by other categories, such as intergovernmental groups, accounts for their higher proportion of testimony, but their activity level is still higher, on average, than in welfare policy. Tables A-2 and A-3 in the Appendix show that the most active public provider group in welfare policy, and the third most active group in food policy, is the American Public Welfare Association, which, in February 1999, changed its name to the American Public Human Services Association. On the initial page of its web site, it describes itself as follows: “Founded in 1930, the American Public Human Services Association is a non-profit, bipartisan organization of individuals and agencies concerned with human services. Our members include all state and many territorial human service agencies, more than 1,200 local agencies, and several thousand individuals who work in, or otherwise have an interest in, human service programs…. The mission of APHSA is to develop, promote and implement human service policies that improve the health and well-being of families, children, and adults.” (www.aphsa.org)

Whereas in housing policy, the major public provider groups are organizationally independent (in spite of their heavily overlapping memberships), the APHSA sits at the center of an interdependent network of professional groups with more specialized concerns. It describes itself as an “umbrella” for two other groups that are very active as witnesses, the National Council of State Public Welfare Administrators and the National Council of Local Human Service Administrators. It includes their resolutions in the section of its web site devoted to issue positions. It also describes itself as currently or previously affiliated with the following organizations: American Association of Food Stamp Directors American Association of Public Welfare Attorneys American Public Human Service Association—Information Management Association of Administrators of the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children. Association of Administrators of the Interstate Compact on Adoption and Medical Assistance

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National Association for Program Information and Performance Management National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators National Association of State Medicaid Directors National Center on Elder Abuse (joint with U.S. Administration on Aging) National Staff Development and Training Association

Although not all of these organizations appear on the list of groups testifying, the APHSA plus its affiliated groups account for 39.0 percent of the public provider testimony in food policy and 29.7 percent of the public provider testimony in welfare policy. Clearly, the establishment of such a network helps to control the natural tendency towards fragmentation of public sector provider groups that was described in connection with housing groups. It facilitates coordination of strategies and avoids duplication of expensive administrative staff support. Some of the groups listed above appear to be so narrow in their scope that they might have difficulty surviving and being effective as independent groups. From this, one might conclude that the organizational interdependence is necessitated by the relative weakness of organized groups in this area. On the other hand, it could be that this organizational interdependence is a deliberately chosen strategy by groups that could survive on their own. The detailed analysis of organizational relationships that would be necessary to determine this is beyond the scope of this work. In either case, the close affiliation of public sector groups could be both an asset and a liability politically. If the representatives of these groups are viewed by lawmakers as essentially members of the same group, periodically changing hats to look more broad-based, this could hurt them. On the other hand, close coordination and division of labor among various specialists could strengthen the effectiveness of lobbying efforts. One public sector group of equal age and reputation to the APHSA that is not part of this interdependent group of organizations is the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). The NASW focuses on promoting and representing social work as a profession. Since social workers are employed in a variety of public and private settings, this means that there is not so much of an emphasis on representing those that are functionally involved in delivering public services, although a significant number of social workers are so employed. The organization’s web page (www.naswdc.org) features policy advocacy as a key element of the organization’s mission, and the NASW has created a political action committee, through which its members can make voluntary donations to political candidates who are sympathetic to expanded services for the poor and other populations requiring special assistance. (Since the APHSA represents public employees, it is much more

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constrained in its ability to get so directly involved in campaigns.) However, the NASW has been much less frequently involved in testimony before Congress, appearing only 14 times in 28 years on welfare policy, and only 4 times on food and nutrition issues. Involvement by other public sector provider groups in welfare policy has tended to be very occasional, with few groups testifying more than once or twice in the entire period examined. Categories of groups that have appeared with some frequency include: groups representing professionals serving those with disabilities, groups providing services to children, groups providing home health care, and groups involved in child support enforcement. The various attempts at reforming the AFDC program have often raised complex issues concerning the ways in which the program interacted with the delivery of other services and benefits, and public sector specialists involved in delivering these benefits have thus been drawn into the debate. However, given the infrequency of their involvement, it is highly unlikely that they are a part of a stable network of group relationships. As the group survey data are explored in Part III of this chapter, it will be shown that such groups are rarely mentioned by respondents as entities with which they are in regular contact. In the food assistance arena, there are several other public provider organizations that have been regularly involved. The school lunch program has attracted the involvement of the American School Food Service Association (ASFSA,) a rather formidable organization with a staff of 38 and a yearly budget of $5,400,000, according to data from Gale’s Encyclopedia of Associations presented in Table A-4 in the Appendix. On its web page, it claims a membership of 65,000, including “…state, city and district food service directors, managers, and others involved in school food service and nutrition programs.” (www.asfsa.org) In addition to serving as a professional certification body for school food service directors, it states as part of its mission: “[To]…advocate national policy to expand and enhance child nutrition programs, (www.asfsa.org)” Considering the number of school districts in the United States, and their active role in feeding, as well as educating, children, it is not surprising that this is such a large organization. It is also to be expected that the organization would define itself as having a social mission to the disadvantaged, as well as providing a general service to the school population. Public policy-makers have defined school meals as a vehicle for enhancing the diets of disadvantaged children by making school lunches available at free or reduced prices to those below a certain income, and by adding school breakfasts when it was discovered a number of years ago that many low income children were arriving at school hungry in the morning. It should be noted that the National School Board Association has also testified on behalf of nutrition programs; although board members

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are not strictly school professionals, they are acting in their professional administrative capacity in supporting school nutrition programs, and thus are included in this category. The ASFSA also states a general goal of improving child nutrition, and it shares this goal with another professional association, the American Dietetics Association (ADA) which is among the most frequent witnesses in the food/nutrition arena. According to its web site (www.eatright.org), the ADA represents 70,000 professional dieticians that are employed in a variety of public and private settings. However, they are heavily involved in public and non-profit settings, especially in relation to disadvantaged clients, and so are included in the public provider category. As is the case with the American Academy of Pediatrics, they frame public food assistance within the context of improving diet and health for children and adults, not just as a means of preventing starvation or providing indirect cash assistance to the poor. To the extent that these groups are successful in highlighting the long term social costs, in terms of poor health and lost productivity, of undernourished children and adults, they contribute legitimacy to federal assistance. Generalist Groups Generalist social welfare groups play important roles in all three areas, ranging from 19.5 percent of appearances in housing to 32.4 percent in welfare. As might be expected, their low levels of specialization lead to greater fluctuation in appearances over time, as they tend to mobilize in an area only when it is most salient. Since this category contains a rather diverse collection of groups, these variations in activity can best be understood by breaking down generalist testimony into the major subcategories that comprise it. Data for these sub-categories are presented in Table 4-7. The frequency of testimony for each type in each area is presented, along with the percentage of all generalist testimony that this subcategory represents, and the rank of that category in terms of proportion of testimony. In the next to the last column of the table, the percentage of all generalist testimony for all areas is presented to provide a sense of the total impact of this type of group on social policy. However, because housing dominates the total percentages due to its larger number of hearings, a better sense of each type’s general proportional importance is provided by averaging its percentage in all three policy areas and ranking it accordingly. These data are provided in the last column of Table 4-7.

Interest Groups in Social Policy Table 4-7: Generalist Group Activity, By Type of Group

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Overall, groups representing the elderly are the most consistent participants in all three areas. However, elderly groups are less active in welfare than in the other areas, because most of the elderly have sources of income support separate from the cash welfare system that serves the poor. Advocates for the elderly tend to get involved in welfare policy primarily when changes in the welfare system threaten to compromise the unique status of the benefits they receive, as, for example, when proposals for blending SSI and AFDC surfaced during the Carter push for welfare reform. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has over 30 million members, making it one of the largest non-governmental organizations in the United States. It defines its membership very broadly, admitting anyone 50 and over, although most persons in their fifties are closer to mid-career than to retirement. It has expanded its membership by pursuing a classic, Olsonian strategy of providing selective benefits, such as discounted health, credit and travel benefits for members. However, a perusal of its web site suggests that policy advocacy, not just member services, is a central part of its mission. The site catalogs numerous appearances before congressional committees on a range of issues affecting the elderly, as well as frequent press releases (www.aarp.org). The size of it’s membership, plus the fact that the 50+ age group has the highest voter turnout of any segment of the population, gives it a formidable reputation as a powerful interest group. In both food and housing assistance, it is the most frequent witness in the Generalist category, accounting for 8.8 percent of the generalist testimony in housing, and 12.7 percent in food. Elderly persons have unique problems in both housing and nutrition, especially those in need of supportive services. Although poverty rates among the elderly are lower than the national average, thanks largely to steady increases in Social

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Security benefits, there are still millions of older households that depend on public housing and food stamps, in addition to SSI and other cash benefits, in order to support themselves. They also depend on public funding for assisted living arrangements, when their own resources don’t cover private access to these services. Because the elderly’s cash assistance programs are organizationally and politically distinct from cash assistance to the poor, the AARP is not as active in welfare policy as in the other areas. With regard to income support, they are more likely to focus their attention on SSI and Old Age Assistance (Social Security). Religious groups figure very prominently in food and welfare policy, but less so in housing policy. The sharing of food is a potent symbol of compassion and community in both the Christian and the Jewish scriptures, and it is perhaps for this reason that many Jewish and Christian groups have mobilized so readily around hunger issues. Cash benefits, too, address directly the assistance to the poor that is required of the religiously devout in both Judaism and Christianity. In recent years, homelessness has tapped the resources and the emotions of various religious groups, and Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity International, has made “housing for God’s people in need” a rallying cry for thousands of Christians. However, this more recent interest doesn’t yet counterbalance the longer history of greater involvement in the other two areas. As noted in chapter 3, different groups and individuals within the Judeo-Christian tradition have differing views of the role of government in meeting a society’s duty to the less fortunate. Among the religious groups testifying in all three areas, Catholic and Jewish groups are disproportionately represented, because their leaders tend to see government as a positive tool for exercising compassion and as a necessary supplement to the activities that their denominations undertake on their own. Similarly, several broadly ecumenical groups such as the National Council of Churches of Christ have taken strong positions in favor of governmental activism. Other Christian groups, particularly evangelical Protestants, have tended to see compassion for the poor as mainly a matter for private charity, and so they are not so prominently represented among the religious groups lobbying for social programs. In fact, organizations such as the Christian Coalition, have lobbied for a reduction of the public sector role. Nevertheless, the data presented in Table A-4 in the Appendix suggest that these opponents are much less active in pressuring Congress than proponents, and the net impact of religious groups has been to exert pressure on the federal government to act on behalf of the poor. Interest groups representing labor are also very prominent among the generalist groups lobbying for social welfare programs. The AFL/CIO is at or near the top of the frequency list for generalist groups in all three policy areas. In addition, a number of individual unions, such as the United Auto

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Workers and the United Mine Workers, have presented testimony from time to time. There are, of course, some active unions, such as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workers, whose specific interests as public or private suppliers overlap with their general interests in an expansive social policy. However, most are involved out of a general ideological linkage of their members’ interests with a generous social safety net. The activities of unions in these three areas are constrained by the fact that labor organizations tackle an incredibly wide range of public policy issues, with an understandable focus on issues affecting their power to bargain with employers, and on issues like free trade that affect the overall supply of jobs. Therefore, they are not able to provide the level of attention to specific social policy programs and issues that one might expect, given their historical role in pressing for the expansion of such programs. Of course, like business, their presence in the electoral process exerts a strong influence on the ideological composition of Congress, so that direct lobbying may not be their most important source of impact on social policy. Groups representing racial or ethnic minorities are also involved in a broad range of policy issues, and they tend to focus on government action (or inaction) that affects the status of their whole group, whether poor, middle class, or above. Enforcement of anti-discrimination laws and affirmative action would, for example, rank high on their list of issues. Therefore, their testimony indicates that they are not as active on specific social policy issues as one might expect. The level of participation of these groups varies considerably among the three policy areas. Their participation ranks fairly low in both food and welfare, while, in contrast, they are the most active of the generalist groups in housing policy, providing 27.3 percent of the generalist testimony in that area. Housing, of course, is an especially important issue for racial or ethnic minorities, because their continued residential segregation not only affects the quality of their dwellings but their access to many other resources, such as education and jobs. The lower income members of these groups are the most dramatically affected by lack of housing opportunities, but housing discrimination is also part of the experience of virtually all members of these groups (Yinger 1995; Massey and Denton 1993) The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is one of the oldest and largest organizations representing African Americans. A perusal of the press releases of the last four years listed on its web site (www.naacp.org) reveals the broad range of issues of discrimination and racial stereotyping it has addressed, from discrimination in housing lending to police brutality directed against

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people of color. Their concern with poverty is framed within their more general concern with discriminatory barriers, since the disproportionate poverty experienced by people of color is, in their view, strongly related to these barriers. The National Urban League, another one of the more active interest groups representing people of color, shows similar priorities on its web page; that is, confronting unequal treatment by the police and discrimination in a wide variety of settings. Business peak associations have less of a numerical impact on testimony in these three areas than the other types of generalist groups, but they are a steady presence nonetheless and in most cases, unlike the other generalist groups, they resist the expansion of social programs. Groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers are, like labor groups, organizations concerned with a very wide range of policy issues, from fiscal policy to trade policy to labor relations. Also like labor, their involvement in the electoral process gives them leverage over who wins congressional office. For these reasons, testimony on social policy issues may not seem as central to their strategy of influence as it does for other groups. Veteran’s groups are very active in housing policy but much less so in welfare and not at all in food policy. Veterans’ lobbying on housing is almost exclusively confined to the specialized programs that benefit them, and it takes place before their own committees, rather than the House and Senate Banking and Urban Affairs Committees that handle other housing issues. Therefore, they are not really a part of the housing policy community. Nevertheless, they exert a steady pressure on government to be more activist on housing issues affecting them, thus potentially having an impact on the overall atmosphere of housing policy making. Women’s groups have been primarily active in welfare policy and only peripherally involved in the other two areas. Their focus on welfare is another example of how the structure of programs affects group participation. Because the AFDC program made women and their children the primary and visible targets of cash assistance, it is more likely to be seen as program uniquely affecting women as a group. One group, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, has been particularly direct in framing AFDC as one of the sources of income on which women rely to survive, when both the job market and male partners prove unreliable. The disproportionate share of women in poverty is, of course, related to their generally lower earning power, again drawing the attention of women’s groups to public policy in this area. That they have not paid attention to other programs serving the poor, food and housing, is perhaps the result of these policies not having as much of an impact on women as a distinct group, although female single parents are the disproportionate beneficiaries of these programs as well.

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The impact of groups explicitly representing men has been seen only in the welfare policy area, and it has been peripheral even there. However, these groups are included because their presence illustrates how social policy can engage groups that believe that their status and relationships are affected by it. Men’s groups have been drawn into this arena largely by the issue of child support enforcement. These groups argue that the aggressive targeting of men for child support payments by recent welfare measures disregards the ways in which they have been excluded from other aspects of parental rights. They are trying to counteract their pariah status as perceived deadbeats by providing evidence of maltreatment by their female partners, particularly with regard to custody. They are not so much arguing for expansion or contraction of welfare but rather how it should fit within the overall structure of male/female relationships. Public Interest Groups Public interest groups are a major presence in all three policy areas, comprising over a third of all testimony in both food and welfare, and a quar-ter of the testimony in housing. The most active groups tend to specialize in their particular area of concern, and few can be seen overlapping into other areas. The average number of appearances per group is lower than some of the other categories, due to the fact that the most active groups in each area are augmented by an army of less specialized groups that only testify once or twice but contribute to the overall mobilization. Of course, some of these evanescent groups are, in fact, temporary coalitions involving some of the more active groups. These coalitions appear a few times as separate entities in the testimony and then disappear. Public interest groups show a lower level of mobilization on cash assistance issues than on food and housing issues, and a greater range of fluctuation in involvement. As noted earlier, most public interest groups tend to specialize in one policy area, and there are fewer public interest groups specializing in cash assistance than in the more concrete issues of food and housing. Many public interest appearances in the welfare arena are by groups with other focal concerns, and so, they will tend to limit their involvement to the major policy debates, rather than having a steady, ongoing mobilization. However, given the greater fluctuations in total group mobilization for welfare than for the other two issues, it is perhaps note-worthy that the level of variation in public interest involvement does not contrast with the other areas even more dramatically. Public interest groups clearly provide a steady presence in all three policy areas. In both housing and food, there is a cluster of five or six organizations at the top of the list that account for a significant percentage of all testimony.

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These groups generally fall into three categories. The first category consists of organizations with strong networks of grassroots members, including both individuals, agencies, and citizens groups that are actively engaged in dealing with the problems of the poor at the local level. The National Low Income Housing Coalition, the most active public interest group in the housing arena, fits into this category, as does the National Coalition for the Homeless. The Child Welfare League that is active in welfare and Bread for the World, that is active in food policy are also in this category. The presence of local non-profit providers in these membership groups would seem to blur the distinction between provider groups and the type of “disinterested” citizens groups that Berry envisioned for his public interest category. However, local non-profit providers are generally closely linked to networks of volunteers committed to their cause, and they often view the mobilization of their clients as part of their mission. The salaries paid by these organizations are generally lower than what equally qualified people could earn in other organizations, so the primary motivation for involvement cannot be seen as the material incentive of keeping a remunerative job. Therefore, the mobilization of these agencies can be viewed as one facet of the citizen mobilization that public interest groups represent. Just as some scholars and political leaders have tried to maintain a “politics/administration dichotomy” with regard to public sector employees, so, too, some critics of social policy advocacy groups have, in effect, asserted a “politics/service” dichotomy with regard to non-profit entities delivering services to the poor. By making a proscription of political activity a condition for tax exempt status for non-profit entities (under Section 501 (c)(3) of the tax code), policy-makers have created an implicit distinction between professional service to the poor and organized promotion of the interests of the poor through the political process. The even more aggressive attempts to restrain the advocacy activities of nonprofits by Congressman Ernest J. Ishtook (R, Oklahoma) fit within the same assumption. In order to avoid challenges to their 501 (c)(3) status most non-profit organizations, both at the national and local level, steadfastly maintain their nonpartisanship and assert that they are engaging in informational and educational efforts when they make their case to Congress, rather than political pressure. However, the reality is that, if a professional service provider is genuinely concerned with his or her clients, then calling the attention of decisionmakers to their problems and advocating for adequate resources to deal with these problems is a logical extension of that concern. They are also quite aware that, as middle class, educated persons, they are in a position to offer much needed leadership and resources to low income persons in their efforts to get their concerns represented in the political process. Therefore, just as

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public sector providers make a strong, organized case for their programs before Congress, so, too, non-profit providers are likely to join in the citizen mobilization efforts that take place around these issues. The “politics/ service” dichotomy thus becomes just as much of a polite fiction as the “politics/administration” dichotomy, but it is one that some elected officials find useful in restraining effective advocacy for the poor. A second category of public interest groups consists of the nonmembership cadre organizations that Jeffery Berry mentions as such a prominent part of public interest lobbying. These include the Housing Assistance Council and the National Housing Law Project in the housing arena; the Children’s Defense Fund in the welfare arena; and the Food Research Action Center and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in the food arena. These groups receive foundation support, and most also solicit individual donations, but they do not have formal membership structures. Several groups in this category have roots in the legal profession, as groups of committed lawyers have organized themselves into non-profit entities to apply their legal expertise to social issues. In addition to the National Housing Law Project just mentioned, examples on the list of witnesses include the Center for Law and Social Policy and the Center on Social Welfare Policy and Law (now called the Welfare Law Center). The original legitimation for these groups’ lobbying role came from the notion that independent sources of information and expertise on these issues were needed to inform the policy debate and to counter the technical and lobbying expertise of opponents of progressive legislation. However, a perusal of their web sites suggests that most of these groups seek further legitimation by providing technical support and services to grassroots, membership organizations. For example, the Housing Assistance Council, an organization mainly concerned with housing for the rural poor, has as its main function the provision of seed loans for project start-up costs for community based housing providers in rural areas. However, it has recently launched organizational capacity building projects to strengthen local organizations in largely Hispanic “colonias” settlements and in Indian reservations (www.ruralhome.org). In this way, even though the organization itself does not have citizen members, it becomes closely integrated into a network of groups that are citizen-based. A third category of active public interest organizations consists of those entities generally referred to as think tanks. This includes such organizations as the Brookings Institution, the Urban Institute, the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. As noted in chapter 1, most of these organizations do not consider themselves interest groups. They rely on foundation rather than public support, and they view their role as providing policy analysis, rather than serving as advocates of

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particular positions. However, the line between advocacy and analysis is so blurred as to make the role of these entities, if not strictly that of interest groups, at least very similar to that of advocates for particular approaches to public policy. On the one hand, each think tank tends to be identified with a particular point of view towards social policy, with some clearly on the left or the right, and some more middle of the road. This does not mean that they are blindly or narrowly ideological but, rather, that their research is influenced by a particular philosophy towards the role of government. On the other hand, many advocacy groups do policy analysis, and, because they rely on their expertise for credibility with members of Congress, they have an incentive to produce accurate, reliable data that command respect even among some lawmakers who don’t share their values. For example, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is recognized as a valid source of information and analysis by many members of Congress of different ideological persuasions, even though its liberal bias is also well known. In sum, there are a variety of non-profit research entities stating their cases for their preferred policy options before Congress. They serve as part of the network of interested parties trying to influence legislation, whether or not they formally consider themselves to be a group. Intergovernmental Groups Intergovernmental groups are also a major presence in all three policy areas. Because there are fewer groups, their testimony represents a smaller percentage of all testimony than the other four categories, but the number of appearances per group is substantially higher than in any other category. Thus, the data confirm the high level of intergovernmental interest in these programs that was hypothesized in chapter 3. The food stamp program has always been federalized, with state and local governments sharing a much lower proportion of the costs than in housing and welfare. The unit of local government most directly affected by food issues is the county, because food programs are administered at the county level in many states and because cuts in food programs can lead to increased burdens on the general relief programs that many counties offer to the poor. In contrast to the steady involvement in housing policy of groups representing cities (the National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors,) the principal organization representing counties, the National Association of Counties (NACO) testifies during major mobilizations on food issues, but not at other times. The groups representing mayors and cities are not nearly as active in food policy, since city governments are only peripherally involved in most food programs. Intergovernmental involvement in cash assistance policy is more continuous than in food policy, resembling the pattern shown in housing

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policy. However, different intergovernmental groups (NACO and NGA vs. NLC and USCM) take the lead here than in housing. This reflects the fact that the state and county levels of government have the most at stake in the outcomes of cash assistance, because of the large matching sums they provide and because, as the most visible administrators of the program, they are likely to be the targets of political fallout, whether the public sees welfare as too generous or as ignoring the needs of too many deserving people. Opposition Groups The vast majority of interest groups that testify before Congress on housing, food and welfare either testify in favor of preservation or expansion of federal programs or testify in favor of relatively minor modifications of these programs that affect the interests of their particular constituents. With hundreds of groups testifying in each area, it was not possible to scrutinize the testimony of every single group, so the assertion of the predominantly supportive nature of the testimony is based on an examination of the most active groups. Groups with a known philosophy of opposing the government’s social welfare role were identified, and testimony was checked on others which had titles suggesting opposition. Table 4-8 shows the frequency of testimony of these opposition groups. Table 4-8: Groups Testifying in Opposition to Federal Social Policy

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This table shows that only in welfare was more than five percent of the testimony given by identifiable opposition groups. For most of the time period studied, the business peak associations, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers were the principal voices testifying against expansion of social welfare programs. With the proliferation of conservative think tanks in the late 1970s, their voices were added to the opposition, with the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation taking by far the most active roles. This is a very significant finding, because these programs have still been the subject of intense controversy and have frequently suffered reductions in funding, particularly since 1981, yet the opposition to these programs was clearly not being articulated through the interest group system. As suggested in chapter 2, forces outside the arena of interest group struggle are influencing the outcomes that interest groups are able to obtain. We will return to this issue in chapter 6. PART III. GROUP NETWORKS In both the 1990 and the 1998 surveys, the interest groups were asked about their perceptions of, and interactions with other groups within their policy arena. Their answers address two issues concerning the structure of the interest group system in social policy. First, it has been demonstrated earlier in this chapter that interest group activity in social policy is not as peripheral and episodic as authors like Ripley and Franklin (1991) suggest, and that participation in the three social policy arenas includes a number of permanently mobilized groups, as well as a larger collection of groups that are active for only brief time periods. However, these data do not address the actual linkages between groups. Describing these linkages is critical to understanding whether or not the kind of policy community posited in chapter 2 exists surrounding each of these three social policy issues. Therefore, the survey asked each group two kinds of questions about its frequency of contact and interaction with a list of other active groups. It first asked for a general rating of how often the group was in contact with every other active group, using the following scale: 3=Very Frequently (more than once a month); 2=Occasionally (less than once a month to once a year); 1=little or no contact: and 0=not aware of group’s existence. It then asked each group to identify the five groups with which it was most frequently and contact and what types of interactions it had with those five groups. The number of respondents in each category was small. In addition, to make the raters’ task manageable, the groups rated were those previously identified as active in the area through frequency of testimony, rather than all of the hundreds of groups that have ever made an appearance. Therefore, these findings must be taken only as suggestive.

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Overall, these averages suggest occasional intergroup contact between most of the groups in each policy area. First, public interest groups and intergovernmental groups have the highest average frequency of contact ratings: averages for intergovernmental groups range from 1.30 in food to 1.55 in housing to 1.91 in welfare, while averages for public interest groups range from 1.44 in welfare to 1.40 in housing to 1.35 in food. This means that these groups are more likely to be contacted by other groups of all types than are the other three categories. This suggests that these groups may be important contact points in an information network utilized by many of the groups active in the policy arena. Second, the three policy areas differ in the extent to which groups in one category are more likely to be in contact with groups in the same category, rather than with other types of groups. In housing, the largest average contact ratings occur among groups of the same type, suggesting that the five group types are distinct sub-communities within the housing policy community. In food and welfare, the pattern is one of more generalized, low level interaction among all the interested parties. The averages suggest that groups tend to be occasionally in contact with each other, but not on a daily or weekly basis. These average rates of contact are somewhat misleading, however, because there is a wide variation in frequency of contact within each category, with the distribution negatively skewed by several groups that showed up in testimony but are rarely contacted by other groups. A more accurate view of the network may be gained by looking at the individual groups with the most frequent contact ratings. The ten groups in each area that receive the highest ratings in terms of frequency of contact are displayed in Table 4-9.

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Table 4-9: Most Frequently Contacted Groups: Food, Welfare, and Housing

Ratings: 3=Very Frequently (>1/mo); 2=Occasionally (<1/mo to 1/yr); 1= Little or no contact; 0= Not aware of group’s existence

In all three areas, the two groups most frequently contacted are in the public interest category, and four or five of the top ten groups fall into the public interest category. Virtually all of the public interest groups listed are engaged in research and data collection, and they, thus, are in a position to provide information to other groups in the area. How much of a strategic function they play in mobilizing other groups in addition to this information dissemination function is not clear from the data available. However, one of the top groups, the Urban Institute, is a moderate to liberal-oriented think tank that brings considerable expertise to bear on

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social policy issues. Its role would be limited to the provision of information, and this suggests that this function may be of primary importance to the other top groups as well. The rest of the groups that make the top ten fit into a mix of categories. No intergovernmental groups are included in the food area, while the U.S. Conference of Mayors makes it in both welfare and housing, with two additional intergovernmental groups included in housing’s top ten. Public and private providers play important roles in both food and housing, while only one of each, the American Public Welfare Association and the American Bar Association respectively, make it in welfare’s top ten. This is, again, in keeping with the lesser roles for both these types in welfare that have been surmised from the hearing data. With regard to generalist groups, one religious group, the U.S. Catholic Conference, makes it in the food area, while none do in the other areas, a further reflection of the importance that these groups attach to the food issue. (Bread for the World is also a religiously oriented group, but because it specializes in food policy, it was placed in the public interest category.) Two women’s groups and one group primarily representing African Americans are in welfare’s top ten, but no generalist groups make it in the housing arena. In all three areas, there are generalist groups that testify frequently, but it would appear that they do less networking with other groups. To explore further the extent of intergroup contact within these policy areas, respondents were asked to identify five groups with which they had certain types of close, cooperative interactions. They were given a choice of six types of interactions: 1. Joining a coalition or forming a united front with a group on an issue or issues. 2. Exchanging technical information with a group. 3. Lending staff to a group. 4. Receiving staff support from a group. 5. Contributing financial support to a group. 6. Receiving financial support from a group. The vast majority of respondents checked only the first two activities, which are the lowest level of interdependence. However, even these reflect a substantial degree of cooperation, and Table 4-10 shows that most of the groups responding to the survey had engaged in these collaborative activities.

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Table 4-10: Collaborative Activities Among Interest Groups

Table 4-10 shows that all types of groups collaborated far more frequently with public interest groups than with any other type of group. These data reinforce the conclusion, suggested by the data on overall frequency of interaction, that these groups perform a coordinating, information sharing role within the three policy communities. In housing, however, all other types of groups except generalists engaged in quite a bit of collaborative behavior, particularly with groups within their category. In food and welfare policy, these other types of groups seemed to cooperate much more infrequently with each other, with the exception of public providers in the food arena, who showed considerable collaboration with other groups. This is perhaps because of the close organizational ties that the APWA maintains with several other public provider groups. Another dimension of interaction among groups is mutual attribution of influence. Groups that are active in a policy arena and have more or less regular contact with each other will arrive at a sense of which of their number have the most influence in the policy arena. In the survey, groups were asked to rate the influence of each of the other active groups. Not surprisingly, these influence ratings correlated strongly with overall frequency of contact r=.88 for housing; r=.75 for welfare, and r=.66 for

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food), since groups with which one is in contact will naturally appear to be more influential. However, some of those groups generally identified as being in opposition to the expansion of the government’s role, such as the Heritage Foundation and the National Federation of Independent Businesses still received mid-range to high influence ratings, even though their contact ratings were lower since they are on the opposite side of the issues from most of the active groups. This indicates that the groups responding were not simply attributing more influence to their allies. If a group’s level of activity in the policy area contributes to a perception of influence by other groups, then one would expect frequency of testimony to correlate with perceived influence, if testimony is a valid indicator of overall activity. This is in fact the case. The bivariate correlation (Pearson’s r) between frequency of testimony and perceived influence in food policy is .42; in housing policy it is .71; and in welfare policy it is .55. The higher correlation in housing policy reflects the greater amount of time and energy that groups spend on testimony in this area, in contrast to the other two areas. However, one might suspect that other group attributes might either make this correlation spurious or account for some of the unexplained variation in the influence scores. Among the variables most likely to have this effect is the total amount of group resources. If a group has more resources, it could be argued, this will both enhance its perceived influence and enable it to testify more frequently. Or, alternatively, group resources might add to the perception of influence over and above the impact of group activity, by making other groups anticipate that the group can act if necessary. A simple bivariate regression of perceived influence on frequency of testimony yielded a regression coefficient of .011 for housing, .022 for food, and .048 for welfare. This means that for every increment of one appearance before Congress, the perceived influence increased .01 for housing, .02 for food, and .05 for welfare. These are not insignificant increases, considering that the entire influence scale runs from 0 to 3. The R2 value for housing was .452, for food it was .172, and it was .398 for welfare, showing a large portion of the variance explained in the housing and welfare cases, and a smaller portion explained in the case of food policy. All of these R values were statistically significant at p=.05. (N=34 for housing, N=30 for food, and N=24 for welfare.) The lower value for food policy very likely reflects the fact that the lower frequency of hearings and testimony that occur in that area make testimony a less important part of a group’s arsenal of activities, with the result that it explains a lower proportion of the group’s influence rating. When the amount of group resources (as measured by staff size) was added to the regression equation as a second independent variable, it increased the R2 to .54 for housing, to .26 for food, and to .41 for welfare.

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(All were statistically significant at p=.05) Thus, only in food policy do the two variables together explain a substantially larger amount of the variance, indicating, again, that other measures of a group’s stature are relatively more important in this policy arena. However, the regression model with two independent variables also shows that the relationship between testimony and influence rating is not a spurious one in any of the three policy areas. In each of the three, the partial regression coefficient for frequency of testimony was the same or larger than in the bivariate model, and the partial regression coefficient for group resources was less than .001. It is recognized that perceived influence is not necessarily the same thing as actual influence over the outcome of legislation. Rather, it is a measure of the respect accorded a group by other groups active in the policy area. However, this surely contributes to a group’s effectiveness, in that it is better able to shape the consensus concerning the definitions of problems among a range of those actors who are most knowledgeable and concerned (Baumgartner and Jones 1993). The picture that emerges here is one in which the level of activity and commitment that a group displays toward an issue can substantially enhance its impact, independent of its level of resources relative to other groups. To be sure, it takes a minimum level of resources to enter the game initially, but once in, the frequency with which the group communicates with members of Congress and the frequency with which it communicates and cooperates with other active groups has a strong impact on its reputation for influence. To further reinforce this point, let us look once again at specific groups. Table 4-11 shows the top ten groups in each area in terms of influence scores and their level of staffing. The composition of these lists is somewhat different than in Table 4-9. Some groups that were listed as frequent contacts do not make the list of the most influential. The “drop outs” were primarily public interest groups, while the groups that made the influence list were large national groups, such as the AARP, the NAACP, and the National Association of Realtors, that have wide reputations for being powerful lobbyists. Thus, in spite of the high correlations between contacts and influence, there appear to be some general reputational factors that affect perceptions of influence, as well as the intensity of a group’s activities. As for group resources, the groups among the top ten most influential vary widely in staff size from 6 for the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities, to 1200 for the AARP. Quite a few of the groups on the list have very large staffs, indicating considerable group resources, but some of them are spread across a number of issues. The smaller, more focused groups can concentrate the resources they have on a very specific range of problems, thus enhancing their impact.

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Table 4-11: Groups Rated Most Influential: Food, Welfare, and Housing

Ratings: 3=Very Influential; 2=Somewhat Influential 1=Not influential 0=Not aware of group’s existence Source for staff sizes: Gale’s Encyclopedia of Associations, 1997, 1998.

CONCLUSION This chapter has provided a wide range of data showing the activities of interest groups in the three social policy areas. It has shown that there is a high level of interest group activity in all three policy areas. These issues draw in hundreds of groups who present their case before Congress. It has also shown that all of the five group types that were hypothesized to be active in social policy are active in all three areas. There is considerable variation in the level of activity of each of the five types, but these variations

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are consistent with those hypothesized on the basis of the policy history of each area. They only hypothesis concerning group activity that was not confirmed was that based on Ripley and Franklin’s work; namely, that only peak associations would be active in trying to influence social policy. The data in this chapter have also shown that each of the three areas of social policy has generated its own distinct policy community of interest groups. There is very little overlap between the three areas in terms of group participation, with only a few generalist and intergovernmental groups testifying frequently in all three areas. Many of the groups listed have testified only once or twice, and so must be considered as part of a temporary mobilization around a particular piece of legislation, rather than as stable members in the policy communities. However, there is a significant number of groups in each policy area that have remained mobilized for all, or most, of the period studied, testifying whenever major legislation is being considered and also on appropriations measures or on less drastic modifications of the programs in their area. Of the groups mobilized around each issue, most have considerable budgets and staff. Their membership bases vary widely, depending on the nature of the group, but some can claim a broadly distributed membership, even if the numbers are not extremely large. Most of the active groups have been in existence for two decades or more, with the public interest groups being the most recently formed. Survey data suggest that these groups are regularly, if not constantly, in contact with each other. Public interest groups appear to be at the center of these networks of communication, in part because many of them play an important role in disseminating policyrelevant information. In housing policy, more communication goes on within each of the five group types than among groups from different categories, but this pattern does not hold for the other two areas. The influence ratings of an interest group appear to depend more on its level of activity in the policy area than on the amount of resources it possesses, although there are a few “500-pound gorillas,” like the AARP, which have high influence ratings despite lower levels of activity than some of the other groups. The correlation of influence and contact ratings with testimony gives one confidence that the use of testimony as an indicator is a good way to capture the overall dimensions of each policy community. Of course, the respect in which a group is held by its peers is not the same thing as its actual impact upon legislative outcomes. Soldiers in an army that is losing a war may still respect each other’s valor. When one considers, on the one hand, the fact that the vast majority of groups that testify in all three policy areas are in support of, or at least not strongly opposed to, an active government role in assisting the poor, while, on the other hand, the fact that there has been steady retrenchment in government assistance to the poor since the mid-1970s, one is forced to question what

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the ultimate impact of all this group activity really is. Therefore, in the next chapter, the activities of these groups will be placed in context by looking at their strategies, tactics, and impacts within the context of actual policy decisions.

CHAPTER 5

Interest Groups and the Policy Process

INTRODUCTION

I

n the previous chapter the types of interest groups that are present and active in social policy were described. The next step is to examine how these groups’ activities fit into the total process of social policy-making. What are the major political forces shaping policy decisions in this arena and how do interest groups fit into the struggle to shape policy outcomes? In exploring this context, one should not expect to arrive at a definitive answer as to how much influence these groups actually have. After reviewing the literature on interest groups, Baumgartner and Leech (1998) conclude that determining the degree of influence of a group or set of groups is one of the most elusive goals in interest group research. There are so many factors that enter into any policy decision, and the motives of actors in choosing one course of action over another are so complex or obscure, that confident assertions that one group or another shaped the alternatives or even tipped the balance in favor of one alternative or another are virtually impossible. However, one can assess the kinds of activities and strategies that groups have undertaken and how they have positioned themselves relative to the legislative debate. In this way, one can understand the opportunities they have had to influence the outcome and their likely impact. In part I of this chapter, generalizations about interest group strategies based on survey data and on testimony data will be presented. In part II, detailed case studies of a series of decisions in housing, welfare, and food policy will be presented. These will provide a close-up of how interest groups function in a particular political environment.

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PART I. INTEREST GROUP STRATEGIES: AN OVERVIEW Interest Groups and the Social Policy-Making System In many accounts of the making of social policy, the President stands at the center of the narrative. Numerous case studies have recounted the various times in history when presidents have placed desired changes in social policy at the top of their agendas (Donovan 1969; Joe and Rodgers 1985; Ripley and Franklin 1991; Lynn and Whitman 1981). They have examined the social, economic and political reasons why these policy changes were considered important, and they have explored the reasons for presidential success or failure in achieving these policy goals. The oftchronicled expansion of social policy by Franklin Roosevelt during the New Deal and by Lyndon Johnson during the Great Society were examples of presidential success, as was Reagan’s effort at retrenchment during the 1980s. Examples of presidential failure include the unsuccessful attempts at welfare reform by Richard Nixon (Lynn 1980) and Jimmy Carter (Lynn and Whitman 1981) and, more recently, Bill Clinton’s failed attempt to reshape the national health care system (Hacker 1997). In accounts of social policy-making that focus on the President, interest group activity is often pushed to the periphery. First, it is recognized that any particular set of interest groups is unlikely to have the same continuous and direct access to top Executive Branch decision-makers as they do to specialized committees and subcommittees in Congress. Interest groups do spend time attempting to influence the Executive Branch, and they often get their members appointed to key positions in sympathetic administrations (e.g., Carter’s appointment of lobbyists for food stamp expansion to some positions in the Department of Agriculture; see Berry 1984). In addition, some scholars have chronicled the process by which presidents mobilize interest group support for their initiatives (Peterson 1992) and the change in access to the Executive Branch from one administration to the other (Reed, 1983). Nevertheless, Executive Branch officials lack the time to attend to the huge variety of interest group demands that might be pressed upon them. Moreover, since the President is expected to represent the larger public interest, he must be careful not to seem too beholden to a particular set of interests Secondly, social policy issues attract attention from a broad spectrum of political elites, and they are charged with ideological conflict concerning the nature and scope of the government’s role. To start the process of change requires strong presidential leadership, and presidential proposals generally set the tone and the parameters of the entire debate. The decision-making process often culminates in high level standoffs or negotiations between the president and congressional leaders, sometimes

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producing legislative action and other times leading to the death of presidential initiatives. Again, interest groups would seem to be peripheral to this process. What seems to count is the overall nature of the problem (i.e., increases in poverty or hunger, or increases in welfare or food stamp rolls) and the general perceptions of the problem and its solutions by the public and by decision-makers. Specific demands and recommendations by interest groups would seem to be less important than the overall political climate and the skill in leadership of the President and his supporters or opponents in Congress. Mark Peterson (1990) asserts that a President-centered view of public policy has prevailed not only in social policy but in other areas of public policy as well, and he argues that this view distorts our perceptions of the policy process. He believes that the President and Congress should be viewed as a single policy-making system, a system which produces various types of outcomes, ranging from inaction, to total domination by the President (or his opponents,) to compromise. The nature of these outcomes is shaped by institutional factors over which the President has little control (such as the constitutional separation of powers or the nature of the party structure), by “malleable” factors such as elections or economic cycles, over which the President has some control, and by immediate policy factors that the President controls directly, such as the coherence and timing of proposals. This notion of the President and Congress as a policy-making system is given indirect support by David Mayhew’s analysis of policy-making under divided party control. Under a President-centered view, divided party control is a recipe for stalemate, since the strength of the President’s party in Congress is seen as critical to his success. However, Mayhew shows that major pieces of legislation have emerged in periods of divided control with approximately the same frequency as in periods of unified control (Mayhew 1991). Given the proper social, economic, and political conditions, Republican Presidents and Democratic Congresses (or since 1994 the reverse) have been able to work together sufficiently to respond to important problems. Thus, the whole system can be responsive, even when the President and Congress have strong institutional reasons to undermine and oppose each other. If one views the relations between the President and Congress from this systemic perspective, one can see how interest groups might fit into the total functioning of the system. They will be making their case and trying to assert their influence at various points in the process. Even when the climactic decisions involve high-level bargaining between the President and congressional leaders, one might see the influence of interest groups in the process of shaping the terms of the debate and the alternatives that emerge.

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As was shown in chapter 3, the functioning of the entire system is profoundly affected by broad trends in the economy, in society and in the relative strength of various political coalitions. This means that interest groups rarely get everything they want and may, at times, be functioning in an environment that is very hostile to their points of view. However, there are plenty of opportunities for interest groups to have their voices heard and, potentially, to exert some leverage. Interest Group Strategies Three sources of information are utilized to examine interest group strategies. The first is the 1998 survey of the most active interest groups in the three policy areas—housing, welfare, and food stamps—that was described in chapter 1. The results of this survey will be compared with a second source, a similar survey conducted by this author in 1989–90. The earlier survey covered only housing and food, but its results are useful in assessing the continuity in group behavior over time. Third, a great deal about interest group strategy can be gleaned from the nature of group testimony before Congress. While the testimony itself is only a small part of a group’s overall strategy of influence, the themes that are expressed in that testimony very likely reflect its overall approach to the issue at hand. To utilize this source for a sense of group strategies, testimony from some of the most active groups in each area was sampled for several periods of legislative action during the 28 years covered by the hearing data. Interest group strategies are shaped by five basic tasks that interest groups seek to accomplish. The first is making contact. Groups must gain both formal and informal access to both the Executive Branch and Congress. This contact can be direct contact with elected officials or informal contacts with the staffs of agencies or committees. It may be contact by the national staff of the group, by professional lobbyists hired to represent the group, or by members of the group. Groups will seek as many forms of contact with decision-makers as possible, but they will probably see some forms of contact as more important than others. The second task is group legitimation. Each group must try to communicate clearly to decision-makers why it should be listened to. Groups with large membership bases or important roles in the economy will stress those characteristics in order to enhance their legitimacy. Most groups will also lay claim to expertise and experience in the area, although these themes will be particularly stressed by those groups with limited membership bases, or national policy research/advocacy groups with no formal memberships (Berry 1977). For many groups, their claims to a legitimate voice will be backed up by campaign contributions and by

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mobilization of members in the electoral process, although one anticipates that most social policy groups will lack this particular resource. A third task is to dramatize the problems that the group wishes decisionmakers to attend to. The stage may have been set by presidential speeches and proposals, and by media attention to the issue. However, groups will still find it necessary to present dramatic information and arguments to reinforce their particular stance on the issue, whether it is in favor of, or opposed to, the changes proposed by the President or Congress. Groups favoring change will stress the severity of existing problems and the consequences of not addressing them. Those favoring the status quo will stress the benefits of the current policy and the risks involved with new and untried alternatives. A fourth task is to address the specifics of the legislation at hand. Decision-makers will have limited patience with abstract arguments about the problem in general unless they are ultimately linked to the concrete legislative proposals that are before them. Therefore, groups will evaluate the President’s proposals, and the various counter-proposals that are typically offered by members of Congress, and they will support those proposals that are closest to their points of view. They will also zero in on the features of these proposals that they view as the most negative and try to get those modified or deleted from the final legislation. Organized groups are acutely aware that “the devil is in the details” and that they may be able to alter significantly the impact of a law by getting a few key provisions modified. A fifth task, which accompanies and reinforces all of the others, is to develop stable linkages with other members of the policy network surrounding the issue. There are two types of linkages that are important. First, there are linkages with other interest groups in the policy arena. The survey material presented in chapter 4 has suggested the extent of these linkages among groups in the three social policy arenas. These linkages can be utilized by interest groups that share similar perspectives to form coalitions on major pieces of legislation. These broaden the support base that each group can claim for its position, and they convey to members of Congress that there is a consensus on certain key points. This is particularly important for groups that, by themselves, represent a small specialized population and for groups with insufficient resources to convince lawmakers of their importance through campaign work or contributions. Chapter 4 has shown how non-membership groups with technical expertise often serve as information resources for other groups in the three social policy arenas. Secondly, groups must attempt to develop stable, long-term relationships with key decision-makers, whether in the executive or legislative arena. Groups will try to establish themselves as regular sources of information for

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congressional staff that are doing background work for legislation. While they will be expected to present information favoring their point of view, they also need to acquire a reputation for credibility, and this need serves as a deterrent against blatantly misrepresenting factual information. In testimony, these longer term relationships will be reflected in the nature of the interactions between members of Congress and the group’s witness. Groups that have more of an outsider status will be greeted with polite indifference or, in some cases, overt hostility. Other groups will be greeted as old friends and allies, and they will be given extended opportunities to interact with the representatives or senators conducting the hearing. Interest Group Time Allocations In the 1990 housing survey and in the 1998 surveys for all three areas, the active groups included in the sample were asked a sequence of questions about their activities related to influencing government policy. The first two questions addressed the total proportion of the groups’ time and budget spent attempting to influence government in any way. The third question asked them to break down their activities related to influencing government according to the general targets or purposes of these activities. Table 5-1 reports the responses to these two questions given by groups in both surveys. Table 5-1: Utilization of Group Resources to Influence Government

1 2

These questions were not included in the 1990 survey of food groups. These are groups active in all three policy areas.

One of Mancur Olson’s conclusions (1965) was that politically active groups are often formed to provide direct, individual benefits to

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members, and they then utilize their surplus resources to undertake political activity. Many of the groups active in social policy do have purposes other than political activity; for example, serving as the national organization for credentialing and networking within a profession. However, Table 5-1 shows that, on average, the social policy groups surveyed in 1990 and in 1998 reported spending a considerable amount of their time and financial resources on influencing government. The lowest percentage, 14.3 percent is found among welfare groups, perhaps reflecting the variety and multiple concerns of the groups that are active in this area. The highest percentage, 42.2 percent, is found in food policy, with the next highest in housing policy. As has been shown, both of these areas have highly specialized groups in the non-profit sector, as well as private sector groups that have a tradition of being more active in influencing government because of the highly regulated nature of their industries. The percentages of time and budget reported for housing groups dropped between 1990 and 1998, perhaps reflecting the very intense legislative activity that had recently been going on in connection with the passage of the National Affordable Housing Act of 1990 at the time of the earlier survey and the low level of federal attention to housing issues during the Clinton Administration. In general, these data suggest that political activity is more than a marginal concern for most of the groups active in social policy, and that most groups make a substantial resource commitment to it. Of the time these groups reported that they spend influencing government, well over 60 percent in each category is spent influencing either program formulation or program funding, while the remainder is spent on the more narrow concerns of helping members or the more technical concerns of influencing regulation. The fact that these proportions have changed little between 1990 and 1998 shows considerable continuity in these time allocations. Thus, the time that they spend interacting with government is not allocated to the particularistic concerns of individual members but to the general shaping of the direction of policy. These groups would appear not to follow the Olsonian logic of giving a high priority to this form of selective benefits. A third question in the sequence asked groups to look only at their activities related to the formulation and enactment of legislation and to further break these down into the types of activities undertaken. Groups were asked to rate the importance of each activity and then to estimate the percentage of time they spent on it. (Respondents were requested to make the percentages sum to 100 percent, but some did not follow instructions, so mean percentages should be taken as approximations.) Table 5-2 reports these responses for six categories of activity, ranked in order of the percentage of groups rating them as “Very Important.”

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Table 5-2: Activities Intended to Influence the Formulation and Enactment of Legislation (In Order of Percent of Groups Ranking Them “Very Important”)

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These data clearly show the great importance that interest groups place on informal contacts with legislative staff that take place during the policy formulation process. Since members of Congress lack the time to work out the detailed provisions of legislation or to research complicated issues related to these provisions, this task is delegated to their personal and committee staffs, which have grown rapidly in numbers over the last forty years (Ripley 1983). Staffers also frequently act as go-betweens in informal negotiations between members of Congress or with the Executive Branch. If groups can supply data to these staffers, or suggest wording for various provisions to them, they may be able to influence significantly the final legislation that emerges. The ranking of the next two items is also very revealing of interest group strategies in the social policy arena. Table 5-2 shows “direct communication with members of Congress” as coming in third behind “mobilizing members to pressure Congress.” Although groups may see particular opportunities to communicate directly with members of Congress as important, they are not going to focus the same proportion of the time and energy of the group’s professional staff on this as on legislative staff contacts. They know that, given members’ busy schedules, they will be allocated only a limited amount of time with members and that it is not necessarily useful to try to hammer out the arcane details of legislation directly with senators and representatives.

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Instead, they prefer to exert more time trying to mobilize group members to communicate with members of Congress. Group members can be primed to stress certain key themes when they speak to their senator or representative, either through written communications or when meeting them directly. A number of organizations hold “legislative conferences” in Washington, at different times than their regular national meetings. At these conferences, members are given written talking points and then asked to visit the senators and representatives from their own states. This strategy assumes that members of Congress are more likely to listen to direct appeals related to the overall direction of the legislation from group members who are their constituents, and who can relate national problems to the specific circumstances of their state or district. In contrast, the group’s national staff may be regarded as inside-the-Beltway policy wonks, who speak only for themselves. Communication with the Executive Branch is given less importance than legislative contacts, but a majority of the respondents still rank it as “very important” and they report devoting about one sixth of their time to this activity. The questionnaire did not specify at which level of the Executive Branch these contacts were being made, but one would assume that lower-level agency contacts would be easier to obtain than direct contacts with the President or his advisors. In their testimony, several of the more prominent interest groups mention direct conversations with the cabinet secretary in their area of concern, which suggests that this may be a key point of contact. However, given the distance that frequently develops between the President and his cabinet officers, this may or may not be an effective way to influence the President’s policy initiatives (Cronin 1982). Mark Peterson (1992) traces the development of the presidential liaison office in recent years and suggests that some presidents have used this office as a way to interact with interest groups whose support they deem important. Other presidents have de-emphasized the liaison office but used various informal mechanisms to communicate with, or mobilize, interest groups. He further argues that interaction with interest groups has been seen as increasingly useful by presidents as political parties have become weaker, and as more and more interest groups are intervening directly in national campaigns through, among other strategies, the so-called unaffiliated issue advertisements that are outside the limits of the federal campaign finance laws (Dreyfuss 1998). It is clear from their responses that the social policy groups surveyed attach some importance to the total range of their Executive Branch contacts and will try to utilize whatever avenues of communication are available. Testimony before Congress is seen as “very important” or “somewhat important” by almost all the groups in these two surveys, although smaller percentages place this activity in the “very important” category than other

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activities. As a way of further clarifying group strategies, testimony by group staff was distinguished from testimony by group members. The latter was ranked slightly higher in importance than the former. This fits with the strategy just mentioned of putting members “out front” in stating the group’s case directly to senators and representatives. These data also show that testimony, in and of itself, is less important, and consumes less of the organization’s time, than more continuous and informal modes of contact, but that it is an important element in the overall strategy of interest groups in getting their message before decision-makers. Testimony and Group Strategy The printed record of testimony before Congress occupies hundreds of thousands of paper documents and microfiche slides in most federal document depositories. It contains much useful information about the process of legislative development, but extracting a manageable amount of data from this vast sea of words is a formidable task. (Perhaps as more and more of this testimony becomes available electronically this task will become easier.) In this study, I include only a limited and selective sampling of these documents. Testimony of at least two very active groups within each of the five interest group types was selected for two or three key legislative struggles in each of the three policy areas during the 28 year period studied. In several cases, the testimony of the same group was sampled at different time periods, to detect strategy changes over time. In all, approximately 50 testimony samples were examined. The testimony of an interest group typically consists of an oral presentation, accompanied by the submission of a formal written statement of the group’s position into the record. Because most major hearings include testimony by numerous groups, group representatives are typically given no more than five minutes to present their case, and comments by subcommittee chairs in the written record suggest that these time limits are fairly strictly enforced. Therefore, the written statement spells out the details of the group’s position, while witnesses try to stress orally the points that they believe most crucial for the subcommittee or committee to hear. Upon completion of their comments, some witnesses are briefly thanked and excused, while others are engaged in fairly lengthy periods of questioning or interaction by the committee members. Although the whole process is governed by norms of civility, the hostility or friendliness of the committee members toward a witness often come out quite clearly in these exchanges. Certain basic elements of testimony seem to be fairly common, regardless of the type of group that is presenting its case. In keeping with the task of legitimation mentioned earlier, most groups begin their testimony by statements that identify who they are to the committee and

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that attempt to establish their credibility on the topic at hand. Examination of the actual testimony reinforces the point suggested by the survey data; namely, that group members are more often used as witnesses than group staff. The spokesperson will often be the president of the national organization, or the chair of its policy committee. This person will make it a point to mention how many members the group has, and how widely spread they are across the country. He or she will then go on to emphasize the group’s expertise and/or their deep, direct involvement in the problem at hand. In keeping with their role of indirectly representing the poor, many social policy groups mention the number of clients they serve or the volume of services they provide. There are some exceptions to this general legitimation strategy. First, some groups are so large and prominent, that they hardly deem it necessary to mention whom they represent. For example, witnesses for the AFL/CIO and the AARP did not spend time describing their groups, because they could safely assume that most members of Congress were already aware of their large memberships and political clout. Second, organizations that do not have a formal membership base will stress their expertise as a source of legitimacy. For example, the Food Research Action Center (FRAC), an extremely active but non-membership group stresses its role as a technical service bureau to other groups concerned with food and nutrition policy and the extensive policy analysis that it carries out with regard to these issues. Third, private business groups are more likely than groups in the other four categories to follow a long established tradition of being represented by “legislative counsel,” that is, hired professional lobbyists, rather than their own members. They evidently believe that this does not harm their credibility as important economic actors. Once legitimacy has been established, witnesses move quickly to the topic at hand. In keeping with their task of dramatizing the importance of the issue, some groups will spend part of their testimony providing evidence of the severity of the need for housing, food or cash assistance among the poor. Most are savvy enough to recite no more than a few key statistics in their oral testimony, backing it up with more detailed analyses in their written statements (in hopes that their data will be read by congressional staffers, if not by the members themselves). Many groups have earned bipartisan respect through the accuracy and completeness of their data, and they are especially careful with this part of the task. When possible, groups will cite evidence from widely respected studies or independent data sources to support their arguments. Having briefly stated the needs, they then move quickly to the particular pieces of legislation at hand. Committee members have little time and tolerance for sweeping jeremiads that are not accompanied by recommendations about the measures they are currently considering. In

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many cases, there is a presidential proposal before the committee, along with one or more bills that have been offered by various members as alternatives to that proposal. In some cases, the committee may be considering how to respond to a bill already passed by the other chamber, with different provisions than the version introduced in their chamber. The task of the interest group is, then, to analyze all of the proposals that are on the table, and to focus on the various alternative provisions that they find most desirable or most offensive. In examining testimony over time, it becomes clear that groups are adapting themselves to the ways in which issues are being framed at different times. With a few rather strident exceptions, the testimony of most groups did not advocate alternatives that were too far outside the general consensus as to how the issue was viewed at that time. Rather, by selectively emphasizing some versions of the legislation over others or by focusing on strengthening or eliminating particular provisions of the legislation, they were trying to move the final policy outcome as close to their issue preferences as possible. Nevertheless, the testimony suggests that most groups believed that they had little to gain from equivocating or dissembling their position. Groups that opposed congressional or presidential initiatives usually stated this opposition clearly, if in measured tones. Their purpose in testifying was to reinforce their positions publicly, in hopes that their concerns would be heard by at least some members of Congress, and thus shape the ultimate outcome. The groups’ strategic balance between advocacy and accommodation is clearly shown by comparing group testimony in different historical periods. For example, the atmosphere of the debate over welfare reform gradually shifted in an ever more conservative direction between the early 1970s, when a Republican president, Richard Nixon, was advocating an expanded, universalized system of benefits (the Family Assistance Plan), and the 1990s, when the whole thrust of both Democrats and Republicans was to narrow or eliminate any entitlement to federal cash support. In both cases, progressive interest groups were trying to expand the benefits to be more advantageous to the poor, but they had to tailor their expectations to the overall tenor of the discussion. The bitterness of some groups concerning the direction the debate took in the 1990s was apparent in their testimony, and some denounced the Republicans’ Contract with America proposals as lacking in compassion and as an abandonment of society’s responsibility to the less fortunate, even though they were speaking to subcommittees with Republican majorities. However, most were still pragmatically oriented to salvaging what they could out of the current proposals by focusing on the removal of the specific provisions they considered most obnoxious.

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The different mixtures of pragmatism and strong statements of group preferences is shown by the testimony of two groups that spoke on welfare reform at three very different times in history; the 1970 hearings on Richard Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan, the 1977 hearings on President Jimmy Carter’s welfare reform proposals, and the 1995 hearings on the Contract with America welfare proposals that were to shape the 1996 welfare reform legislation. One group, the American Public Welfare Association (currently known as the American Public Human Services Association) is, as discussed in chapter 4, the professional organization representing welfare case workers. The other is the Child Welfare League, a group representing non-profit children’s services agencies and child advocacy groups. In the 1970 and 1977 hearings, both groups endorse the idea of national standards for minimum welfare benefits, and the simplification of program eligibility criteria, because those ideas were under serious consideration in both of those welfare debates. These ideas were totally out of consideration in 1995, so neither group mentions them. Similarly, in both 1977 and 1995, both groups stress themes of promoting work and self-sufficiency on the part of welfare recipients, because that idea was central to the debate in both of those years. However, the two groups diverge in the overall tone of their testimony. The APWA representatives mention their dedication to helping the poor, but as public administrators they are clearly accustomed to adapting to changing legislative requirements. In 1977, work incentives are mentioned by their spokesperson, John Affleck, the Director of the Rhode Island Department of Social and Rehabilitative Services, as an important element but are listed behind “a federal income floor” and “universal coverage based on need” (U.S. House Committee on Agriculture 1977c). In 1995, their spokesperson, Gary Stangler, the Director of the Missouri Department of Social Services, states that “there is a national consensus that the welfare system is broken” and that his organization’s recent report, “places work as the centerpiece of welfare reform” (U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means 1995a:315). In contrast, the Child Welfare League strongly and consistently emphasizes that its top priority is meeting the needs of children, and it makes it clear in all three years that it is viewing the proposals before Congress through this lens. In all three years, it criticizes proposed benefit levels as inadequate to meet the needs of children, but in 1995, its testimony takes on a particularly bitter tone. Its spokesperson, David Liederman, Executive Director of the group, describes the entitlement status of AFDC that was created in the 1935 Social Security Act, as a “sacred trust with kids” that will be broken if it is eliminated. It describes the proposal for block grants to states as “an excuse for social engineering at the expense of kids.” The group’s written statement contains a list of

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specific provisions that they want incorporated into new legislation, but the witness’s tone is more that of protest against what Congress is considering than of persuasion in favor of particular modifications. Perhaps he believes that the values held by the subcommittee are so far from those he espouses that he simply wants to get a protest on record on behalf of the organizations and clients that he represents (U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means 1995b:842–843). In observing interest group behavior in the two policy arenas he analyzed, John Kingdon (1995) arrived at the conclusion that interest groups were mostly reactive in dealing with legislative proposals. That is, rather than initiating policy proposals and then pushing them before Congress, groups tended to react to, and try to modify, proposals made by the President or by the members themselves. On one level, the behavior of social policy groups just described would seem to reinforce Kingdon’s conclusion. However, it is clear from an overall examination of testimony that many groups had proposed new legislative ideas, or had participated in earlier discussions during which ideas were formulated. Their actual testimony was tailored to the proposals at hand, but this was a strategic attempt to maximize their impact on the actual outcome, rather than a passive or reactive posture. They had put their ideas on the table, but when the legislation took a different direction, they tried to limit the damage it might cause their position by addressing its details. The interactions with members of the committee that follow a group’s presentation often reveal much about the group’s relationship with Congress. Some groups clearly behave as outsiders, speaking stridently to an audience that they consider unfriendly to their proposals. Their strategy leans more toward dramatization than towards subtle persuasion. In some cases, these outsider groups are merely dismissed by committee members with a polite thank you. This may mean that they were called just so the committee could claim to have heard all sides, rather than because their ideas had any chance of being taken seriously. On the other hand, some insider groups were also dismissed without comment, suggesting that the pressures of time may influence the committee response to particular witnesses as much as their agreement or disagreement with the groups’ positions. In the cases where there was a more extended follow up to group testimony, some groups were treated to a love feast. The comments of committee members clearly reflected respect for the group’s position and expertise, and, in some instances, personal acquaintance with the group spokesperson. Rather than being viewed as external voices to which committee members had to attend, some witnesses were seen as partners in the problem solving process with whom the complexities of the situation could be reviewed. An example of this type of interaction is found in

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testimony given by two mayors representing the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National League of Cities before the House Committee on Banking and Urban Affairs in 1973. The mayors strongly criticize Nixon’s moratorium on housing programs, and while they support his block grant approach, they are very concerned about his distribution formula, which they believe will benefit more affluent cities. They then praise alternative bills introduced by two of the members of the committee. Their testimony is followed by an extended, casual discussion of their cities’ problems and of urban problems in general between them and the committee members. It is clear from the tenor of this discussion that they and the committee members are all “on the same team” in terms of their general approach and in terms of their opposition to the initiatives of the Executive Branch (U.S. House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs 1973a). Such interactions could be taken as evidence of the kind of close relationships envisioned in the subgovernment model, and, thus, they might seem surprising in the context of social policy, where subgovernments are usually thought to be weak or non-existent. However, the overall evidence suggests that there are no closed system relationships in these policy areas (if, in fact, they continue to exist in any policy arena). Instead, one may take these friendly interactions to mean that some groups have established close, stable ties with their relevant committees, even within relatively open policy networks. In other cases, the more extended interactions with groups consisted of more or less hostile questioning and probing by committee members. In some instances, the members directly challenged the groups’ approach or credibility. For example, Congressman Poage, of Texas, Chair of the House Agriculture Committee in the 1970s, after hearing several nonprofit advocacy groups describe the nutrition problems of the poor and advocate program expansion to deal with these problems, asked them where they thought the money was coming from to address these problems. He asserted that working people were going to be asked to give away larger and larger proportions of their earnings to support the poor if these groups’ demands were met. In other cases, members seem to bypass the concerns expressed by the group and express their own conflicting perceptions of the problem. Thus, an extended discussion of the needs of the poor might be followed by questions concerning how to control fraud or get the “undeserving” off the rolls. Perhaps in anticipation of such comments, most advocacy groups were careful to describe themselves as “pro-work” and as supporters of rigorous pursuit of fraudulent clients. Similar hostile questions were posed to groups supporting President Richard Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan by Senator Russell Long (D, Louisiana), Chair of the Senate Finance Committee and by Republican members of that committee. The Child Welfare League is challenged as to

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the cost of providing the day care it believes is adequate to support welfare mothers returning to work (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1970b, 1533–1534). In 1977 House hearings on Carter’s welfare reform bill, the National Council of Churches is also challenged as to the cost of its proposals (U.S. House Committee on Agriculture 1977c, 1422), and the AARP is accused of being concerned only with the elderly poor at the expense of others, because of its opposition to combining SSI with a reformed AFDC program (U.S. House Committee on Agriculture 1977d, 2557). Changes in Party Control Most of the testimony sampled took place before committees in which Democrats were in the majority, since that was the situation in the House during all but two of the years sampled and, in the Senate, for all but eight of the years sampled. However, the shift from a Democratic to a Republican majority after the election of 1994 represented a potentially radical change in the environment in which interest groups advocating for assistance to low income persons operated. Until the early 1970s, the southern Democrats who controlled most committees were often as hostile to program expansion as most Republicans, but by the mid-1970s, southerners had lost their grip on many committees, as the seniority system was modified, and as Congressional seats in the south shifted more and more towards the Republican Party, making northern urban Democrats the most senior members of their party. Therefore, most Democratic committee chairs and members in the 1970s and 1980s could be counted on to provide a sympathetic audience for the appeals of groups advocating increased benefits for the poor. In contrast, many Republicans were elected in 1994 on a platform of shrinking all forms of public assistance to the poor as rapidly as possible. All the interest groups in the 1998 survey were asked several questions about how their situation had changed after the Republicans assumed control of both houses in 1995. They were asked: (1) how their issue priorities had changed; (2) how their ability to gain access to members and staff had changed; (3) how their ability to present their views before Congress had changed; and (4) how their lobbying strategies had changed. Not surprisingly, many pro-social welfare groups reported that their overall position vis à vis Congress had taken a turn for the worse. With regard to issue priorities, 16 groups (of the total of 42 respondents) reported that they had taken a more defensive, reactive posture, concentrating on preserving the very existence of programs they valued and on maintaining adequate funding levels. Another 8 groups reported that their access to members and staffs was reduced or eliminated, and 13 groups reported that it was much

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harder to present their views before Congress than it had been before the Republicans gained control. One group complained that hearings were often restricted to those sharing the majority’s views, while another said that Republicans did not return their phone calls. A smaller number of groups (3–4) found the changes positive. Some cited greater attention to the autonomy of local governments and to the responsibilities of fathers to support their children as positive factors in the new Republican atmosphere. Others noted that they had to adjust by developing new contacts, but that their access had not suffered. However, in spite of the numerous groups reporting negative and positive changes, the strongest survey finding is one of continuity. 23 of the groups reported that their issue priorities had remained unchanged, 20 reported that their access was essentially the same, and 23 reported that their ability to express their views was the same. What these findings suggest is not that the policy preferences of the new Congress are in agreement with groups that are advocates for the poor, although many moderate Republicans support preservation of most of the basic social programs. Rather, it suggests that groups believe they can still play a role in the policy-making process, even if this requires adapting their strategies to a new environment. The data reported in chapter 4 (Figures 4-1 to 4-3) show a marked reduction in the number of hearings devoted to all three issues after the Republicans took control in 1995. This relative inattention, no doubt, contributed to groups’ frustration at not being heard. However, there is no sense that their access has been shut off or that they lack the opportunity to present their case. As the case studies will show, the terms of the debate have shifted greatly, but many of the leading interest groups are still participants in that debate. With regard to lobbying strategies, the most frequently mentioned change was an increased emphasis on grassroots mobilization of group members. Since pro-social welfare groups can no longer count on policy discussions with members of Congress who share their basic philosophy, they feel a greater need to convince lawmakers that the policies they advocate meet genuine needs in their home districts and that they have grassroots support. The survey did not ask the groups to evaluate the effectiveness of this lobbying strategy, and, given the fact that it is unlikely that most Republican representatives or senators were elected with strong support from low income voters or their advocates, one might question how great an impact such grassroots efforts might have. However, the fact that interest groups see the need to reconnect their advocacy at the national level with grassroots support in times of adversity has long-term implications for the kind of strategies that may be needed to rebuild political support for social programs. This issue will be discussed more fully in the next chapter.

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PART II. CASE STUDIES OF INTEREST GROUP INVOLVEMENT In order to situate fully the activities of interest groups within their political context, it is necessary to look in depth at some actual instances of legislative action in the three policy areas. The length of time covered by the data presented in this book enables a comparison of legislative actions at very different periods in recent political history. The following are the decisions that have been chosen for examination: Housing Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 National Affordable Housing Act of 1990 Public housing restructuring—1998 Welfare Family Assistance Plan (attempted passage)—1971 Family Support Act—1988 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act—1996 Food Food Stamp Act of 1977 Budget reductions in food programs—1982 Table 5-3 summarizes interest group activity at hearings identified as part of the Congressional Information Service’s legislative histories of the bills that actually became law. In the case of the Family Assistance Plan, which was never enacted, hearings were identified that were closely associated with deliberations on the measure. One striking pattern revealed in this table is the lack of continuity in group activity over the three pieces of legislation chosen for examination in each policy area. There were only four groups that testified on all three housing acts, and only eight groups that testified on all three pieces of welfare legislation. With regard to housing, the fact that few major housing groups showed up to testify on the public housing reform legislation is a significant finding in itself, to be discussed below. However, the selection of this particular case causes Table 5-3 to understate somewhat the overall continuity in housing group activity. Up until that point, there were quite a number of groups that had shown up to testify consistently on almost all housing legislation. Nevertheless, there is a fairly high rate of change in the collection of groups over time, and this feature of the interest group community is worth noting. As the cases are examined in more detail, some of the reasons for this turnover will become more clear.

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Table 5-3: Overview of Group Activity in Legislative Case Studies

A complete and thorough treatment of each of these cases is beyond the scope of this work. The purpose here is simply to provide enough context to understand more clearly the behavior of interest groups. Moreover, there are already some very thorough treatments of most of these policy decisions in the literature. The previous work of this author (Hays 1995) provides a detailed account of the development of all but the most recent housing legislation, and Anne Cammisa (1995) also provides an excellent account of the passage of the 1990 Housing Act, as part of her analysis of the activities of intergovernmental groups. This work also provides a detailed account of the passage of the 1988 welfare reform law, and Cammisa’s more recent work (1998) provides an equally thorough discussion of the process leading up to the 1996 welfare reform legislation. As discussed in chapter 2, John Kingdon’s (1995) model of the policy process includes three streams of activity: problem identification, the formulation of alternatives, and a political stream consisting of major changes in the priorities and interests of national leaders. These case studies will follow this model, with the exception that, following Baumgartner and Jones (1993) they will assume that problem identification and policy formulation are thoroughly integrated into the political stream. Overall

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conceptualiza-tions of the nature of the problem flow from the attitudes and interests of political leaders, forming a context in which specific solutions come to the attention of decision-makers. These changing problem definitions then shape future decisions within the policy area. CASE 1: HOUSING LEGISLATION This case study of the role of housing interest groups will focus on three important points in the development of federal housing policy. The first was the creation of the Housing Act of 1974, in which the programs that would dominate the federal response to housing needs for sixteen years were created: the Section 8 program, with its sub-programs aimed at new construction, rehabilitation, and assistance for tenants in existing standard housing; and the Community Development Block Grant program, which replaced the urban renewal program but was much more oriented to housing and neighborhood rehabilitation than its predecessor. The second was the creation of the National Affordable Housing Act of 1990, often referred to as the Cranston-Gonzalez Act after its two major authors, Senator Alan Cranston (D, California) and Congressman Henry Gonzalez (D, Texas) This act codified many of the changes in approach and philosophy toward housing provision that had emerged since the 1974 Act had been created. The third was the passage, in 1998, of an overhaul of the public housing program, which converted it into a block grant and changed important eligibility rules, in an attempt to diversify the incomes of public housing residents. The political conditions surrounding the passage of the 1974 and the 1990 measures were similar in their broad outlines. In both cases, a moderate Republican was President; Richard Nixon in 1974 and George Bush in 1990. Both presidents wanted to move housing policy in a direction more compatible with conservative values, yet both supported a continuation of substantial federal efforts to assist the poor with their housing needs. In both cases, they faced Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, who had a considerably more liberal agenda, including much greater commitments of public resources to housing problems. However, the overall political atmosphere was quite different in 1990 than in 1974, because, during ten years of the Reagan and Bush Administrations, the entire political debate had shifted in a more conservative direction. The Housing Act of 1974 When Nixon took office in 1969, he inherited two new housing programs that had been created by the Housing Act of 1968, enacted during the last year of the Johnson Administration: Section 235, which assisted home

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purchases by the poor; and Section 236, which provided interest subsidies to private developers of low income rental housing. Over the next three years, he presided over a rapid expansion of assisted housing production under these programs, as well as a dramatic increase in the construction of conventional public housing (i.e., the program created in 1937, in which assisted housing is owned and operated by local government entities). While Nixon tried to scale back other aspects of Johnson’s Great Society programs, he did not, at least initially, challenge the growth of federal assistance in this area. However, in 1971 and 1972 widely publicized scandals emerged concerning the operation of these programs, particularly Section 235, creating the perception of crisis in these programs. In addition, the dramatic demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing project in St. Louis in 1972 led to even more hostile scrutiny of the already unpopular public housing program. Nixon interpreted his landslide reelection in 1972 as a mandate for more conservative policies, and, in January 1973, in response to this and the scandals, he declared an administrative moratorium on all construction under Section 235, Section 236 and public housing (Hays 1995). The Nixon Administration was heavily influenced in several areas of social policy by the philosophy of economist Milton Friedman (Lynn 1980). While Friedman was a devotee of the free market, he acknowledged that the government might have a necessary role in ameliorating the worst excesses of poverty. However, he stressed that this role should disrupt free market allocations of goods and services as little as possible and, for this reason, should be in the form of direct cash assistance or vouchers that increased the resources available to the poor but gave them as much choice as possible as to how to spend those resources within the market economy. For Friedman, the most wasteful and destructive government interventions were those in which the government directly produced goods and services, or subsidized private production in ways that distorted market allocations. (Friedman, M. 1968; Lynn 1980) As will be discussed later, this was the philosophy underlying Nixon’s proposed Family Assistance Plan as a substitute for the AFDC program, and it also guided the massive study of housing policy options, Housing in the Seventies (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 1974), which the Nixon Administration published during the moratorium. The study proposed new housing programs based on direct rent supplements to the tenants (housing allowances) rather than subsidies to private producers of housing or government ownership of housing. This became the underlying approach of the Section 8 program, although much of its assistance (under Section 8 New Construction, Section 8 Substantial Rehabilitation, and Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation) was still projectbased, in that the rent subsidies to tenants were tied to specific newly

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constructed projects. Only the assistance provided under Section 8 Existing Housing resembled housing vouchers, in that tenants had some choice of which units to occupy while utilizing their rent assistance. Thus, President Nixon did not challenge the basic role of the federal government in assisting the poor. Rather, he focused on reorienting the mechanisms for delivering that assistance towards those that reduced the direct federal involvement in production. To be sure, some of the debate between his administration and liberal Democrats in Congress was over the scale of the federal role, since Nixon always proposed lower funding levels for these programs than the Democrats wanted. However, their main disagreements were over the appropriateness of his proposed new mechanisms. Democrats tended to favor more active federal involvement in production, since they did not believe that the market would produce adequate housing for the poor, even with the stimulus of rental assistance. Many expressed the fears that rental assistance in existing housing would leave the poor paying higher rents for inadequate housing. Many of the interest groups testifying on the 1974 Act were clearly oriented towards maintaining the status quo in housing policy. Their criticisms echoed the concerns of congressional Democrats about the efficacy of the housing allowance concept, although different groups had different reasons for their concerns. In addition to housing allowances, the Nixon Administration had proposed a housing block grant, to match the Community Development Block Grant that would replace existing urban renewal programs. Many interest groups were also very critical of the amount of local government discretion that this block grant would provide. In the private housing sector, the Housing Act of 1968 had spawned a specialized group of developers of federally assisted housing. They depended on the federal interest subsidy to make their projects viable, and they attracted private investors to their projects by syndicating the special tax benefits for low income housing that were also provided as an indirect subsidy. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) was a powerful voice in support of these programs that benefitted many of their members. Private providers were also linked to public providers through such organizations as the National Housing Conference and the National Leased Housing Association. Members of the housing subcommittees had close relationships with some of these developers, some so close as to raise questions of legality in future years. (See Hays [1995] on the HUD scandal of the late 1980s and related accusations against members of the housing subcommittees.) In his October 1973, testimony before the Subcommittee on Housing of the House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee, George Martin, the President of NAHB, strongly protested Nixon’s moratorium

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on existing programs, as well as Nixon’s proposal to end these programs permanently. He argued that the unassisted private sector could not produce enough housing to serve low income families, and that housing allowances by themselves would not stimulate additional production. (See Hays [1995] for a more detailed discussion of the impact of housing allowances.) He also defended the successes of existing programs, arguing that they had been falsely characterized as unworkable due to a small number of well-publicized failures (U.S. House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs 1973a, 855–919). Although many Democrats in Congress were already predisposed to distrust the housing allowance concept, lobbying by such groups as the NAHB can probably be credited with the fact that major elements of the new Section 8 program resembled the previous programs far more than might be suggested by the rhetoric of housing allowances. In order to receive assistance under the Section 8 New Construction, Substantial Rehabilitation, or Moderate Rehabilitation programs, low income households still had to locate in special, federally sponsored projects. As with Section 236 projects, these projects involved long term contracts between HUD and private developers, and the developers still received the same indirect tax subsidies. Private developers actually benefitted from the new subsidy mechanism, since the amount provided to each tenant household was based on the difference between twenty five percent (later thirty percent) of their income and a federally determined “Fair Market Rent,” which could be adjusted upward as costs and rents in the locality increased. This was far more flexible than the main Section 236 subsidy, which was aimed at only one element of project cost, the interest rate. The NAHB was also critical of the amount of local government discretion allowed in Nixon’s proposed housing block grant. They argued that local governments lacked the “knowledge and expertise” to run housing programs. Their real concern was, of course, the obstacles that local governments continually placed in front of low income housing development, largely due to the negative reactions of middle class citizens to projects located anywhere near them. Also, because of their close ties to the relevant congressional committees, they were more confident in their ability to mold housing assistance programs to their liking at the national level. The position of the National Association of Realtors (NAR) on the 1973–74 housing legislation was quite different than that of the NAHB, as indicated by the testimony of its first vice president, Joseph Doherty, in October 1973. First, rather than focus on programs to assist low income households, he devoted the larger portion of his testimony to arguing for the preservation of federal subsidies to middle income home ownership; through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) programs; through continued regulation of interest rates by the Federal Home Loan Bank

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Board; and through secondary mortgage market entities such as FNMA (Fannie Mae) and FMAC (Freddie Mac.) This suggests that the NAR was adopting the logrolling position described in chapter 4, rather than the strongly supportive intermediary position adopted by the NAHB. Secondly, while they no longer strongly opposed the federal role in low income housing as they did in the 1950s, the NAR endorsed Nixon’s housing allowance concept and his proposed housing block grant. As key players in local housing markets and in local politics, realtors clearly felt more confident in their ability to exert control over housing allowances at the local level than did developers of large housing projects. They were also in a good position to influence the housing development decisions of local governmental units. Public interest groups specializing in low income housing were not as prominent in the 1973–74 housing debate as they would be in the 1990 hearings. The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) and the National Coalition on the Homeless (NCH) had not formed at this time. One public interest group, the National Housing Conference, was prominent in this debate, and it raised similar issues about local control and adequate housing supply as the NAHB, to the extent that it drew criticism from Congressman Thomas Ashley (D, Ohio) for being “too wedded” to old programs (U.S. House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs 1973b:1131–81). However, even though the NHC fits the definition of a “public interest group” used in this work because it draws members from all citizens concerned about housing problems, it was perhaps not a typical public interest group, in that it drew much of its support from public and private housing developers. It was not so oriented to grassroots organizations or to non-profit community providers as would be groups such as the NLIHC and the NCH that emerged later. It was a generalist group, the NAACP, whose testimony raised concerns about housing allowances and about local control from the standpoint of low income households that might be the beneficiaries of housing assistance. In his testimony, William R.Morris, the NAACP’s Director for Housing Programs, made the same argument as other groups that housing allowances would do nothing to increase the supply of housing available to lower income households (U.S. House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs 1973a:517–531) Underlying his concern, however, was not the direct financial interest in housing production of the NAHB, but rather the concern that housing allowances would do nothing to challenge racial segregation and that, in spite of the nominal “freedom of housing choice” provided by these allowances, African Americans would remain ghettoized, with private landlords absorbing the benefits of the allowances through higher rents. Mr. Morris also expressed deep distrust of local control over housing production decisions, arguing that localities tend to

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resist providing housing where it is most needed. Over the 28 year period examined in this work, the NAACP did not testify very frequently on housing issues, so the fact that they participated clearly shows deep concern over the impact of Nixon’s proposals on the housing opportunities of African Americans. Not surprisingly, intergovernmental groups were much more enthusiastic about having greater local discretion over federal dollars than were many of the other groups testifying. As in other policy areas, groups such as the National League of Cities and the United States Conference of Mayors wanted federal aid to continue to flow, but with as few strings attached as possible. In a joint appearance, representatives of both groups were bitterly critical of Nixon’s moratorium but endorsed both the housing and the community development block grant concepts. However, they were deeply concerned about another of Nixon’s innovations, that of the allocation of funds to cities via a formula, rather than by competitive application. They argued that a local government’s willingness to compete aggressively for federal grants showed the seriousness of their community’s need for housing and that the formula would take funds away from the most needy communities and give it to more affluent ones (U.S. House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs 1973a). The major public provider group, the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO) assumed something of a middle position with regard to Nixon’s proposed changes in housing programs, in testimony given by its President, John B.Williams. On the one hand, Williams strongly criticized the moratorium, and he urged continuation of existing programs while new ones are being considered. On the other hand, he did not categorically reject the housing block grant concept. Rather, he advocated citizen participation and a community plan to guide local investment, while at the same time arguing that the program must embody “clear national priorities” and avoid being diverted to local purposes other than low income housing. As traditional providers of public housing, this organization, was, of course, very skeptical of the housing allowance concept. Thus, it is apparent that NAHRO viewed its members as local players who could benefit from more discretion, but its testimony reflected the skepticism of local, specialized agencies about the dedication of general units of local government to preserving and expanding their programs (U.S. House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs 1973b). In the end, the Housing and Community Development Act reflected the concerns of many of the groups about Nixon’s new approaches. (Nixon was forced to resign before the Act passed, so President Gerald Ford actually signed it in August 1974.) As noted, it was modified in ways favorable to private developers, and it did not include the proposed housing block grant. It did convert urban renewal programs into the

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formula-based Community Development Block Grant. However, there were generous “hold harmless” provisions for cities receiving more than their formula share of federal funds. The formula was later modified (in 1977) to favor older, poorer communities that were losing funding under the original formula (Nathan and Adams 1977). At this point in history, various housing interest groups had the ear of a sympathetic Congress. While President Nixon’s leadership was sufficient to significantly change the federal government’s approach, these groups’ preferences were clearly reflected in the legislation that emerged. Their testimony reinforced the arguments that Democratic members of Congress used to resist the more radical devolution of federal control envisioned by Nixon and his advisors. The National Affordable Housing Act of 1990 In 1990, the terms of the housing debate were quite different. During the Ford and Carter Administrations, housing assistance under the Section 8 program expanded rapidly, with approximately 200,000 units per year added during the last years of the Carter presidency. As noted in chapter 4, the Reagan Administration succeeded in reducing federal expenditures for additional assisted units by seventy percent during its first two years in office, and expenditures remained at that reduced level during the remainder of the Reagan and Bush presidencies (also under President Clinton, a point to which I will return). By the early 1980s, many conservatives were questioning whether the federal government should have any role in assisting the poor, a position epitomized by Charles Murray’s bestseller, Losing Ground (1984). With Democrats in control of one house of Congress, and considerable support for housing assistance among moderate Republicans, the Reagan Administration was not successful in eliminating the government’s role altogether. However, it was successful in an even greater reorientation of federal assistance away from the construction of new units. Public housing construction was virtually halted (except on Indian reservations) and the Section 8 New Construction Program, which had been the largest of the Section 8 sub-programs, was eliminated. By the end of Reagan’s second term, virtually all new housing assistance was being provided in the form of Section 8 certificates or vouchers, the latter being a more flexible form of assistance in which the tenant had the option of paying higher than the federally established affordability criterion (thirty percent of income,) if they chose (Hays 1995). In the late 1980s, three developments contributed to a sense of crisis about housing. First, homelessness became a growing and widely publicized phenomenon, triggering great public concern and wide social protest (Imig 1996; Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1987). Although

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some of the debate over homelessness centered on the individual characteristics of the homeless, such as substance abuse or mental illness, many scholars and activists made a clear linkage between this problem and overall reductions in the supply of affordable housing (Burt 1989). Secondly, long-term assistance contracts with private developers covering hundreds of thousands of units that had been made under the Section 236 and Section 8 construction subsidy programs were beginning to expire, and many developers were on the verge of converting their units to market rents. This meant reductions in the existing stock of assisted housing, not just in the incremental units funded by Congress, as in the Reagan Administration’s reductions. Third, considerable data was being made available by, among other sources, the U.S. Census and the Harvard Joint Center on Housing showing that low income persons were paying ever higher percentages of their incomes in rents, as thousands of low cost rental units were being removed from the private market and the number of federally assisted units had stopped expanding (Joint Center for Housing Studies 1993; U.S. Census 1995). However, in spite of the sense of crisis, the terms of the housing debate had fundamentally changed. While it was accepted that federal funding would continue, it was no longer assumed that large new federal expenditures would be forthcoming in response to these problems. Large federal deficits, disillusionment with both the costs and the effectiveness of previous federal efforts, and the conservatism of the Bush Administration precluded that option. Rather, the debate centered around how to reorient programs within existing levels of federal assistance to make them more effective. There was also a major shift in the terms of the debate with regard to the role of local governments and other local entities in providing low income housing. The sharp cuts in federal funding for assisted housing made in the 1980s forced many localities to look to their own ideas and resources for dealing with the housing problems of the poor. Because the end of Section 8 New Construction program meant that private developers would no longer be as heavily involved in low income housing production, and because their role had not always been a responsible one in the eyes of many communities, localities increasingly looked to non-profit Community Development Corporations (CDCs) as the providers of choice for new or rehabilitated housing units. During this process, necessity became a virtue, as the very real advantages of this mode of housing provision over either government or private sector ownership became apparent (Bratt 1994; Koebel 1998). Whereas in 1973, progressive groups were very skeptical of the abilities and inclinations of local entities, and were still pushing for federally administered programs, by the late 1980s there was a consensus among both liberals and conservatives that local

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providers would be central to any strategy for low income housing provision. One other major idea was contributed to the mix by President Bush’s HUD Secretary, Jack Kemp. Kemp’s conservatism was, in some respects, similar to Nixon’s, in that it was focused on reorienting and reducing, rather than totally ending, the federal government’s involvement in the provision of housing, as in the Charles Murray/Heritage Foundation brand of conservatism. Kemp’s central idea was the privatization of public housing, through the carefully controlled sale of public housing units to their occupants. The British efforts to do this, under the regime of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, were widely regarded as successful, and Kemp had succeeded in getting a demonstration program of public housing sales adopted by Congress in 1984, when he was a leading Republican member of the House of Representatives. (See Rohe and Stegman 1990, for a description and evaluation of this demonstration program.) Therefore, with Bush’s support, he insisted that a privatization program be included in any new housing legislation. A very large number of hearings on housing issues were held in the late 1980s, all contributing elements to the final housing legislation passed in 1990. However, the principal hearings were held in 1988 and 1989. Senator Alan Cranston (D, California), chair of the Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Affairs of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, took an unusually proactive role in the process prior to the hearings by convening a National Housing Task Force, which utilized Senate staff support to produce position papers on various key issues in the housing policy debate. The ranking Republican member of the subcommittee, Senator Alphonse D’Amato (R, New York), was also a supporter of this effort to revamp housing programs. Therefore, most of the witnesses who testified were reacting to the proposals offered by the task force. The NAHB was represented by its President, Dale Stuard, a builder from California. He began with a strong statement about the “housing affordability crisis” that was, in his view, afflicting the nation at that time. He cited both a decrease in home ownership rates and the increasing proportions of income paid for rent by lower income families. However, he clearly linked the solution to this crisis both to the home ownership subsidies available to middle class home buyers and to programs specifically directed at the poor. He recommended that IRA savings be allowed to be used for down payments without tax penalty, a measure that would benefit mostly the middle class and above. He endorsed new low income housing initiatives, but, in his view, these were clearly part of a package of government involvement that would benefit more than the poor, and, of course, expand the markets served by NAHB members (U.S.

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Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs 1988, 101– 118). With large federal subsidies no longer flowing directly to private producers, the NAHB moved closer to the logrolling position taken earlier by the NAR. As in 1973, the NAR made housing finance for middle income households the centerpiece of its testimony, this time provided by its president, Nestor R.Weigand, Jr. (U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs 1988:77–90). Along with a whole series of witnesses from the housing finance industry, such as the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America, the NAR advocated a series of revisions in the FHA that would reflect higher housing costs, and it endorsed the use of IRAs and 401K pension funds for housing down payments. It supported the local housing block grant program (then known as HOP, later as HOME) that had been proposed, funds for the modernization of public housing, and continued rental assistance, provided that the funds flowed directly to the landlord, not the tenant. (Former NAR president Herbert U.Nelson was, no doubt, flipping in his grave; see chapter 3.) However, again, these were pieces of a total package, linked closely to ongoing federal subsidies of the industry in general. Whereas the National Low Income Housing Coalition was not in existence in 1973, by 1988 it had become a major player in the housing policy community. Under the leadership of its original executive director, Cushing N.Dolbeare, a woman widely respected for her housing expertise, the NLIHC had been a leading critic of President Reagan’s housing budget cuts, and had produced several reports documenting a growing housing affordability crisis in the 1980s (Stanfield 1982). As noted in Chapter 4, its membership consists of local housing advocacy organizations and individuals. Although Dolbeare had retired from her position by 1988, she still played an active role in the organization. In his 1988 testimony, the new executive director, Barry Zigas, began by reciting some of the cost statistics gathered by his organization, such as the fact that between 1970 and 1983 median rents had risen at two times the rate of median incomes. Rather than support the efforts of the National Housing Task Force, he strongly criticized its lack of attention to the extent of national resources truly necessary to address the housing problems of the poor. He argued that housing is a human right and that housing assistance should be an entitlement. He agreed with the structural reforms proposed by the Task Force, but he argued that a major expansion of national resources devoted to housing is necessary to support these new programs (U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs 1988:441–455). The position taken by the NLIHC was clearly not a mainstream position in 1988. Existing entitlement programs were widely under attack, and the political prospects of creating a new one were slim, even though such an

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effort might be justified by the extent of the problem. The NLIHC had also been critical of some of the sacred cows of private housing providers, especially the federal tax deduction for mortgage interest, which, it argued, costs the federal government three or four times in lost revenue what is expended on low income housing assistance programs (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 1991). Nevertheless, as shown in chapter 4, the organization was frequently in contact with other housing interest groups, and it had gained some respect for its expertise. Therefore, Senator Cranston, in his response to Zigas’ testimony, took pains to address directly the issues he raised. He asserted that funding amounts were left blank in the Task Force recommendations in order to allow the Senate to make that decision, not because of a lack of commitment on the part of the Task Force to solving the problems. The sub-text of his response was, of course, that political reality would dictate funding amounts, not the extent of need. The final legislation that emerged in 1990 contained provisions that addressed many of the concerns of the various interest groups testifying, as well as those of the Bush Administration. A new housing block grant program, HOME, was created, and local governments were given wide discretion in utilizing these funds. However, higher local matching requirements for the construction of new units were designed to discourage the use of HOME funds for this purpose. The series of programs designated HOPE I through HOPE VI were designed to encourage home ownership in various ways, including the sale of public housing and assisted housing units to tenants and funds for the construction of new home ownership units for the poor. Local, neighborhood based CDCs were given favorable treatment for public assistance in the funding formulas developed. Voucher funding was provided to replace federally assisted private units that were converted to market rate units and to replace substandard public housing that was demolished. However, contrary to the wishes of the NLIHC, no substantial commitment of new funding to housing assistance was made, nor did housing assistance achieve entitlement status. The 1990 legislation represented a commitment to maintain the federal housing effort and to reorient it to some new goals. This represented a significantly greater degree of flexibility on the part of the Bush Administration than had been shown by the Reagan Administration, which had proclaimed its hostility to such programs all through the 1980s. Nevertheless, federal deficits were still substantial at that time, and a budget agreement that included strict ceilings on domestic, discretionary programs had been forged between the President and Congress (Collender 1996). In this fiscal and political environment, no large new commitments of funds by the federal government to meet housing needs were possible.

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Public Housing Reform The third housing policy decision to be examined, the restructuring of public housing in 1998, took place in a political context that was even further removed from the political situations that surrounded the 1974 and 1990 decisions than they were from each other. As has been copiously documented, Bill Clinton assumed the presidency with an agenda of moving the Democratic party more toward the center and away from its association with generous federal spending for the poor (Pomper 1993; Ladd 1993; Kusnet 1992). However, even within Clinton’s modest social agenda, housing was given a very low priority. He included few incremental units of housing assistance in his budget requests, and he focused his political energies on jobs, education, and health care, programs that he perceived had more support than housing among the middle class, suburban voters that had been critical to his narrow margin of victory in 1992 (Congressional Quarterly 1993). The Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 reinforced the low status of federal housing programs by bringing into office a doctrinaire conservative element of the party, many of whom were calling for the abolition of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Next to welfare, federal housing programs were one of the most frequent examples used by these conservatives to illustrate what they perceived to be the “massive failure” of federal efforts to help the poor (Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1995:8–13). Therefore, the Clinton Administration was put in the position of having to fight for the survival of any federal role in housing assistance. To do so, it adopted the strategy of proposing its own radical restructuring of HUD. It’s chief housing spokesperson, HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros (later replaced by Andrew Cuomo, who continued sounding similar themes) argued that the new, streamlined, decentralized set of programs they were offering would continue to meet the desperate housing needs of the poor while addressing the most serious objections to HUD’s role. The Administration’s position was closer to that of the slightly more moderate Republicans, Congressman Rick Lazio (R, New York) and Senator Connie Mack (R, Florida) who chaired the housing subcommittees in Congress than to the more extreme critics of HUD (Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1997, 7–12). However, it was clear that some minimum survival level of existing commitments, rather than any new resources to address housing problems, would be the outcome of any housing legislation. The focus of the debate was on the problems created by federal programs, not the overall housing situation of the poor. A particular emphasis was placed on breaking up the concentrations of poverty created by the large public housing developments in major cities.

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Units would be demolished to reduce density, and income guidelines would be relaxed to allow a mix of slightly higher income families among the extremely low income residents of public housing. Liberal members of Congress, such as Representatives Joseph Kennedy (D, Massachusetts) and Barney Frank (D, Massachusetts), protested that this would eliminate the only housing available to some of the most desperately poor, but the direction of the debate was clearly set towards fundamental change in the public housing program (U.S. House, Committee on Banking and Financial Services 1995). The gap between hearings and legislation was very long in the 1998 case, because it took Congress three years of consideration before a public housing bill was finally passed and signed by President Clinton. (Note that 1998 hearing data were not included in this study, because there was no certainty that all of the 1998 hearings had, as yet, been recorded in the 1999 Abstracts at the time of writing; however, the Legislative History published by the Congressional Information Service shows that all of the hearing activity on this legislation occurred from 1995–97.) An additional, striking difference between the 1997–98 legislative process and the earlier two is the much lower levels of interest group activity that preceded it. In general, congressional attention to housing issues dropped off sharply in the 1990s, even before the Republicans assumed control of Congress. There were fewer hearings, and fewer interest groups testified at the hearings that were held, with 1993 containing the second lowest number of interest group appearances on housing in the entire twenty eight year period, (see Figure 4-1) Some of this could be attributed to the natural fall off of activity that occurs after a major piece of legislation (in this case the 1990 Act) has been passed, but comparable slack periods after previous legislation were not so longlasting. In 1993 and 1994, the lack of attention to housing issues might be attributed to the Clinton Administration’s lack of interest in making new proposals in this area. Beginning in 1995, the new Republican majority would add to Clinton’s disinterest its desire not to provide too willing a forum to groups concerned with housing issues. The Republicans wanted to revamp or abolish HUD as part of their retrenchment efforts, but most interest groups in housing would be strongly opposed to such moves. Thus, other than calling enough groups to testify to avoid the impression they were totally ignoring housing advocates, the Republican controlled committees had little incentive to hold a lot of hearings. Many of the major housing interest groups were conspicuous by their absence in the hearings held on public housing reform legislation. In general, after 1994, the full range of group types did participate in hearings on housing issues, including appropriations hearings and the restructuring of the process by which assisted units could become market rate units

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(Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1992, 1993, 1996). Therefore, one may infer that they were absent because this legislation was so narrowly focused on the 1937 public housing program, rather than on other federal subsidies for low or middle income housing. Groups representing private developers did not testify, with the exception of the National MultiHousing Council, which represents managers of large, private apartment complexes. Surprisingly, there was also no testimony by any of the intergovernmental groups and no testimony by any generalist groups. The three public provider groups that are directly involved in public housing; NAHRO, the Public Housing Authorities Directors Association (PHADA) and the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA) all testified, but none of the other public provider groups were in evidence. The public interest sector was represented by the NLIHC, by the National Housing Law Project (NHLP,) and by the Center for Community Change. (CCC) The latter two groups are non-membership organizations providing technical assistance to housing and community groups, with the CCC specializing in promoting equal access to credit by low income neighborhoods by helping to organize local groups to put pressure on banks to comply with the Community Reinvestment Act. Most liberals and conservatives would agree that large public housing projects in major cities contain huge concentrations of very low income households, very few of which are headed by regular participants in the labor force. They would also tend to agree that having projects with a broader mix of incomes, including more working families, would enhance their quality and stability and would provide more positive role models for youth growing up in that environment. The disagreement is over how best to rectify that situation. Liberal members of Congress, and groups like the NLIHC and CCC that are advocates for the housing needs of the poor, tended to stress the fact that the very lowest income households are also the ones with the most desperate housing needs. Therefore, displacement of these households from public housing in exchange for higher income households might lead to their inability to find adequate affordable housing and even to homelessness. While they believed mixed income projects to be desirable, they argued that this should not be done without carefully insuring that adequate replacement housing was available. Conservative members of Congress, along with groups like the Heritage Foundation, tended to be more concerned with breaking up public housing concentrations that they viewed as blighted and destructive communities than with the overall housing options available to the poor. Another point of contention was how much flexibility to grant local housing authorities with regard to setting eligibility requirements and rent levels. NAHRO, not surprisingly, advocated giving local administrators greater flexibility in determining the rents paid by public housing residents.

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They were represented by Deborah Vincent, Executive Director of the Clearwater Housing Authority in Clearwater, Florida (perhaps not coincidentally the subcommittee chair’s home state.) They advocated abolishing the Brooke Amendment that in 1970 had mandated that no tenant pay more than twenty five percent of income for rent (increased to thirty percent by the Reagan Administration), in exchange for local discretion in matching rents to income. They were against a requirement in the House bill that every tenant pay at least a minimum rent, inserted because of concern that tenants with the very lowest incomes were paying no rent at all in many projects. They wanted their constituent members to be allowed to set minimum rents, and to grant waivers to those minimums, as the situation dictated (U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs 1997). On this point, their position as professional housing administrators diverged not only from what some in Congress were calling for, but from that of the public interest groups representing the poor. Whereas NAHRO, NLIHC and CCC all agreed that low income persons faced a severe housing crisis, and urged Congress to respond to that crisis, the public interest groups were less willing to trust the discretion of local housing administrators to make eligibility and rent decisions. In keeping with their primary concern of not displacing, or intensifying the income burdens of, the very poor, they argued for keeping the Brooke Amendment guidelines in place and against imposing minimum rents on the poorest of the poor. All of these groups are, in the broadest sense, on the same side of most housing issues, yet the public interest advocacy groups are more likely to see local housing administrators as not always responsive to the needs of their tenants. The income targeting issue became the main bone of contention between the House and the Senate, and it held up passage of the bill for three sessions of Congress (Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1996, 1997, 1998). The interest groups testifying at the Senate hearing took pains to express their preference for the Senate approach over the House approach. The House bill, in addition to reducing the units reserved for the very poor, and requiring community service work by public housing residents, would have repealed the Housing Act of 1937, which created the public housing program. In one sense, this was largely symbolic, because the program would have continued under subsequent authorizing legislation, but some of the public interest groups pointed out that a large body of case law and administrative rulings based on the 1937 Act might be invalidated if the Act were rescinded. In the final bill, which was appended to the housing appropriations bill in the fall of 1998, a compromise was reached on the numbers of units reserved for the very low income, the community service requirement was eliminated, and the 1937 Act was not repealed. Thus,

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many of the interest groups got something closer to what they wanted than the House version. In summary, interest groups appeared much less often on housing issues before a Republican Congress than they did before a Democratic Congress. The hearings that were held included a diversity of opinions, and the majority of groups surveyed believe that their opportunity to be heard has not been diminished. Nevertheless, Congress has become less of a forum for the extended detailed discussion of housing issues than it was during the 1970s and 1980s under Democratic control. In part, this can be accounted for by the dynamics of executive/legislative relationships. Since most Presidents were Republican during that period, Democrats in Congress were in the position of pressing for more action than these Presidents wanted. They had an incentive to utilize group testimony to dramatize housing issues and to try to forge compromise housing legislation that the President would agree to sign. In the 1974 and 1988 cases, there were clear differences in preferences among the various interest groups testifying and between the groups and members of Congress. However, both members and groups had a common interest in modifying presidential proposals in the direction of more government housing assistance. In the 1998 case, there was a wide divergence between the provisions desired by the congressional majority and those desired by many of the interest groups. In all three cases, it would appear that the final legislation was closer to the preferences of many of the major groups than the original proposals by either the Executive Branch or by members of Congress. From this, it is legitimate to infer that the groups’ activities had some impact on the final outcome. However, in 1998 it was clear that most progressive groups greatly disliked the overall direction that housing policy was taking and that they were engaged in damage control against provisions of the various legislative proposals that they considered the most obnoxious. CASE 2: WELFARE LEGISLATION Since the late 1960s, there have been four major cycles of attention to reform of the AFDC program, and other cash assistance programs. The first two, under President Richard Nixon in 1969–72 and under President Jimmy Carter in 1977, did not produce any major legislative changes in the program. The second two, under President Ronald Reagan in 1987–88 and under President Bill Clinton in 1995–96, did produce major changes in the program, with the 1996 legislation being the most drastic overhaul of welfare since the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935. This case study will examine three of these four points: the 1970 Family Assistance Plan, the Family Assistance Act of 1988, and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.

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The Family Assistance Plan The Nixon Administration introduced its Family Assistance Plan in Congress in 1969. This reform proposal was driven by the same focal concerns that have dominated the debate over cash assistance from the 1930s to the present. One concern was the relationship between cash assistance and work. How can assistance be provided to needy families without creating a strong disincentive for them to become self-supporting through work? Until the late 1960s, the AFDC program had in effect imposed a 100 percent tax on work income earned by recipients, by deducting earnings from the benefits on a dollar for dollar basis. The 1967 amendments to the program created the “30 plus a third” rule, under which the first $30 of monthly earnings, plus one third of the rest, would not be deducted from the grant, in order to provide a work incentive. However, there was still a great deal of concern that the AFDC program was discouraging work effort. A second focal concern was the program’s impact on family structure. Since only female-headed families with children were eligible, the program was seen as an incentive for low income males to abandon their families, or for women with children not to get married at all. As noted in chapter 3, this feature was an artifact of the almost accidental manner in which AFDC had grown from a small program for widows and orphans to the nation’s major cash benefit program. A third focal concern was the wide disparity in benefits between states. As noted in chapter 3, allowing the states to set benefit levels had been the necessary political price for southern Democratic support for the Social Security Act of 1935 in Congress. However, in the late 1960s, when concerns with problems of the poor were high on the nation’s agenda, these large disparities were increasingly seen as arbitrary and unfair. Although the focal concerns in the FAP debate were similar to those of previous and subsequent welfare debates, the solution proposed by the Nixon Administration was radically different. As noted in connection with the 1974 Housing Act, this administration was strongly influenced by the thinking of Milton Friedman, who wanted any assistance given to the poor to be in the form of straight cash benefits. One type of cash benefit program, the Negative Income Tax (NIT), was often held up as the purest form of a cash welfare system, and Friedman is sometimes regarded as the father of the NIT, even though the idea was embraced by many other economists across the political spectrum (Lynn 1980). Under this approach, the welfare system would be, in effect, absorbed by the tax system. It would provide uniform benefits, rather than the widely varying state standards that existed under AFDC. Below a certain level of income, households would stop paying taxes and start receiving transfer payments. These payments would gradually

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increase to a maximum benefit for households with zero income. However, the income/benefits trade off would be far less than one to one. This would give people a strong incentive to work, since they would always be better off working than not working. (This idea survives today, in a modified form, in the Earned Income Tax Credit.) The FAP was not a full fledged NIT, in that it would still be administered by state welfare agencies, who would also provide services to the poor, and it did not totally equalize benefits across the nation. However, it provided a national minimum payment (which states were expected to supplement). It also made dollars available to all eligible households, regardless of family composition. Most of the congressional hearings on the Family Assistance Plan were held in 1970 and 1971, by the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. Both of these committees were chaired by conservative southern Democrats—Wilbur Mills (D, Arkansas) in the House and Russell Long (D, Louisiana) in the Senate. Both of these individuals were very skeptical of the sweeping changes proposed by Nixon. Their opinions, plus the positions taken by various interest groups, reveal the complex issues raised by the FAP proposal. In many respects, the debate was more wideopen to divergent viewpoints than later welfare debates, because there were fewer assumptions widely shared by all of the participants. While the expression of diverse views might promise to lead to a more rational decision-making process, in this case it probably helped to torpedo the entire plan, since there were so many objections to the plan raised from so many different directions. As was apparent from the data presented in chapter 4, some of the most prominent public interest groups in the welfare policy arena are those concerned with children. These groups tend to view children as the main clients of the program (which, numerically, they are) rather than the adults who care for them. They are concerned that features introduced to reward or penalize certain behavior in adults may harm the children whose needs are being met through the program. This orientation was strongly reflected in the testimony of Joseph Reid, Executive Director of the Child Welfare League, before the Senate in 1970 (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1970b, 1529–1553). He stated the organization’s agreement with the basic goals of the FAP, such as a national minimum benefit, aid for all types of families, and simplification of the welfare system. However, he argued strongly that work requirements should be flexible, so as not to interfere with the ability of mothers to care for their children. He also urged the expansion of federally funded day care, to support parents who would be required or induced to work under the FAP. The National Congress of Parents and Teachers, represented by its Legislative Chair, Mrs. Edward F.Ryan, had a more favorable view of work

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requirements, even though its principal concern was also the well-being of the children affected (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1970b, 1664– 1667). They urged that the income disregard be more generous, so that the benefits would be reduced more gradually as work income increased. They also urged increased funding for day care for working parents. Both they and the Child Welfare League deviated even further than Nixon from the strict NIT model by urging the continuation and expansion of the government’s role in providing services to families receiving benefits, both to address family problems and to support employment. They clearly did not want public assistance to be purely a cash transaction, in which the government would supplement income without giving support to households in dealing with their problems. The questions addressed to these witnesses by Republicans and conservative Democrats revealed some of the issues that would bedevil the effort to enact the FAP. Senator Wallace Bennett (R, Utah), responding to the call of the National Congress of Parents and Teachers for a larger income disregard, asked if this would not unduly increase costs, by trading a smaller, totally dependent client population for a larger population that is partially dependent on welfare. The FAP would have utilized the carrot of additional income to encourage work. This strategy would have made a larger number of the working poor eligible for benefits, thus negating some of the cost savings derived from reducing the average size of payments. This concern with costs, plus the desire to eliminate people totally from dependence on government aid, later led most conservatives to reject the NIT approach, and to advocate more coercive approaches, utilizing the stick of work requirements or of time-limited benefits to reduce the welfare caseload. The chief public provider witness was the American Public Welfare Association, represented by Dr. Roy Nicks, its president (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1970b, 1375–1390). They praised the Family Assistance Plan as a significant, constructive step. They were especially pleased that it would deal with what they considered to be the worst inequity of the current AFDC program, the denial of assistance to families with an unemployed father who is present. However, they were critical of the proposed minimum benefit of $1,600 for a family of four, declaring it to be grossly inadequate. They, too, wanted adults to have incentives to work, but, like the public interest groups, they urged that flexibility in work requirements and supportive social services would be necessary to protect the well being of children. The APWA represented the “bureaucrats” who have often been accused by critics of public welfare of wanting to keep the poor dependent in order to maintain their jobs and expand their organizations. It is clear from their testimony that they did want to continue to provide services for welfare

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clients. Some supporters of the NIT viewed it as substituting cash assistance for the “paternalistic” control of clients by the welfare bureaucracy. The APWA saw such payments as rationalizing the benefit structure, rather than substituting a cash transaction for services. Were they motivated by a self-serving desire to maintain their client empire, or by a realistic professional judgement that many welfare households have multiple problems and can benefit from assistance in solving these problems? One’s answer to this question usually depends on one’s positive or negative attitude towards public administrators in general. However, the fact that welfare services were not de-bureaucratized by this round of proposals kept this aspect of the welfare issue alive in future debates. Several of the subcategories of generalist interest group outlined in chapter 4 were represented in hearings on the FAP. Several labor unions gave testimony, with the lead role played by the AFL/CIO, represented by is “legislative representative,” Clinton Fair, and the chair of its social security department, Bertrand Seidman (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1970b, 1727–48). Their testimony focused on the complex relationship between welfare recipients and the low wage job market. These union representatives were strongly against subsidizing employers to hire welfare recipients, due to the competition that they would represent for workers already holding low wage jobs. They further argued that welfare recipients required to work should be assigned to jobs that paid either minimum wage or the prevailing wage in the community, whichever is greater. They also expressed reluctance to see mothers with children pushed into the workforce too rapidly, without proper provision for the care of the children. By focusing their attention on labor force issues, the AFL/CIO was in effect challenging the dominant American conceptualization of antipoverty programs as a series of interventions on behalf of poor individuals, designed to integrate those individuals into the economic mainstream. They were calling attention to the fact that persons on welfare at any given time are part of a pool of low skilled labor. Even though the welfare recipient may be temporarily out of the workforce, he or she is at least a potential competitor for someone in an existing job. Although unions have been consistent participants in the welfare debate, and though their opposition to subsidized employment of welfare recipients has been effective in some instances, theirs was clearly not the mainstream view among policy-makers. Even progressive witnesses such as the Child Welfare League appeared to be individualizing the problem, rather than viewing it in the total context of the supply and demand for labor in a capitalist economy. Witnesses for groups primarily representing African Americans expressed yet another view of public welfare, one that was not so much

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focused on labor market problems as on the availability of benefits, calibrated on the basis of need, to anyone requiring such assistance. Whitney Young, Jr., one of the major leaders of the civil rights movement, testified jointly on behalf of the Urban League and the National Association of Social Workers. The thrust of his testimony was that considerations of work incentives should be secondary to getting adequate resources to needy families. He stressed the total inadequacy of the proposed minimum benefit level in the FAP, and he argued that work incentives were not really necessary because most low income people want to work, if decent jobs are made available to them (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1970b, 1748–1765). The extent to which Mr. Young ignored or sidestepped the issue of the relationship between welfare and work is revealed by a long exchange between him and Senator Long following his prepared statement. The senator cited an example (which he also presented to other witnesses) of a woman who had secured a decent paying job with a small business but was told by her social worker not to take it because she would be better off with her welfare benefits. He repeatedly asked whether the program should be designed so that someone who works is always better off than someone who is not working. Mr. Young repeatedly deflected the question, insisting that need should be the main criterion for aid and challenging the representativeness of the case cited by the senator. His stance was similar to that taken by many welfare advocates at that time. Groups such as the National Welfare Rights Organization strongly asserted that the poor have a right to guaranteed support by the government, independent of work force participation. Their sub-text was that the economy could never provide sufficient numbers of good jobs to lower skilled workers, so that federal assistance should always be available as an option. This concept was totally out of sync with the way that most Americans viewed the issue at the time, since there was (and is) almost universal support for the notion that individuals have a personal and societal obligation to work to support themselves and their families. There might be valid reasons for asserting such a right, but if groups were going to make that assertion, it would have been much more effective if they had least confronted the issue of how cash benefits would affect the labor force participation of the poor and how public policy might minimize the disincentives to work that arose from such benefits. In contrast to the labor unions, who wanted to look at welfare in the context of the labor force, other progressive groups seemed to be dodging this issue altogether at this stage of the welfare debate, rather than trying to work out progressive alternatives that would make work and welfare compatible tools in enhancing human dignity. In doing so, they allowed conservative groups to seize the high ground on the work issue. In later welfare debates,

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progressive groups would reassert their interest in work incentives, but by then the whole issue was framed with the work obligation in the foreground, and legitimate concerns with meeting the basic needs of adults and children had been pushed into the background. Within another category of generalist group, the business peak association, one finds conflicting positions on FAP. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) gave a qualified endorsement to Nixon’s proposal (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1970b:1927–29). They shared with Nixon the belief that a rationalized benefit structure would increase work effort. They argued that the FAP would not lead to a flat guaranteed income, provided that the work incentives could be properly structured. In contrast, the Council of State Chambers of Commerce rejected the FAP as inevitably leading to the disassociation of income with work and a universal entitlement to income support that they abhorred (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1970b:2102–18). Theirs was the position that would later come to dominate conservative criticism of welfare, but in this debate it was still in competition with Nixon’s perspective. At this period in the history of welfare policy, intergovernmental groups were still seeking to have the financial burdens of welfare shifted entirely to the federal government. Governor Warren Hearnes of Missouri, chair of the National Governor’s Conference (now known as the National Governor’s Association) stated his organization’s support for federalization of the financing of cash assistance, with the states retaining administrative responsibility for the program. He argued that since federal decisions drive the program’s costs, the federal government should also assume financial responsibility for it (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1970b: 1971–2077) In later years, as governors increasingly found it politically advantageous to be seen as courageous experimenters with new welfare approaches, their national organization would increasingly emphasize full state autonomy in carrying out public assistance programs. In 1970, the governors were still seeking to transfer greater responsibility to the federal government, while in 1988 and 1996, they would become important advocates of greater decentralization, as long as federal dollars were available to cover the costs. When one views the conflicting demands that interest groups made concerning cash assistance to the poor, it is not surprising that achieving a consensus behind some form of the FAP proved elusive. Most of the groups testifying basically supported the Nixon Administration in its willingness to consider reform of the welfare system. They also shared the Administration’s strongly negative view of the current AFDC system as inequitable and counterproductive, both for clients and for society as a whole. Their criticisms of Nixon’s plan were also consistent in that they all pointed in the direction of increased generosity of benefits and the

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maintenance of extensive service relationships with clients. However, the Nixon Administration viewed welfare reform primarily as a way to contain costs, reduce bureaucracy, and induce more work effort on the part of clients. Many in Congress shared this agenda. Some were supportive of the FAP, but others saw it as going too far in expanding and liberalizing benefits. In the end, the Nixon Administration balked at going as far toward expanding welfare benefits as progressive groups wanted, so these groups, along with key Democrats in Congress, were unwilling to support the FAP as proposed. Without strong support from either the left or the right, the proposal died. The Family Support Act of 1988 With the death of the serious reform efforts in the early 1970s, the AFDC program was left to limp along in its existing form, steadily gaining clients but gaining little in public acceptance or political support. President Jimmy Carter made another attempt to reform it in 1977, but this, too, foundered on disagreement about the goals of the program. (Lynn and Whitman 1981) Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the AFDC program existed in a curious political limbo. Liberals did not like the program, but they lacked the political clout to dictate reform on their terms. Conservatives liked it even less, and made denunciations of “welfare queens” or multigenerational welfare households a staple of their rhetorical attacks on “big government.” However, the Reagan Administration was only able to cut it at the margins through eligibility changes; the Administration’s plans for a radical devolution of the program to the states never really got out of the starting gate. This was because moderates and liberals in Congress, as much as they disliked the inequities and absurdities of AFDC, preferred it to conservative alternatives that they viewed as essentially abandoning the poor. The program survived not because it had solid political support but because policy-makers were unable to agree on an alternative. By the late 1980s, however, political conditions shifted in ways that were conducive to reform. Having been soundly defeated in the two previous presidential elections, Democrats were looking for ways to rebuild their political base. The AFDC program, because of its extreme unpopularity with voters, had become an effective vehicle for Republican attacks on the social policy “excesses” of the Democrats. Along with the crime issue, it had been used to paint an image of the Democrats as too permissive of immoral, irresponsible behavior by the poor and as too willing to subsidize such behavior with federal funds. Poll data suggested that this image had stuck in the voters’ minds (Edsall 1984). One way for Democrats to distance themselves from this permissive image was to take stands on welfare that had traditionally been associated with Republicans,

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such as a strong emphasis on work requirements. On the other hand, the Reagan Administration had been successfully portrayed by Democrats as lacking in compassion for the poor, and many Republicans wanted to avoid being labeled as totally callous or as having no constructive alternative to the present system. In addition to these national developments, state political leaders began to discover that experimenting with welfare “solutions” could enhance their reputations for leadership. Whereas in the early 1970s, there was considerable sentiment among state and local leaders that the whole welfare problem should be transferred to the federal government, in the 1980s state leaders began to see advantages to tinkering with the system on their own. In spite of the fact that welfare expenditures had been reduced in the 1980s, and that the inflation-adjusted value of benefits had steadily eroded, the program was still viewed by many citizens as an expensive problem that needed to be solved. Particularly in the area of work incentives, several states developed new approaches within the structure of the Work Incentive (WIN) program that had been created in the 1970s. Evaluations of these experimental programs showed that well designed programs could increase workforce participation among welfare recipients (Cammisa 1995; Gueron and Pauly 1991). As a result, when President Reagan again expressed his strong desire to reform the welfare system in his 1986 State of the Union message, Democrats in Congress had strong incentives to take him at his word and to begin to seriously formulate welfare reform proposals (Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1987b, 1988). The president set the parameters of the debate, both by the atmosphere he had created with his repeated attacks on welfare and by his ability to veto legislation that he considered too liberal. However, in contrast to 1970, when the proposal drafted by the Nixon Administration was the centerpiece of the entire debate, other actors played a more important role in crafting legislative options in 1987–88. Members of Congress (most prominently, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D, New York) and their staffs, plus several key interest groups, stepped forward to take the lead. The data presented in this work have shown intergovernmental groups to be strong and steady participants in all three areas of social policy. True to form, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the National Association of Counties weighed in strongly in the 1987–88 hearings in favor of welfare reform (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1987c: 142– 81). The National League of Cities also testified, noting that although welfare was not traditionally a major concern of city governments, they were directly affected by the prevalence of poverty and by the needs of households who slipped through the cracks of the welfare system (U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means 1987a:366–87).

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However, Anne Cammisa (1995) reports that none of her informants saw these three groups as very influential, and she credits the National Governors’ Association with a particularly strong leadership role in the passage of the 1988 Act. They convened a welfare reform task force, chaired by Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, and its recommendations became the basis for a welfare reform proposal endorsed by the entire organization in February, 1987. As described by Governor Clinton in histestimony (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1987a:21), the key components of their proposal included: • A strong, well-coordinated child support enforcement program that underscores our basic belief that parents should support their children through their own efforts. • A flexible, state-designed work program that accommodates remedial education, training, job placement, and experience. • A requirement that all recipients of cash assistance with children age 3 or more participate in a work program. • A binding contractual agreement between the recipient and the government that assigns clear mutual obligations—the client to strive for self-sufficiency and the government to provide adequate support services for a designated period of time as the client moves towards economic independence. • An enhanced case management system at the central point of intake and assessment of the client’s needs, resources, and the steps necessary to move the client towards self-sufficiency. • As we realize savings from a strong work program, movement toward a cash assistance program that would ultimately be a state-specific family living standard developed according to nationally prescribed methodology and paid, as a minimum, at a nationally prescribed percentage of that state’s family living standard.

Having adopted these policy goals, the NGA proceeded to lobby strongly for their adoption, and Congress proved receptive. Governor Clinton not only testified but was invited to participate in the mark-up sessions of the Ways and Means Committee. In 1988, a strongly worded letter from the NGA, stating that “Passage of welfare reform legislation continues to be the association’s number one legislative priority” was submitted to Senator Lloyd Bentsen (D, Texas), Chair of the Senate Finance Committee. This letter encouraged him to place a higher priority on the passage of a welfare reform bill (Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1988:358). Ultimately, most of the governors’ recommendations became part of the legislation (Cammisa 1995:101). The element of personal political ambition on the part of some governors comes through strongly in their lobbying role. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis gave testimony before the Senate Finance Committee in 1987, at the time that he was launching his presidential bid. A good bit of his testimony consisted of claiming credit for Massachusetts’

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ET program, a demonstration program under the existing WIN provisions of AFDC that was widely considered successful in placing AFDC recipients in jobs and lowering the state’s welfare costs (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1987c:90–112). Bill Clinton, of course, had wanted to be president at least since the day he shook hands with President John F.Kennedy as a high school student. His testimony was designed to stake out his position as a pragmatic centrist Democrat who would be tough but compassionate in dealing with welfare recipients. Both of these presidential aspirants clearly believed that the political popularity of their approach at the state level would carry over to the national level. Public providers, specifically the APWA and its subsidiary, the National Council of State Human Service Administrators, also had a significant impact on the development of the 1988 Act. According to Cammisa (1995), they worked with the National Governor’s Association to achieve a shared perspective on the issue, and the proposal offered by the NGA strongly reflected the influence of the APWA. In addition, in their own testimony, the APWA staked out a strong, yet pragmatic position (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1987c:219–31). They supported the Senate bill’s emphasis on child support enforcement and its extension of coverage to two parent families. They also supported the basic direction of the bill with regard to the establishment of a contract between recipients and the government, spelling out the expectation that the client participate in work or work training and that the state provide adequate job training opportunities, as well as day care and medical care. However, the APWA recommended strengthening, that is, making more prescriptive, the federal requirements for state programs included in the bill. They argued that the legislation should spell out the requirements of a “full effort” by the state to provide job training and that states should be required to guarantee support services, such as day care, not just assure them, as in the bill’s language. Their spokesperson, Stephen B.Heintz, a state welfare official from Connecticut, gave a specific example of how the word assure could create a loophole that could be used to avoid providing adequate day care (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1987c, 223). At first glance, it might seem contradictory for state administrators to be arguing for a more prescriptive law that would reduce their own flexibility. Most administrators prefer to have the flexibility to design their own programs, and a constant stream of local complaints about excessively rigid federal regulations has been a part of the social policy debate since the 1960s. However, for specialized state officials, state flexibility is a mixed blessing. While it may give them more freedom to operate their programs, it also may be used by state elected officials as an excuse for not giving them the resources they believe they need to carry out their programs. For example, if federal legislation does not prescribe a

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guarantee of day care, then a state legislature may only allocate the money for a minimal effort to provide day care. Thus, federal mandates may strengthen the hand of professional specialists in dealing with the elected bodies to which they report. In addition to advocating stronger federal mandates, the APWA somewhat gingerly approached, as did the NGA, the idea of national standards for welfare benefits. In their testimony, they expressed concern about the declining inflation-adjusted value of welfare benefits. Cammisa suggests that establishing a national minimum was an important goal for them. However, the idea of a national minimum benefit had encountered much opposition in Congress in the past and had contributed to the defeat of both the Nixon and the Carter welfare reform initiatives. Therefore, rather than come out in favor of a minimum cash benefit, they (in concert with the NGA) advocated a national minimum family living standard, which would mandate sufficient benefits to meet the basic needs of families but would allow states to calculate the dollar amount necessary to meet those needs, based on local economic conditions. Public interest groups were also arguing for a national minimum benefit standard, but even the modest proposal supported by the APWA and NGA did not make it into the final bill. This indicated continuing support in Congress for a decentralized welfare system, support that would surface even more strongly in the 1995–96 debate. In general, public interest groups did not play the central role in 1987– 88 debate that was played by the intergovernmental and public provider groups. Nevertheless, there were a few that made important contributions. The whole tenor of the debate was of pragmatic actors reasoning together to come up with a policy that met a diverse set of goals. This is not the same as saying that the ultimate outcome was rational social policy; rather it means that the debate had an analytical, rather than an overtly ideological flavor. In this atmosphere, it is not surprising that the most prominent kind of public interest witness was the think tank. Although they don’t represent groups of citizens, think tanks represent certain general orientations towards social policy issues. Their legitimacy derives from the technical expertise they bring to bear on the issue, even though all actors recognize that most research by any think tank is shaped by its ideological perspective. One of the most prominent think tanks in the 1987–88 debate was the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC). This organization was founded in 1974, to conduct research on educational and employment programs that could benefit low income persons (www.mdrc.org). In the 1980s, eight states contracted with the MDRC to evaluate their experimental welfare to work programs, and the organization had just produced its evaluation reports at the time that the

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Family Support Act was being considered. (The results of these reports were later summarized in Gueron and Pauly 1991.) Cammisa (1995) credits these reports with an influential role in the policy debate. In her testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, Judith Gueron, President of MDRC, struck an optimistic note about the ability of public programs to move female heads of households off welfare and into the labor force, through a combination of work requirements, training and support services (U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means 1987b:168– 188). She said, “There is convincing evidence that programs that link work and AFDC can raise earnings and employment levels and reduce welfare dependency. Moreover, they can represent a cost effective investment of the taxpayer’s dollar” (U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means 1987b:168). Another think tank that participated in the hearings was the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). The AEI is often associated with the neoconservative perspective that emerged among some scholars in the 1970s. These scholars were critical of what they considered the excesses of the Great Society programs. However, unlike the more extreme conservative organizations, such as the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, that would later become prominent, they wanted to revamp, not totally reject, the government’s role in social policy. Their organization’s representative, Michael Novak, actually testified as a representative of the “Working Seminar on the Family and American Welfare Policy,” convened at Marquette University and funded by several foundations. This seminar was described as having included social policy experts representing a broad spectrum of views, and its stated goal was to achieve a consensus among these experts on how to reform welfare. However, the consensus positions arrived at by the group had a distinctly conservative flavor, relative to the full spectrum of views on welfare reform that were expressed in the overall policy debate. They stressed “dependency” as a problem separate from poverty; the obligation of families to behave responsibly; and the need to require work effort on the part of welfare recipients. If this was truly a representative group, then this testimony reveals how much the consensus had shifted in a conservative direction. In any case, it served to legitimize the kinds of conservative positions that would become much more prominent in the 1990s (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1987d:78–96). Interestingly enough, the Heritage Foundation, although founded in 1973 and well-established by this time, did not testify directly, but limited itself to participating in shaping the consensus position of the Working Seminar. The prominence of child support issues in the 1987–88 debate mobilized another type of public interest group that had a specialized focus on issues of single parenthood, child custody, and child support. Groups such as

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Parents without Partners argued for stronger child support, while the National Council for Children’s Rights was more concerned with the fairness and effectiveness of custody arrangements. Several organizations claimed to speak for men as a group, and for this reason they were placed in the generalist, rather than the public interest category. However, the main purpose of these groups was to present the viewpoint of noncustodial fathers in the debate over child support (Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1988, 350–351). For example, the National Congress for Men argued that non-custodial fathers were being stereotyped as selfish, materialistic “bad guys,” without looking at the ways in which many of them had been denied access to their children by their female partners (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1987d:138–145). In spite of the seeming agreement among influential actors about the parameters of welfare reform, there were groups that dissented from this agreement, from a progressive point of view. Generalist groups such as labor unions and civil rights organizations were not prominent in this particular welfare debate, but they did join with more liberal public interest groups in an umbrella organization, the Coalition for Human Needs. Sounding the traditional concerns of such groups, Susan Rees, Chair of the Coalition, was critical of the discretion given to states through the waiver system and through the non-prescriptive language of the job training and child care sections. She also called for a national minimum benefit and recommended that participation in the job training program be voluntary. The Coalition’s attitude of more faith in the poor and less faith in state welfare administrators was clearly not the prevailing one in this debate, but this viewpoint continued to receive some representation in 1987, as it had in 1970 (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 1987b, 72–74). One type of generalist group that was involved in 1987 that had not been involved in 1970 consisted of groups representing women. It was noted in chapter 3 that the structuring of AFDC around households headed by single females made welfare a women’s issue to a significant degree. The position of women as the main recipients of AFDC highlighted the contradictions of their overall social role. The debate over work requirements for welfare mothers was premised on the dual expectations that American society now placed on women in general; that they were expected to retain primary responsibility for child rearing while still participating in the labor force. It also raised the issue of discrimination against women in both hiring and pay rates, with women excluded from many good paying blue collar jobs and still earning 70 cents on the dollar as compared to men (U.S. Census 1992). The National Organization for Women did not testify, but it joined with 25 other organizations concerned with the needs of women, to form the National Coalition on Women, Work and Welfare. The Coalition’s report, like that of the Coalition on Human Needs, recommended higher benefit

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levels, more extensive education and training efforts, and voluntary participation of recipients in work programs. However, they linked their concerns directly to the overall status of women in American society. Cynthia Morano, Executive Director of Wider Opportunities for Women (an organization specializing in job training for disadvantaged women), testified as follows on behalf of the Coalition: It is important to consider the demographics of the population we are discussing as we consider education, employment, and training for welfare recipients and their families. It is a population which is currently more than 90 % female, and which faces the same barriers of occupational segregation, race and sex discrimination in the workplace, sex-differentiated education, child care responsibilities, and lower wages experienced by other women in this society (U.S. House 1987:127–8).

The Family Support Act coupled strong work requirements for welfare recipients with programs of training and child care. It also provided for extended Medicaid benefits after the recipient left the rolls, since the loss of medical coverage had proved to be a major disincentive to get off welfare. Finally, it supported stringent enforcement by the states of child support payments from absent fathers, forcing mothers to reveal the identity of the fathers of their children and allowing for withholding of payments from the father’s pay check (Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1988, 351–358). Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the leaders in the welfare reform effort, compared the rare alignment of political forces behind this bill to a syzygy, an astronomical term for a rare alignment of the earth, moon, and sun (Cammisa 1995). However, those more liberal groups whose primary concerns were the immediate well-being of clients and the fairness of stiff work requirements were left out of the consensus. Congress was unwilling either to raise benefits or to continue to allow welfare recipients choice with regard to participation in work or training. Nevertheless, in contrast with the subsequent welfare reform efforts of the 1990s, the Family Support Act seems a rather moderate reform effort, retaining the AFDC program while substantially changing its direction. In spite of its careful design, the ongoing political appeal of welfare bashing, plus the increasing ideological shift away from supporting any broad federal obligation to the poor, would doom this legislation to a relatively short, seven-year life span. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 When attempting to explain the passage of the 1996 welfare reform legislation, one is tempted to place the major emphasis on what Kingdon

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(1995) calls the political stream. One can trace presidential candidate Bill Clinton’s campaign pledge to “end welfare as we know it” to his emergence as a centrist Democrat, determined to shed the baggage of his party’s “permissive” image, and to his successful use of the centrist strategy in playing a leadership role in the passage of the Family Support Act as chair of the National Governor’s Association. One can trace the growing conservatism of the Republican Party on social policy issues and their bold attempt to use their new congressional majority in 1995 to achieve a coherent policy agenda through the Contract With America. As Anne Cammisa (1998) has ably done, one can show how these two political agendas intersected during the 1996 election year to produce the 1996 Act. However, to understand the rather dramatic shift in public policy represented by the 1996 Act, and the role of interest groups in that shift, one must also look at what Kingdon calls the policy stream, that is, the important changes in the prevailing views of the “welfare problem” that occurred between 1970 and 1996. The year 1970 was one of ongoing social upheaval, in which many organized groups with leftist positions had been spawned by the unrest of the 1960s. Richard Nixon was considered the candidate of the conservative backlash against this unrest, yet the option of being unresponsive to the needs of the poor, or of enacting measures seen as punitive towards the poor, was not open to him in that political environment. As noted earlier, his strategy for reigning in the government’s social policy efforts was to reorganize them and redirect them, not to drastically limit them. Even though the Family Assistance Plan was considered the conservative alternative at that time, the unspoken premise of the FAP was that there would continue to be a population dependent on public assistance, perhaps even a slightly larger one than under AFDC. However, most of this population would not be totally dependent on federal assistance, and they would have incentives to gradually move themselves off the welfare rolls. The shift in atmosphere from 1970 to 1988 was quite drastic, with the rhetoric of work and mutual obligation between the recipient and society drowning out the concerns of some groups with insuring that families had adequate levels of financial support to meet their basic needs. The Family Support Act of 1988 was a carefully crafted compromise between the conflicting goals of adequate support vs. work incentives and obligations. As such, it appeared to hold the promise of becoming a stable policy that would win the (perhaps grudging) support of both liberals and conservatives, and its quick loss of support seems quite surprising. However, in another sense, it is not at all surprising that the Family Support Act did not maintain long term political support, given the underlying logic of the conservative view of the welfare state that was asserted ever more aggressively during the 1980s and 1990s. In discussions

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of welfare policies, it is often assumed that the basic premise of the conservative argument is that all able bodied adults should work. This is certainly an important element of the conservative position, but it is also a premise with which most liberal or progressive groups would agree. Although earlier liberal groups had tried to brush off the work requirement, by the 1980s most liberals had come to support the notion that able bodied adults should be making some contribution to society through their labor, both for the sake of fairness and productivity in society and for the sake of the individual’s dignity and self-esteem. The testimony of the various liberal interest groups suggests that some are more willing than others to use governmental carrots or sticks to induce work, but almost all agree that long-term cash support for those able to work is undesirable. Where liberals and conservatives truly part company is on a second, often unstated, premise of the conservative argument; namely, that all able bodied adults can work. It is clear from the positions taken by conservative groups that their strong belief in the fairness, efficiency and productivity of the capitalist system leads them to assume that, at least in times of normal prosperity, this system is capable of providing jobs for all adults who are genuinely motivated to work. Therefore, if there are adults who are not working (particularly for extended periods of time) it must be due to reasons unrelated to the opportunity structure of the capitalist system. In the nineteenth century, Social Darwinists attributed poverty to the inherent moral or genetic unfitness of the individuals who were poor. In the 1950s and 1960s, a conservative interpretation of the “culture of poverty” thesis also ended up attributing moral unfitness to the poor individual, albeit by the different route of blaming that person’s cultural environment for it (Waxman 1983). However, more recent conservative arguments, while dwelling to some degree on such “immoral” accouterments of poverty as teen pregnancy and unwed parents, have taken much of the blame for lack of work motivation off the individual and placed it on the government. Charles Murray (1984) argues that it is rational for an individual to avoid work if he or she can earn an income without working, and that it is rational for poor women to have no husband and lots of children, if government programs reward such behavior. If one truly believes that it is possible for all persons who are properly motivated to find work, then it is logical to believe that they will do so, if the government will just get out of the way. Most liberal groups share a quite different premise; namely, that the economic system frequently does not provide sufficient jobs for all able bodied adults who are willing to work, particularly those individuals with lower education and skill levels. Also, may of the jobs that are available do not provide sufficient income or benefits to meet a family’s basic needs, a factor that seems to trouble conservatives very little since they expect the

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poor to put up with some deprivation as a motivation to climb further up the ladder. Therefore, liberals tend to believe that there are legitimate reasons why an individual or household may need cash assistance for a short, or a longer period of time. Placing arbitrary time limits on benefits does not reflect the true opportunity structure in which low income persons find themselves. In addition, while placing great value on work, liberals also place a great value on maintaining the physical well-being of households, especially those containing children. In the liberal view, human dignity requires that people be pushed towards self-sufficiency, but it also requires an adequate safety net when they cannot make it. Given these quite different premises, it is no wonder that the seeming consensus supporting the Family Support Act quickly unraveled. The 1988 Act did not promise to remove all households from welfare. The work programs cited as successful in the testimony of the Manpower Demonstration Research Project achieved placement rates only in the twenty percent range. In practice, the program’s performance was even lower than expectations. Cammisa (1998) attributes its lack of success in moving families off welfare to: (1) the economic downturn of the early 1990s; (2) the lack of adequate funding for job training programs; and, (3) the lack of “teeth” in the work requirements. Conservatives zeroed in on the third factor, arguing that merely offering services and support, with limited sanctions for not participating in work programs, would never break the cycle of dependency for the majority of welfare families. Increasingly, the continuation of any degree of dependency became unacceptable to conservative critics. The Family Support Act also provided leverage for further attacks on the entire welfare system by making it easier for states to apply for waivers of federal rules. A large number of states obtained waivers, and they proceeded to design their own programs, containing various combinations of benefits and sanctions. Some of these programs involved time limited benefit structures and other conditions for receiving benefits, such as, in Wisconsin, keeping one’s kids in school. Although at the time of the 1995– 96 welfare debates most of these experimental programs had not been in effect long enough to track long-term impacts on the poor, the seeming popular support these programs enjoyed added legitimacy to the notion that state governments were the ultimate repositories of wisdom with regard to welfare policy. President Clinton attempted to take the initiative on welfare reform in 1994 by offering his own proposal. For the first time, a proposal by a Democratic president included a time limit of two years on the receipt of benefits without taking a job. However, weakened as he was by his defeat on health care, Clinton could not get even the Democrat-controlled Congress to support his initiative. The Republicans made welfare reform a

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major element in the Contract with America pledge that their candidates signed. Thus, they began hearings on welfare reform almost immediately upon taking control of Congress in January 1995. As in 1988, most of the major intergovernmental interest groups testified at these hearings, but it was the National Governors’ Association that took a major leadership role. Because a number of governors had undertaken what they considered to be successful and popular innovations in welfare under the waiver system, there was even greater interest than before in the NGA in seeking further decentralization in the administration of the program. This led to their support for the concept of replacing AFDC with block grants to the states, even though ending the program’s entitlement status might leave states vulnerable to covering more cases with less revenues during economic downturns. In spite of Republican rhetoric about giving states a free hand, some versions of their welfare reform legislation put strong restrictions on state discretion in areas of concern to conservative lawmakers. For example, the bill passed by the House required states to impose a family cap, in which children born while the family was on welfare would not receive extra support. Therefore, the governors had to fight against these restrictions, if they expected to truly have a free hand in running the program. As in previous rounds of welfare reform, the American Public Welfare Association was the leading witness among public providers. Many conservative critics have viewed welfare bureaucrats as contributing to the problem by failing to enforce work requirements and by seeking ongoing close federal control. Perhaps to distance itself from these criticisms, the APWA came out strongly for programs focused on work and for decentralized administration of welfare programs. Whereas in 1987, they had sought tighter federal controls over certain aspects of the program structure and had even advocated a national minimum benefit, the APWA’s 1995 testimony embraced decentralization. Their witness, Mr. Gary T.Stangler, a welfare administrator from Missouri, noted that more than half the states were currently operating demonstration projects, and he then provides a series of favorable examples of successful state programs. Most of his examples included additional expectations and restrictions imposed on welfare recipients. Their written statement also strongly endorsed work as the centerpiece of all welfare reform efforts (U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means 1995a:313–327). As was suggested earlier, public interest groups are more inclined to take unequivocal positions on the liberal or conservative side of a social policy issue than are more pragmatic public provider and intergovernmental groups. This willingness can be traced to the nature of the incentives for supporting a group. Public provider and intergovernmental organizations represent broad groups of public professionals or elected officials,

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representing differing views along the political spectrum. Their consensus positions are therefore going to represent a balance between more liberal and more conservative members, and they are going to be focused on issues that are vital to the organizational self-interest of the members. Public interest groups attract support by appealing to the purposive benefit of belonging to a group taking positions in which one strongly believes. Therefore, the group benefits from taking unequivocal positions, even though this may reduce its credibility with some lawmakers. In earlier welfare debates, most of the public interest testimony was given by groups arguing the liberal position in favor of expansion of social welfare benefits. In the 1996 debate, strongly conservative public interest groups, such as the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, and the National Center for Policy Analysis, began to weigh in more strongly with their conflicting views of the welfare problem. They were encouraged by the fact that the entire tenor of the welfare debate had shifted in their direction and by the sympathetic hearing they would receive from the new Republican majority. The testimony of Robert Rector, Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation, clearly showed the conservative perspective on welfare just described. Rector presented graphs showing a sharp upward trend in federal and state welfare spending since 1960, coupled with a poverty rate that, between 1950 and 1970 dropped sharply but then leveled off and increased slightly between 1970 and 1995, just as federal welfare expenditures really began to increase rapidly. He argued that the increase in welfare spending, “brought to a standstill the natural progress against poverty that was occurring before the War on Poverty began” (U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means 1995a:64). He was particularly critical of cash assistance programs: These programs are intended to directly raise an individual’s standard of living. Such aid directly substitutes for the private sector income which the welfare recipient is presumed to be incapable of earning for him or herself. (U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means 1995a:65) [emphasis added]

The assumption here is that without the federal government’s intervention the private economy would have continued to rapidly reduce poverty rates and that individuals on welfare are really quite capable of earning money on their own, if government programs did not distort their incentives. Instead, “by undermining the work ethic and rewarding illegitimacy, the welfare system insidiously generates its own clientele” (U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means 1995a:68). Rector’s policy proposals included an immediate end to the entitlement status of the major welfare programs, so that individuals could no longer

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automatically count on government support if their income falls. He also advocated no benefits for children born out of wedlock to women under 21 and no additional benefits for additional children born into a family on welfare (the family cap). He argued that, “by slowing the outpouring from the federal welfare spigot, such a welfare spending limit would gradually reduce the subsidization of dysfunctional behavior; dependency, non-work, and illegitimacy” (U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means 1995a:69). The responses of liberal interest groups to this argument took several forms. One was to challenge the veracity of the conservative account of the relationship between welfare spending and poverty. Robert Greenstein, Executive Director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, suggested that the Heritage Foundation’s presentation distorted the true nature of the relationship between welfare spending and poverty. First, he pointed out that the U.S. Census Bureau’s calculation of the poverty rate includes only cash income, and excludes in-kind benefits such as food stamps and housing assistance. Therefore, the rather substantial amounts spent on these programs do not show up as reductions in poverty in the official calculations. Secondly, he argued that Rector included as welfare programs quite a number of programs that direct substantial portions of their benefits to the non-poor, thereby inflating the total spending that Rector claims is directed at the poor (U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means 1995a: 104–106). My own examination of Rector’s report supports the accuracy of Greenstein’s criticism. For example, Rector includes as welfare spending the total budgeted amount for the Community Development Block Grant program (U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means 1995a:79). This program does direct the majority of its spending to lower income areas, but much of this spending also benefits residents of those areas who are not poor, and a substantial percentage of CDBG funds go to economic development projects that do not provide direct benefits to low income persons. A second type of response by liberal interest groups revealed, in its passionate rejection of conservative arguments and proposals, the way in which these groups balance social values. The arguments presented by the Children’s Defense Fund are typical. Dr. Clifford M.Johnson, the organization’s director of programs and policy, made the following argument in his prepared statement: CDF strongly supports practical steps to enable parents to enter work and stay there—child care, health coverage, financial work incentives, and education and training. We understand that these investments in work and self-sufficiency often are expensive but we believe that they also are essential if we are realistically to move parents receiving AFDC from welfare to work. CDF also believes that fairly structured requirements and reciprocal obligations are appropriate and useful means of striking a balance between

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compassion and personal responsibility. But we oppose proposals that punish parents who “play by the rules,” simply force poor families off the welfare rolls even when parents are willing to work but jobs are not available, or push children deeper into poverty because of past mistakes by their parents. (U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means 1995b:834)

The group was clearly stating its support for work incentives and requirements, but it was also arguing that block grants and time limits would inevitably victimize unfairly families who have tried to comply with expectations but have been unsuccessful through no fault of their own. With regard to the loss of entitlement status of AFDC, they made their strongest appeal to compassion and fairness: If the Subcommittee is prepared to withdraw this assurance of help by repealing the entitlement to AFDC and food stamps, you must be prepared to answer the most basic question: Under what circumstances do you believe it is acceptable and appropriate to turn away a mother and child with no other means of support from a county or city welfare office? [bold in original] For example: • Should a mother and child be turned away simply because a recession pushed more families onto the welfare rolls and available federal funds for AFDC or food stamps had been exhausted? • Should a mother and child be denied help simply because their personal misfortune struck too late in the fiscal year? • Should a mother and child be left without income support simply because a state or county chose not to provide AFDC or food stamp benefits in particular regions, communities or neighborhoods, or to specific groups of families? (U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means 1995b:834)

The contrast between the perceptions of liberal and conservative groups on this issue could hardly be more stark. To conservatives, entitlements are open-ended commitments that fuel poverty by creating an expectation that support will be forthcoming, regardless of work effort. To liberals, entitlements are a matter of horizontal equity, i.e, making a commitment to provide aid to all people that share whatever circumstances have been defined as making them deserving of aid. To conservatives, the only way to control welfare spending is to put absolute limits on its duration and on the amount of funding available to states. To liberals, this kind of spending control occurs at the expense of adults who are genuinely trying to improve themselves and at the expense of children who are forced to pay with hunger or homelessness for whatever mistakes their parents might have made. The outcome of the 1996 struggle over welfare reform was mostly a victory for the conservative definition of the problem. Under pressure to fulfill his 1992 campaign promise before his 1996 election campaign went into full swing, President Clinton dropped his opposition to the use of block grants and

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to the five year lifetime limit on welfare that the Republicans advocated. However, the Republicans were forced to concede the retention of entitlement status for food stamps and for Medicaid. These programs were seen as benefitting the working poor, as well as those on welfare, and Medicaid was seen as easing the transition into work for welfare families. In addition, in-kind benefits have always been more popular with the public than cash assistance, because they are viewed as targeted towards a basic need, rather than as giving money to people who are regarded as irresponsible. CASE 3: FOOD STAMPS Unlike housing and welfare, the 28 year period studied has not been punctuated by major legislative efforts specifically directed at the food stamp program. One major revamping of the program occurred in 1977, including the elimination of the purchase requirement, and there was a major mobilization of interest groups during consideration of this legislation. Other changes in the program have occurred, not through re-authorizing legislation but through the budget process. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 included reductions in the food stamp program, along with major cuts in other social programs. This legislation was passed so quickly that interest groups had little time to mobilize, but they did participate in subsequent debates over Reagan Administration proposals for further cuts. In these debates, the positions taken by groups are not exclusively focused on the food issue, but, rather, deal with the overall issue of social program cuts. However, they do illustrate how groups that had traditionally supported food stamps reacted to the greatly altered atmosphere that the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as President ushered in. The Food Stamp Act of 1977 As discussed in chapter 3, the food stamp program grew slowly from its inception in 1961 until the early 1970s. Then, enrollment began to grow quite rapidly, and expenditures grew even more rapidly due to the inflation of food prices. Jeffrey Berry (1984) credits the active efforts of what he termed the hunger lobby—a coalition composed primarily of public interest and generalist groups—with pressuring both Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to loosen program restrictions and encourage greater participation by the eligible population. During the early 1970s, according to Berry, groups lobbying for program expansion benefitted from much favorable media attention to the problem of hunger and the vital role of the food stamp program in alleviating it. However, as the program continued to grow, and the mood of the country became more conservative, publicity surrounding the food stamp program

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turned negative, with media stories now focusing on fraud and abuse in the program, rather than on the needs it served. The Ford Administration attempted to issue tighter eligibility regulations, an effort fought bitterly by hunger advocates. A new group, the Food Research Action Council (FRAC) arose, which initially focused on litigation as its primary strategy and was able to win several key court victories, and a Democratic Congress was persuaded to reverse some of Ford’s regulations (Berry 1984). Nevertheless, FRAC and other groups were now in a position of defending previous gains, rather than pushing for more expansion. By 1976, some of the negative publicity had died down, and the program did not become a prominent issue in the 1976 presidential campaign. In addition, it was time for a major re-authorization bill for farm programs, and this gave food stamp proponents some leverage in trading improvements in that program for the continuation of various farm subsidy programs. Therefore, in the hearings on the food stamp provisions of the farm bill that began in 1976, advocacy groups for the poor were virtually unanimous in backing a fairly radical change in the program; namely, the elimination of the purchase requirement. The argument for the purchase requirement had always been that it effectively compelled poor families to spend a certain amount of their income on food. If a family spends $70 to purchase $100 of food stamps, they are getting a $30 benefit, but in exchange they are irrevocably committing $70 to food purchases. Without this requirement, the argument went, the family might simply accept food stamps and then make other purchases with their cash income, thus failing to increase their total food expenditures, with the nutritional benefits that would entail. Designers of the program did not trust the poor to make decisions that would improve their families’ well-being. Many conservative members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, strongly defended the purchase requirement (U.S. Senate, Committee on Agriculture 1985). Senator Herman Talmadge (D, Ga.) went so far as to suggest that the elimination of this requirement would mean the destruction of the program (Berry 1984, 94). A few interest groups backed up this position in their testimony, including two that might be classified as private sector providers. The 28 year record shows that the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) has rarely testified either for or against food stamps, but in this case they spoke up strongly in favor of retaining the purchase requirement, saying that it would encourage family dollars to be spent on food (U.S. House, Committee on Agriculture 1976:547–551). The National Association of Retail Grocers also spoke in favor of retaining the purchase requirement (U.S. House, Committee on Agriculture 1976:430–432). Both of these groups supported the continuation of the program, but both wanted its benefits to be tightly

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controlled. They wanted to insure that the maximum amount of expenditures would go directly to food, which would benefit their members directly, but their position also reflected a general, ideologically based distrust of low income clients. In contrast, the public interest groups who testified strongly supported elimination of the purchase requirements, and their position was supported by the testimony of generalist groups, public provider groups and intergovernmental groups. The principal argument of these groups was that the purchase requirement prevented many of the poorest families from participating because it was impossible, in many months, for them to come up with sufficient cash to purchase the food stamps they needed. These groups also expressed confidence that low income families would not reduce their food expenditures if the purchase requirement were eliminated. Religious groups justified their support for expanded access to the program by appealing to society’s moral obligation to feed the hungry. The Washington staffs of twenty Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic denominations had formed a coalition called the Inter-Religious Task Force on U.S. Food Policy. Their testimony included a disclaimer that they were not speaking for their respective congregations, but they strongly asserted the moral principle that every human being has a right to food to sustain life (U.S. House, Committee on Agriculture 1976:552–56). Monsignor Francis Lally, speaking on behalf of the U.S. Catholic Conference (which represents American Catholic bishops) cited the conclusion of the 1974 International Catholic Synod that the right to eat is fundamental to the right to life, utilizing that last phrase in a quite different context than the abortion debate with which it later became associated (U.S. House, Committee on Agriculture 1976, 212–18). These statements clearly show the element of the Judeo-Christian tradition which challenges the unvarnished assertion by some capitalists of “Root hog, or die.” In 1977, while the farm bill was still under consideration, President Jimmy Carter took office, and he proceeded to appoint to the Department of Agriculture some of the hunger advocates who had been pressuring it from the outside for so long (Berry 1984). Carter’s victory added momentum to the progressive direction of the bill, and a version containing the elimination of the purchase requirement became law as the Food Stamp Act of 1977 (U.S. Senate, Committee on Agriculture 1985). However, in exchange for this new provision, food stamp proponents were forced to accept much tighter eligibility regulations. The issue of allowable deductions from income had been a contentious one. While income limits on eligibility were quite low, the ability of families to take deductions for shelter, child care, and other expenses had effectively raised the income standards, and critics had argued that this had enabled too many better off families to take advantage of the program. Both public interest groups such as the Community Nutrition

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Institute and public provider groups such as the American Public Welfare Association and the National Association of Social Workers argued for simplification of the system of deductions, in order to make administration of the program easier (U.S. House, Committee on Agriculture 1976). But in the process of simplifying the rules, Congress also made the income guidelines and deductions more restrictive, thus making millions of households ineligible for food stamps. In addition, they tightened the rules governing student participation, and launched a pilot program requiring some families to work to receive their food stamps. Thus, even though the passage of this bill represented the successful culmination of a long drive by hunger advocates to eliminate the purchase requirement, and even though it was passed at a time in which the political atmosphere was relatively favorable, the final bill was far from a total victory for these groups. Reagan’s Budget Reductions The passage of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 (OBRA) is sometimes referred to as Reagan’s budget coup because it was pushed through rapidly, before potential opponents could mobilize against it. The Reagan Administration took skillful advantage of the momentum provided by Reagan’s 1980 presidential victory, by using the budget resolution and reconciliation process to put in place spending limits on social welfare programs that preempted the regular appropriations process. In subsequent years, hearings were held in which both interest groups and members of Congress raised strong, passionate objections to these budget reductions. They were able to successfully resist some of the deeper funding cuts, and the profound program reorganizations, that the Reagan Administration proposed, but they were now working within the parameters set by Reagan’s initial success (Shuman 1988; Palmer and Sawhill 1982). OBRA made substantial cuts in the food stamp program by tightening eligibility requirements and excluding many of the working poor. As was the case with AFDC, the Reagan Administration argued that food stamps should be targeted only at the most desperately poor and should not be available as partial support to those who are working. However, the main success of the Reagan Administration was not in the amount of dollars that were cut from the program, for their cuts merely slowed the growth of the program (U.S. Senate, Committee on Agriculture 1985). It was, rather, in re-framing the terms of the debate from a discussion of the relative merits of various efforts to aid the poor to a discussion of the need to restrain the growth of the federal budget in general, by controlling the overall impact of spending for social welfare programs. A series of hearings were held in the House Agriculture Committee and in the House Budget Committee on the impact of the OBRA cuts, and of

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proposed future cuts, on food stamps and the school lunch programs and on the impact of these reductions on entitlement spending. Public provider groups (such as the APWA) and intergovernmental groups (such as the National Governors’ Association) began their testimony by acknowledging the need to control federal spending and balance the budget, but they then went on to protest the disproportionate impact of spending reductions on the poor, particularly the working poor. The testimony of public interest groupssuch as FRAC and of generalist groups such as the U.S. Catholic Conference focused more heavily on the harm that these budget cuts would do to low income persons. However, groups like the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, speaking in support of the Reagan Administration, did not directly address the issue of the impact of government programs on the poor, even in a critical vein. Rather, they focused on what they characterized as the “out of control” growth of entitlement spending, and the need to restrain it in the name of fiscal responsibility. In this way, they could keep the debate focused on the claims made by the budget as a whole on society’s wealth, rather than on the merits of individual programs. Obviously, both they and the Reagan Administration believed that this would be a successful strategy for reducing social spending, and the historical record suggests that they were right (U.S. House, Committee on Agriculture 1982; U.S. House, Committee on the Budget 1982). Reagan’s most drastic proposal for structural change was labeled the “New Federalism” proposal. This involved a swap of fiscal responsibility between the federal government and the states, in which the states would take over entirely the responsibility for welfare and food stamps, while the federal government would assume responsibility for Medicaid. Since rising Medicaid costs were a serious problem for many states, the Reagan Administration believed that this would be a sufficient carrot to induce states to take over other major federal responsibilities. However, intergovernmental groups were unanimous in opposing this idea, since they could see that the burden of caring for the poor would place long-term fiscal responsibilities on them that were well beyond their capacities. These groups clearly had an interest in maintaining a federal commitment to the substantial costs of the food stamp program. The food stamp program also survived the 1996 welfare reform effort which turned over much of the responsibility for administering cash assistance to the states, albeit with continued federal block grants to help support the costs. As noted in the earlier discussion of welfare reform, Republican versions of the legislation converted food stamps, as well as AFDC, to a block grant. However, President Clinton, while willing to compromise on many issues related to AFDC, was unwilling to give in on this issue. In spite of the various restrictions placed on it, this program was

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still the most widely available form of assistance to all kinds of low income families, and it retained some legitimacy because it addressed the basic human need for food. The 1996 law placed further restrictions on access to food stamps (for example, excluding legal immigrants from this, as well as other benefits) but did not alter the basic federal obligation to aid those who are eligible. There was never a separate debate over food stamps during the 1990s, and one cannot identify an interest group role in saving the program that is distinct from interest group resistance to changing the welfare system as a whole. However, the food stamp program, along with Medicaid, proved more resistant to the conservative policy shift that occurred at that time than many other programs. CONCLUSION This chapter has shown the array of strategies utilized by interest groups in the social policy arena in their efforts to influence major policy decisions. They utilize both formal and informal mechanisms to communicate their views to decision-makers, including testimony before congressional committees. A review of the testimony of a sample of these groups clearly shows how they attempt to adapt to the political environment in which they are operating in choosing which positions to defend and the language that they use to defend them. Groups try to establish and preserve access, to assert the legitimacy of their demands, and to dramatize the problems that are being addressed by the legislation. They carefully scrutinize the various proposals that are being considered, and they focus their attention on promoting the alternative bill, or provisions of a bill, that are most positive from their point of view and on defeating the alternatives they consider most harmful. The case studies suggest that the activities of these interest groups have some impact on the final outcome of the legislation. Most of the major legislative proposals discussed were modified in the directions that many of the interest groups were advocating. Interest groups that were supportive of more generous social welfare benefits could not stop the tide towards retrenchment that swept the 1980s and 1990s, but in many cases they were able to slow it down and to defeat the most extreme proposals for dismantling the U.S. welfare state. The next chapter will consider the limitations of the kind of pro-social welfare mobilization represented by these groups and the question of whether an interest group mobilization more directly representative of the poor could be more effective in defending their interests.

CHAPTER 6

Mobilizing the Poor

INTRODUCTION

T

he evidence presented in chapters 4 and 5 strongly supports the conclusion that there are numerous interest groups with both the motivation and the resources to participate actively in the formulation of social policy. Each time Congress considers a major piece of legislation in the areas of housing, food and cash assistance, their hearings attract the participation of dozens of groups and individual witnesses. Many of these interest groups appear only once, and some are drawn into the debate by a narrow interest in some particular facet of the legislative proposal, not by a general interest in social policy outcomes. However, in each policy area there is a core set of groups that participate regularly. Most of these groups have adequate resources to remain more or less permanently mobilized. Data from the two group surveys show that these interest groups utilize a variety of strategies to try to influence the outcome of the legislative struggle. There are three questions that inevitably arise as one reflects on all this interest group activity: 1. How effective has this interest group mobilization been in influencing the course of social policy? 2. Would the interest group mobilization have been more effective if it included more groups that directly represent the poor, rather than the surrogate representatives that currently dominate the social policy arena? 3. If direct mobilization would enhance the influence of social policy advocates, in what ways might it be possible to bring about such a mobilization of the poor? In this concluding chapter, each of these three questions will be addressed. 213

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GROUP IMPACT The case studies presented in chapter 5 show that the final legislation passed by Congress often contained substantial changes from the original legislation proposed by the President and that these changes reflected the preferences of key interest groups. When the Democrats controlled Congress, many of them (with the exception of conservative southerners) provided a sympathetic audience to the kinds of program expansions and changes that the interest groups wanted. Even under the conservative Republican regime that took power in 1995, interest groups were successful in softening or deflecting the more drastic proposals for getting the federal government out of social policy altogether. In every case, some of the modifications supported by interest groups and their congressional allies were lost in the inevitable bargaining and compromise between Congress and the Executive Branch, but usually the legislation reflected their concerns sufficiently that the outcome would have been substantially different without their involvement. On the other side of the coin, the overall trend in social policy since the late 1970s has been one of retrenchment. It is true that conservatives were often unable to achieve the deep, drastic cuts that they proposed. It is also true that some social programs targeted at the poor, such as Medicaid, continued to expand. However, the momentum towards expansion of social benefits that had built up between 1965 and 1975 was effectively halted by the early 1980s, and many of the newer programs created during that era were either severely curtailed or abolished (Brown 1988). There were always a few interest groups that supported this trend toward retrenchment, but the vast majority were opposed to it. Thus, their activities were able to slow this trend, but not to reverse it. The fact that a strong, pro-social welfare mobilization of interest groups was unable to expand, or even preserve, programs that they valued certainly demonstrates the inaccuracy of the interest group driven model of public policy making proposed by the early pluralist scholars. As discussed in chapters 2 and 3, interest group activity takes place in a context of broad social, economic and political forces. Changes in the economy, in social relationships, or in overall configurations of political influence appear to push public policy almost inevitably in certain directions. Interest groups are themselves reflections of these changes, but they are only one type of political mobilization. The impact of their specific activities on specific legislation is constrained by these larger trends. The forces underlying retrenchment in social policy are very powerful, so powerful, in fact, that they have also affected European countries with much stronger welfare state traditions than the United States (EspingAnderson 1996). On the economic front, the increased competitiveness and mobility of capital in a global economy has made it much more

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difficult for workers to maintain or increase their share of the wealth in any one country. Many businesses have come to believe that they must unburden themselves of both higher wages and higher social benefits for ordinary people if they are to remain competitive. On the social front, changes in family structure and values have reduced the linkages of individuals to their communities. In addition, many middle income persons feel threatened by the demands of new groups, not only because they must sacrifice some resources to redistribution but because they see their own values and social status threatened. On the political front, the nature of political mobilization and competition has changed in ways that lower citizen involvement in general, but are particularly disadvantageous to lower income persons. This does not, however, justify the conclusion that interest groups have been totally impotent or have affected social policy in only marginal, insignificant ways. The present social policy landscape looks quite different than if the strongest advocates of retrenchment had gotten their way, and at least part of the credit for this lies with the ability of pro-social welfare interest groups to dramatically communicate the human costs of such proposals. For example, the Reagan Administration had a strong desire to ignore hunger and homelessness, but public interest groups were instrumental in generating enough publicity to make these problems impossible to ignore. While the public generally dislikes welfare, they also have a streak of compassion for the less fortunate. As a result of such incidents as FRAC blowing the whistle on the Reagan Administration’s plan to include ketchup as a vegetable in evaluating the nutritional value of school lunches (Imig 1998), the Administration found that the label mean spirited was beginning to stick in the public mind and they backed off their more extreme proposals. In addition, intergovernmental and public provider groups were able to communicate some of the pragmatic consequences for states and localities of various retrenchment proposals. In sum, the impact of retrenchment was considerably blunted by the activities of these groups. DIRECT VS. SURROGATE REPRESENTATION Direct representation of the poor in the social policy interest group system would mean that it would contain a significant number of interest groups with a membership base that included large numbers of lower income persons (not exclusively low income, since the involvement of skilled, educated middle class organizers would remain important). In evaluating whether or not the presence of such groups would add to the influence of the coalition supporting an active social policy role for the federal government, one must remember that the size and distribution of membership is only one of the interest group resources listed as important in chapter 2. There have

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been many examples of policy decisions in which groups with considerable grassroots support have lost out in the legislative struggle to well-financed lobbyists representing a much smaller constituency. For example, a recent story in the Washington Post describes the role of lobbyists for the beer industry in defeating a proposal backed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) to include anti-alcohol abuse messages in the government’s antidrug campaign directed at youth (Eilperin 1999:12). MADD has dedicated volunteers all over the country (many of whom have lost family members to drunk drivers), and it benefits from very positive symbolism in terms of public perceptions. However, the beer industry donates thousands of dollars to congressional candidates, and this gave it sufficient leverage to exclude the nation’s most prevalent legal drug from the campaign. Part of the disadvantage of grassroots interest groups stems directly from the free rider problem. Even though a grass roots group may mobilize tens or hundreds of thousands of voters, their supporters are inevitably only a fraction of the groups potential supporters. This means that even a group whose position enjoys majority support among the population can still be portrayed and perceived as just another “special interest.” For example, polls consistently show large popular majorities in favor of stricter gun control, and Sarah Brady’s group, Handgun Control, Inc., has done a better job of mobilizing these sentiments than any previous interest group. However, because it has only a few thousand members, it can still be viewed as a small “faction” arrayed against another “faction,” represented by the National Rifle Association (Spitzer 1995). In other words, the potential support of a majority or significant minority of the population does not automatically confer greater legitimacy on a group in the legislative struggle. However, the effects of free riders may not be the most serious problem faced by mass based interest groups. A more serious problem may be the establishment of an electoral connection. Members of Congress and the President naturally listen most carefully to those segments of the population that they believe will have a significant impact on their electoral success. Other groups may get a polite audience, and they may be taken seriously when they call attention to significant problems. However, they are always at a disadvantage vis-à-vis groups that can present themselves as a credible asset or liability in the electoral process. At some risk of oversimplification, it may be argued that there are two basic ways for an interest group to make this electoral connection. One is through financial contributions and the other is through the delivery of the votes of its supporters. In many ways, the financial connection is more straightforward. The beer manufacturers’ lobby may not represent many voters, but they are willing to provide funding to members of Congress who desperately need it for their ever more costly campaigns. The representative or senator can see, in his or her swelling campaign coffers,

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the direct consequences of derailing threats to these kinds of special interests, particularly when it is on an issue that has not drawn a lot of attention from the public as a whole. From their thorough literature review of systematic studies of the influence of campaign contributions by interest groups on legislative outcomes, Baumgartner and Leech (1998) conclude that these studies have produced inconsistent findings as to the extent of their impact. However, they attribute this inconsistency in part to the focus of these studies on roll call voting, rather than on decisions made earlier in the legislative process. Campaign contributions may lead the member of Congress to exert influence over the content and the ultimate fate of legislation in more subtle ways than in the final public showdown over its passage. However, the voter connection remains even more problematic than the financial connection. It is not enough for an interest group to point to the thousands of voters who belong to it in order to present a credible threat to a lawmaker’s re-election. The group must also demonstrate (1) that significant numbers of its members will turn out to vote; and, (2) that their choice of a candidate will be motivated primarily by his or her position on the particular issue with which the group is concerned. Because voters’ decisions are notorious for their lack of issue content, and because even those voters motivated by issues may be cross-pressured by their support or opposition for a candidate’s stands on different issues, it is very difficult for an interest group to show conclusively that its members will affect an electoral outcome. One reason the National Rifle Association has been such a powerful lobby is that many lawmakers believe, rightly or wrongly, that NRA members really will cast their ballots primarily on the basis of this issue (Spizter 1995). Although the present work has not directly explored the electoral connections of social policy groups, a glance at the nature of the groups active in the social policy arena suggests that these connections are unlikely to be very strong. Public provider groups do represent substantial numbers of voters. However, most of them are prevented from electoral activity by federal, state and local versions of the Hatch Act, which forbid open support of candidates or parties by public employees. Additional restrictions on political activity have been placed on the agencies composing such groups by provisions in various federal grant programs. This does not prevent them from engaging in advocacy through testimony before Congress, because they can always characterize their activity as “providing information” rather than as “lobbying.” In contrast, campaign contributions or campaign organizing work by such groups would be a blatant violation of such laws and regulations. Many public interest groups have a limited membership, or no members at all. These groups can indirectly mobilize voters through publicizing

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social problems or abuses by public officials, as the Reagan Administration feared might happen with FRAC’s publicizing the “ketchup incident.” However, this is not the same as directly delivering motivated members to the polls, because public concerns raised by such tactics are usually shortlived. In addition, even those public interest groups that have substantial membership bases are constrained from overtly partisan activity by the desire to maintain the Section 501 (c)(3) tax deductible status of donations to the organization. They often establish nominally separate organizational entities, to which donations are not tax deductible, in order to engage more directly in the electoral process. Intergovernmental groups are composed of elected as well as appointed officials, but they are informally constrained by the bipartisan nature of their membership. Groups like the National League of Cities, the National Governors’ Association, the National Association of Counties, and the National Conference of State Legislators adopt consensus positions that can be supported by both Republican and Democratic office holders within each group. Any perception that these groups were overtly tilting their positions towards one party or the other would quickly destroy their internal consensus, although each group’s positions may, at one time or another, be de facto closer to Democratic or to Republican proposals. This leaves only private providers and generalist groups as potentially unrestricted electoral actors. There are large interest groups with large resources in both these categories, and many of these groups have long traditions of active electoral involvement. However, most generalist groups have numerous issue priorities, and they are unlikely to deliver votes solely on the basis of social policy issues. Private providers, too, generally place their highest priority on public policies that affect their overall industry. They may put in a favorable word on various programs in congressional testimony, but social policy issues are not central to their concerns. Because the financial resources of the poor are very limited, the only way they can make the electoral connection is through their votes. There are millions of low income persons, scattered widely across the United States. They could potentially be swing voters in quite a few states and districts, and even in presidential races, as urban working class voters were in post-New Deal presidential elections. However, as discussed in chapter 3, their level of political participation is substantially lower than the already low average for eligible voters as a whole. Given the limitations of the groups that currently advocate for the poor, the creation of grassroots organizations that could credibly claim to mobilize these voters would definitely add substantially to the clout of the coalitions that advocate expansion of the federal social policy role. Bringing this about is, of course, an incredibly difficult task.

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MOBILIZING THE POOR In addressing the question of how to mobilize the poor, one must first establish a baseline by asking how the typical middle class citizen is mobilized. The immediate answer is that millions are not. Over half the eligible voters do not bother to vote in any election, and many of those who stay home are not poor. Other forms of participation are limited to even smaller percentages of the adult population, and are skewed even more heavily to upper status citizens. It is true that large majorities of Americans belong to at least one voluntary association, but the most frequently joined organizations are largely, or exclusively, non-political (Scholzman and Tierney 1986; Verba, Scholzman and Brady 1995; Salamon 1992). Of those middle class citizens who do become involved, many are mobilized through their occupational roles. Professional and trade associations combine material, solidary and purposive benefits in one package. They offer training and networking for career advancement plus defense of the occupation’s core values. Their dues are often paid by the individual’s employer and, if not, they are tax deductible as a business expense. When one of these interest groups takes a position on a public policy issue, it can count on a solid, if not extremely large, membership base, one which is often willing to make substantial financial contributions to the group’s goals. With regard to “causes” outside of occupational concerns, much middle class interest group mobilization is “checkbook” mobilization, that is, limited to making financial contributions to support the group. As noted earlier, this kind of mobilization is successful among middle class citizens because: 1. They have sufficient formal education to relate meaningfully to national and global issues. 2. They have surplus resources to make financial contributions if they so choose. 3. They understand and accept their instrumental relationship to group elites and professional staff. In other words, they are willing to pay these people to represent their interests. Of course, middle class mobilization is not limited exclusively to check book mobilization. Many middle class citizens are also directly involved in grassroots organizations, at the local level and, less frequently, at the state and national levels. The research on participation by Verba, Scholzman, and Brady (1995) suggests that social linkages are very important in stimulating such participation. Most of their activist respondents report

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that their activism began simply by someone asking them to become involved. They had social connections through work and community organizations that led naturally to their becoming more involved in causes about which they care deeply. The poor generally lack the attributes that enable middle class citizens to become mobilized in the ways just described. They are only loosely tied to the labor force and almost never in the skilled positions that generate professional organizations. Because they have less formal education, they may not be tuned into national and international issues, and they have very limited surplus resources to support national organizations, even if they were attuned to such issues. They have also learned to distrust group leaders that make sweeping claims to represent their interests, and they often lack the social connections to the larger community that would draw them naturally into greater activism. For all of these reasons, direct grassroots organization is essential if the poor are to be politically mobilized. They will respond best to organizations based on direct face to face ties and immediate issues. Through participation, they may learn to relate to broader national issues, but the starting point is, as the saying goes, “up close and personal.” When considering how lower income citizens might be mobilized, three alternative bases of political mobilization come immediately to mind: as participants in the workplace, as clients, and as neighborhood residents. The social policy literature emphasizes the traditional source of working class power in industrial societies, union organization in the work place. Historically, when unions have gained organizational leverage in the economic arena, they have been able to translate it into political power (although the path to political influence is not smooth or uniform; see Skocpol 1995). Even when the poor are not directly represented by unions, they gain indirectly from union concerns with economic security for their members. However, as discussed in chapter 3, workplace organizations have been in decline in most segments of the workforce. It has always been true that the more disadvantaged the workers, the harder they are to organize, but the organizational decline has affected more than just the lowest paid and least skilled workers. In the long run, a resurgence of occupationally based political activity by working class organizations may be necessary to move social policy back in a progressive direction. In the short run, other organizational bases may be more promising. The poor have also, from time to time, been organized as clients of public programs. Clientele-based organizations are common throughout the interest group universe, many of them having been actively promoted by the agencies administering their programs as a way to strengthen political support (Long 1949; Walker 1991). Therefore, it would seem a logical extension of this norm to mobilize the poor as clients. In this view,

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the middle class professionals running both public and non-profit agencies would be motivated by their own self-interest to provide their skills and resources to assist client organizations in getting established. They would already possess the contact and knowledge of the process to help client organizations become part of the policy network. However, there are serious problems involved in trying to organize the poor in their role as clients. At the root of many of these problems is the fact that, unlike the clients of various middle class and corporate benefit programs, the client status of the poor carries a social stigma. In our individualistic society, people are not supposed to rely on the government for assistance, and, if they do, it should only be for a short time. According to the prevailing view, receipt of public assistance is not something to be proud of, and it should not be claimed as an inherent right Therefore, it was politically unproductive, even in the relatively expansive atmosphere of the late 1960s, for welfare client groups to claim benefits as a right. To the typical middle class citizen, this amounts to a claim that one is entitled to a perpetual handout. In the testimony surrounding Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan, groups claiming welfare as a right contrasted sharply to most of the active groups, who were talking about work incentives and other ways to keep persons off welfare. In addition, the poor themselves internalize society’s negative view of welfare clients. Bailis (1974) reports that organizers for the Massachusetts Welfare Rights Organization found that many of the poor were reluctant to admit publicly that they were receiving assistance, let alone stand up and aggressively assert their client status in the political process. More prosperous groups have found positive symbols to associate with their dependence on government for assistance, such as, for example, farm groups’ use of “saving the family farm” as a justification for price supports and other aid to farmers. Some specialized groups of the poor, such as those who are elderly or disabled, may be able to call upon such positive symbols, but, for most of the poor, to be a client is to be looked down upon, and to be involved in an organization of clients is to call attention to one’s stigmatized status. Another problem with client-based organization relates to the complex, interdependent relationship that clients have with the agencies that serve them. On the one hand, both agency and client have a common interest in maintaining or expanding social programs. On the other hand, social welfare agencies often have a bureaucratic, social control agenda in relation to their clients. They are inclined to regulate their clients’ behavior tightly; first, for the internal purpose of maintaining orderly administration of their programs; and, second, as Piven and Cloward (1971) suggest, to carry out the desire of those in power to keep the poor quiet and out of sight. Another way to look at it is that the agency

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performs a mediating function, balancing the needs of its clients vs. the demands of the larger society that these clients be kept under firm control and not given “excessive” benefits (Hays 1982). This relationship has the potential to create a political situation disadvantageous to program survival. Some of the most dramatic examples of the political organization of the poor have been directed against the social program administrators that were seen as the immediate source of their frustrations or as having immediate control of the resources they needed. Examples include the organization of tenants in public housing (Meehan 1979; Monti 1993) and the organization of welfare recipients in the various local chapters of the National Welfare Rights Organization (Bailis 1974). The problem is that, while clients may be effective in getting some demands met by administrative agencies, the unrest and instability within these programs tends to de-legitimize them even further in the eyes of middle class citizens. The program administrators may be seen as incompetent for allowing the protest to occur, or the clients (as in Dickens’ Oliver Twist) may been seen as greedy for wanting more than the meager portion they are already receiving. Given this political atmosphere, higher administrative and elected officials may respond to disruption by curtailing programs, rather than by finding the resources to meet the clients’ demands. Bailis’ (1974) study shows that this is exactly what happened in Massachusetts in response to aggressive client demands. For all these reasons, then, organizations based on the client status of the poor have severe limitations as a means of mobilizing them politically. Program providers and clients are natural allies in many respects, and since provider organizations are already plugged into the national interest group system, grassroots groups that ally with them may have better access to that system. However, organizations representing the poor need a broader base of support and legitimacy than is provided by the status of client. In the end, client status rests on the notion that the individual has deficiencies which society must correct. The poor need a mode of organization that is able to recognize and develop the positive capacities of low income persons. This leads one to consider the third mode of organization; that based upon geography. There is an extensive literature on neighborhood-based organization of the poor, which deals in detail with its problems and complexities (Alinsky 1971; Stoecker 1997; Woliver 1993; Fisher 1984). It is beyond the scope of this work to deal with the issue in comparable depth. However, since the issue of local organization of the poor ties in so closely with the possibilities of representation of the poor at the national level, an overview of the problems it encounters is essential. These problems may be roughly categorized into problems internal to low income neighborhoods and problems external to these neighborhoods.

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Any neighborhood organization, whether of the middle class or of the poor, faces the free rider problem at the local level. Residents may or may not be strongly invested in their neighborhood surroundings, and, even if they do care, they may try to enjoy the benefits that organization brings without sharing its cost burden. However, neighborhood organizations in lower income areas face unique problems, which are related to the characteristics of the poor as potential political participants discussed in chapter 3. They may be briefly summarized as follows: 1. Even though they are local in nature, neighborhood organizations consume surplus time and resources that are in short supply among the poor. 2. Cynicism and despair are widespread among lower income persons. These attitudes are logical responses to a situation in which one has little control over one’s life, but they are obstacles to mobilizing the resources that are present. 3. Lower income persons may be temporarily mobilized around immediate, concrete issues, but it is hard to translate this into longterm, organizational effort. If they are victorious on short term issues, the urgency of the organizing effort becomes less and they are pulled back to their other concerns. If they are defeated on short term issues, it reinforces their cynicism. 4. Middle class organizers can bring much needed skills and resources to organizing the poor, but, given the initial inequality in resources, it is all too easy for these organizers to take over the program, with neighborhood residents slipping back into the passive role. Genuine empowerment is a long, difficult road that many organizers lack the time and patience to carry out. 5. For the best and brightest in a low income neighborhood, the option of personal escape through upward mobility may be more attractive than staying in the neighborhood and trying to rescue it. Some critics of neighborhood based organizing have, in fact, suggested that, by encouraging those with leadership qualities among the poor to identify with their poverty status and stay in destructive social environments, such organizing may be doing them a disservice as individuals. The work of McAdams (1982) on the development of the civil rights movement suggests that even communities that are severely disadvantaged and excluded (such as African Americans in the south) can draw on their own resources to create a movement, if they have relatively dense social networks within their own group. These networks facilitate communication and provide natural leaders to sustain the movement. In contemporary communities, some low income areas contain well-

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structured communal relationships, while others suffer from severe social disorganization. In disorganized areas, building up such social networks around common community problems may be a necessary, albeit time consuming preliminary step to organizing the poor for political action. They represent the creation of the kind of social capital within low income communities that many social critics say is lacking in the community at large. The external obstacles to organizing the poor are both economic and political. How one views the economic obstacles depends on one’s view of the fundamental nature of the capitalist system. In the classical Marxist view, the owners of the means of production are dependent on the exploitation of the poor in order to accumulate wealth. Therefore, any conflict between rich and poor is essentially zero-sum. Short of a complete revolution, the best that the poor can hope for is the exact concessions from economic elites by raising the costs of their doing business through work stoppages, protests, or riots. In the contemporary capitalist system, there are certainly zero-sum aspects to the relationship between the poor and economic elites. Global competition has put great pressure on corporations to cut labor costs, and their resistance to both higher wages and social benefits has grown accordingly. The increased global mobility of investment means that, rather than confront the demands of the working class or poor, and enter into negotiations, businesses can simply pack up and leave the community, shifting jobs to other areas of the country or to other countries where workers have less leverage. In addition, economic elites can usually rely on a significant segment of the middle class to support their resistance to the demands of the poor, especially when these demands require that tax dollars be spent. The increased global mobility of capital has lead some scholars to conclude that, in order to survive and prosper, a local community must become, in Harvey Molotch’s term, a “growth machine” (Molotch 1976). All aspects of local public policy must be oriented to making the community attractive to mobile capital, and local elites prosper to the extent that they are successful in the competition for new investment. Policies that redistribute wealth by providing benefits and services to the poor harm the community’s competitive position and are to be minimized and avoided. This view lends support to the notion of a zero-sum relationship between the poor and the rest of the community (Peterson 1981). However, other scholars, while not questioning the importance of economic competition between localities, argue that communities have some flexibility in how they respond to this economic imperative. According to urban regime theorists, the composition of the local network

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of power and decision-making shapes the responses that a community makes to issues of economic growth and influences the distribution of the benefits of that growth (Stone 1989). This flexibility presupposes that the economic system generates enough surplus resources that choices can be made as to who gets to share in that surplus. According to this view, if the poor are organized on a neighborhood basis sufficiently to make themselves a part of the local decision-making network (or regime) then they may be able to claim a share of the surplus in the form of benefits to their neighborhoods. To put it another way, the political economy is not the strict zero-sum game envisioned by Marx, but has sufficient slack resources to allow it to respond to demands for redistribution that are put forward forcefully and effectively. In addition, there is room within the capitalist system for economic elites to take different views of their self-interest. Throughout the history of aid to the poor, there have always been voices within more privileged groups arguing that it is in the enlightened self-interest of a capitalist society to reduce the extremes of deprivation through non-market reallocation of goods and services. Such expenditures can either be viewed as an antidote to potential disorder and other social costs caused by deprivation or as an investment in human capital, in which the poor are enabled to be more productive members of society. Although this has generally been a minority view, some of the economic elites who are active in a community may embrace this point of view and may support a reallocation of resources towards the needs of the poor. The research of Jack Walker (1991) and others has shown how critical the contributions of wealthy individuals with sympathetic views are to the start-up of progressive interest groups at the national level. Anyone who has been involved in local community affairs knows that the same dynamic applies at the local level as well. However, even if one acknowledges that the political economy allows a community the flexibility to respond to the demands of the poor, there are still formidable political obstacles to getting those demands recognized. Elected officials who have built political coalitions that exclude the poor have a strong incentive to keep the poor passive and powerless, in order to avoid upsetting their carefully constructed power bases. Local administrators, too, often want to avoid new demands or disruptions by keeping the poor passive, as noted in the discussion of client relationships. In addition, in ethnically diverse communities, racism is typically a potent factor in the exclusion of those substantial segments of the poor drawn from people of color. Moreover, when representatives of the poor are granted a seat at the table in various decision-making bodies, they do not come as equals. Others at the table control significant financial or organizational

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resources. Representatives of the poor control only the support of citizens within their neighborhoods, and that control may be imperfect. Their lack of bargaining power increases the chances that they will be co-opted by political and economic elites. They then become spokespersons for decision-makers in dealing with the poor, rather than vice versa. The difficulties of genuinely including the poor in local decision-making are clearly illustrated by Larry Bennett’s (1998) case study of decisionmaking regarding the redesign of public housing in Chicago. As part of the national movement to lower residential density and diversify income in public housing projects that was discussed in chapter 5, public officials in Chicago made plans to demolish several large, high rise public housing complexes and replace them with lower density units serving a broader mix of incomes. The rhetoric was communitarian; that is, the stated goal was to create a new community with active citizens sharing mutual rights and responsibilities. As part of this rhetoric, they promised to include current public housing residents in the planning process and consult them closely on the project design. Bennett’s analysis found that, in reality, there were many powerful community forces shaping the plan, including the Chicago Housing Authority and local real estate developers, and that the residents were presented with the plan as a fait accompli, which they had little choice but to endorse (Bennett 1998). Because of numerous experiences such as this one, Randy Stoecker (1997) is very skeptical of models of empowerment of the poor that involve close collaboration between the poor and members of the local power structure. He argues that the take over of joint decision-making by political and economic elites is almost inevitable, given their greater control of resources and the fact that they are plugged into local networks of influence. Stoecker believes that low income neighborhoods must maintain independent organizations that are willing to engage in confrontation and conflict when it is necessary to focus the attention of the powers that be on their problems. This outsider strategy has been strongly supported by other scholars as the poor’s best option for gaining real leverage (Piven and Cloward 1979). However, in spite of the need for the poor to use outsider strategies to command attention to their problems, the vision offered by communitarians and advocates of a civil society is a compelling one. They envision a local community in which active, engaged citizens of all races and classes engage in dialogue and develop solutions to problems of mutual concern. There are huge chasms of fear, mistrust and stereotyping between people of different races and classes, and only through improved dialogue and mutual involvement can those chasms be bridged. While the rhetoric of community may at times lend itself to manipulation by those with a non-inclusive vision, unless the chasms between groups are bridged

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by a genuine vision of the civic community in which all voices are invited to be heard, it is doubtful that the poor will ever receive more than token inclusion in the local power structure, because inclusion in the informal networks that make decisions in most communities requires a certain level of trust. In spite of his emphasis on confrontation as an essential element in empowering the poor, Stoecker acknowledges that confrontations that call attention to problems must be followed by the establishment of structures for mutual problem-solving if the needs of lower income communities are to be consistently and effectively addressed. THE LOCAL/NATIONAL LINKAGE Having made the argument that direct participation by the poor would strengthen the influence of the groups representing their interests at the national level and that face to face, grassroots organization of the poor at the local community level is the firmest basis for such involvement, it is now necessary to show how linkages between strong local groups and the national political process might be forged or strengthened. As the earlier discussion suggested, there are two main types of linkages. The first are what might be called policy connections. These involve the flow of ideas and proposals from local groups to national organizations and from national organizations to decision-makers in the executive and legislative branches. These connections also involve the flow of information and technical assistance from national organizations to community groups. The second type are electoral connections. These involve the flow of voter support via political parties and local political coalitions to candidates seeking national office. Both the policy connection and the electoral connection are based on mobilization of supporters. Although the data presented in chapters 4 and 5 suggest that groups without strong membership bases may be listened to, groups with broader support will almost always get a more respectful hearing. However, as noted earlier, even groups with large and dedicated membership bases may not carry a great deal of clout without the electoral connection. Therefore, this is a separate stream of influence that reinforces the policy stream. Protest and disruption may be necessary, from time to time, to reinforce both of these connections. Many of the interest groups that are currently active in the national social policy arena actively seek to strengthen their grassroots policy connections. A perusal of their web pages, which are a major form of communication between them and the public, suggests an ongoing concern with mobilizing people at the local level to support their activities and to reinforce their leverage with members of Congress. They may, of course, exaggerate their concern with the grassroots in order to enhance their

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image in public statements such as web page materials. However, it is possible to discern how sincere their efforts are by the concrete examples of interaction with local groups that they include. Based on these data, their interactions appear to range along a continuum of intensity. The most basic level of interaction is simply to communicate with local groups about national issues that affect them and to try to mobilize local citizens to express their views to Congress. For example, Bread for the World, because it is a religiously based organization, asks local churches to sponsor letter writing campaigns on hunger issues. It provides information on legislation currently before Congress and guidelines on how citizens can write brief, but effective letters (www.bread.org). This approach relies on the fact that there are already concerned citizens out there, linked to established organizations such as churches, that can help stimulate their involvement. The role of the national group is to tap into that concern and target it towards national issues. The group brings to the relationship its detailed knowledge of what is going on in Washington, but offers little else in the way of support to the local group. (Bread for the World may, in fact, engage in other kinds of supportive activities, but this is the kind most in evidence on its web page.) Other groups provide more active support for local citizens groups, in addition to mobilizing them on national issues. Groups like the Children’s Foundation and the Housing Assistance Council provide training and technical assistance to local groups. In the case of the Children’s Foundation, their major national role has been to lobby on food issues, but they have also made child care a priority, and they offer training sessions for family childcare providers (www.childrensfoundation.net). In the case of the Housing Assistance Council, they provide seed loans for rural housing projects and they accompany it with training on how to establish and operate a community housing development organization (www.ruralhome.org). Other housing organizations, such as the National Coalition for the Homeless (nch.ari.net) and the National Low Income Housing Coalition (www.nlihc.org) stress similar strategies. The two types of relationships just mentioned are the most prevalent, but a few groups move beyond them towards a more intense focus on local community development and neighborhood capacity building. The National Housing Institute publishes a magazine called Shelterforce, which is primarily devoted to articles on strategies for mobilizing low income neighborhoods to deal with the provision of affordable housing and other problems (www.nhi.org). In these articles, community organizers from around the country analyze the organizing struggles in which they have engaged, and describe strategies that they have found to be successful. Similar in their focus on local capacity building are ACORN, Center for Community Change, the National Committee for Community Economic

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Development, and National People’s Action. Interestingly enough, the latter groups make regular appearances at congressional hearings but are not among the very most active in testifying. This relative de-emphasis on testimony may reflect a subtle shift in the groups’ perspective from seeing local mobilization as a facet of the group’s national activities towards seeing national activities as an extension of their involvement with local groups. All interest groups are constrained in the amount of such activities they can carry out by the limitations on their resources. Most of these groups have substantial budgets, but many of their dollars are needed to support the group’s national activities. Professional and trade associations can charge their members substantial fees for their technical and educational services, but groups serving community organizations for low income people cannot, because these local groups typically operate on even more of a financial shoestring than the national groups. Such activities are labor intensive, and required highly trained staff to carry out. This makes them costly, even if staff are dedicated enough to work for lower salaries. Another set of obstacles to the formation of successful local/national policy linkages is derived from the current outlook of both decision-makers and certain segments of the public towards the role of the national government in social policy. The dominant political rhetoric of the 1980s and 1990s denies or denigrates the role of the national government as an effective instrument for addressing social problems. Action by local governments or community based non-profits is seen as a substitute for national action, rather than as part of a partnership between national and local entities. In this atmosphere, claims made by local groups on national resources are de-legitimized, both in the eyes of some local coalition members and those to whom demands are addressed at the national level. The self-interest of powerful economic actors in delegitimizing and weakening the national government’s ability to reallocate resources is obvious. The higher levels of regulation and progressive taxation required to sustain these efforts are extremely distasteful to the holders of significant wealth, and their distaste is shared by many upper middle class citizens as well. Given the competition for investment in which states and localities find themselves, it is much easier for economic elites to utilize their leverage to restrain such activities at the state and local level than at the national level. However, there is more to the issue of centralization vs. decentralization than the conflict over resources. Concerns over federal involvement go beyond conservative resistance to the redistribution of resources and touch on issues of empowerment that are also the concern of progressive forces. In the past, the federal government has often acted on social problems through the creation of large, complex, bureaucratic structures, issuing

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multiple rules governing every aspect of program administration. This approach discourages the creative dialogue and problem-solving that can emerge at the local level and that is probably a necessary element in successful solutions to the problems of the poor, as well as many other community problems. In the 1960s and early 1970s, there was a strong progressive bias against local control of programs, because of power of local economic elites just mentioned and because local governments often seemed to entrench the worst social prejudices and exclusionary practices. This bias was reflected in much of the testimony from the early 1970s that was analyzed in chapter 5. As federal support was withdrawn in the 1980s, progressive groups of necessity had to explore ways to implement social policy at the local level and with local resources. They discovered that it is possible to work out local solutions that are creative and are empowering for lower income citizens, in spite of the formidable social and political obstacles that exist at the local level. Therefore, the stage was set for a new paradigm of social policy, in which great autonomy for program design and administration would exist at the local level, while resources to support local efforts would flow from the federal level. Some liberals and conservatives might question whether true local autonomy can exist when the national government controls the purse strings. However, while it is true that federal dollars inevitably come with some rules and restrictions, recent experience suggests that programs can still provide meaningful flexibility to local officials and citizens to make decisions about the way that programs are run. The current problem is, of course, that federal resources continue to shrink, so that the national government is really not holding up its redistributive end of the relationship. Locally run efforts, such as CDCs in the housing area, have become associated with catch as catch can assembly of limited federal, state, local and private resources to accomplish limited goals on a shoestring. (Goetz 1993) The experience of these local groups suggests that it is disingenuous for conservatives to argue that, if the federal government steps out of the picture, the poor will be aided effectively by states, localities or private charity alone. It is revealing that many of the national organizations representing local, non-profit community-based groups are the strongest advocates of a continued flow of federal resources as an essential element in their success. The national government is the only level of government with sufficient leverage in the national and international political economy to engage in the significant redistribution of resources that is necessary if the United States is to address the many problems faced by lower income persons. A constructive blend of federal and local ideas and resources will not be achieved unless political power flows upward from strong local

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organizations to national organizations that can make effective claims on the national government for resources. The data presented in this work suggest that only organizations that can mobilize sufficient resources to be an ongoing presence in the national policy-making process can play an effective role in shaping national legislative decisions. If such national organizations are based on genuine, grassroots mobilization, then they are unlikely to make demands that will compromise the autonomy of the local groups that make up their political base. They will seek instead to secure a steady, adequate flow of national resources that will enable them to be more effective in addressing the problems that they have defined as important. In addition, because they do have strong grassroots support, these national groups will be able to exert more leverage within Congress, as its members recognize that they are speaking for a substantial, mobilized segment of the population. INTEREST GROUPS AND THE ELECTORAL CONNECTION Among many scholars who have analyzed the political role of the poor, there appears to be an assumption that an electoral connection for interest groups representing the poor is not a viable prospect. In order for such a connection to exist, one not only must overcome the ingrained apathy and cynicism of low income persons but must also find potential candidates for office that see incorporating low income voters into their electoral coalition as a viable strategy for winning office. These two factors act in concert to reinforce each other. The poor will be unlikely to become active without leaders to inspire them, yet political entrepreneurs will not be attracted to groups of voters that they view as unlikely to participate. In addition, there will be other political leaders who will see it to their advantage to discourage the participation of the poor in the political process, and to appeal to middle class voters by making the poor into scapegoats for all of society’s problems. The apparently low likelihood of active electoral participation by the poor is another reason why some scholars place great stress on the importance of outsider strategies such as street protests as the main source of political influence for the poor (Piven and Cloward 1979; Bailis 1974). Because the poor are not part of insider networks of political influence, and because they are too alienated from the political process to vote, they can only be mobilized by groups advocating protest tactics, and they can only hope to bring about change by creating disruption. Interest groups would appear to have no role in this strategy, because they rely on an ability to make at least some insider connections with members of Congress. According to Douglas Imig, advocates for the homeless turned to street protests when the access of groups representing the poor to public

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officials was greatly curtailed during the Reagan Administration. Because their protests struck a sympathetic chord with a large segment of the public, they were able to maintain pressure on the President and Congress to act on the problem of homelessness. The passage of the McKinney Homeless Assistance Act in 1987, a time when very little progressive legislation was being enacted, is, in his view, evidence of the effectiveness of this strategy (Imig 1998). However, Imig’s analysis allows for the possibility of a dynamic interaction between interest group activity and street protest, not just a substitution of one for the other. In local politics, there has often been a tacit or explicit alliance between radical groups who are causing trouble on the streets and moderate groups who are willing to negotiate solutions with those in power. The moderate groups use the existence of the radical groups as leverage, since decision-makers want to solve the problem of the ongoing disruption and protest, but the local power structure feels more comfortable negotiating with individuals that they perceive as moderate and reasonable. Imig’s discussion suggests that such an interaction did in fact take place on the homeless issue. Active national groups continued to use insider strategies such as staff contacts and testimony to work with Congress on national homeless legislation, while the tent cities in Lafayette Park (across from the White House), operated by Mitch Snyder’s Committee for Creative Non-Violence, kept up public attention and pressure on the issue (Imig 1998). Of course, the success of this whole dynamic was dependent, in part, on the existence of at least some decision-makers who were sympathetic to the groups’ cause. In the late 1980s, Congress had a Democratic majority with the Senate just having been returned to Democratic hands in 1986. Many Democrats had both political and ideological incentives to dramatize the homeless issue. The responsiveness of at least some of those in power to the issue, in turn, helped to energize both the street protesters and the lobbyists, since there was at least some hope of change. If the same protest activity were to take place now, with a Republican majority in Congress, it is questionable whether it would achieve the same results. Since few Republicans have anything to gain politically from being responsive to such issues, and since many of them are strongly ideologically opposed to expanding the government’s role in assisting the poor, one can predict that they would simply ignore both the street protests and the lobbyists for the poor. Thus, one is compelled to turn back to the electoral connection as a vital element in achieving meaningful political influence. Even if one were able to establish the kind of positive feedback loop between local and national action described earlier, it is extremely difficult to integrate an electoral element into this process. There are several important obstacles to such an integration. First, electoral involvement by

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large groups of voters inevitably entails an element of partisanship. Interest groups whose main electoral connection is financial can, in many cases, avoid overt partisanship, by allocating funds to members of both parties on the basis of support for the narrow issues affecting the group. However, popularly based groups, in order to stabilize their influence must become part of a national electoral coalition, and political parties are still an important vehicle in creating such coalitions, in spite of their weakened influence on the voters. In contrast, at both the local and the national level, citizen interest groups rely on issue-based mobilization. They attract supporters on the basis of a common concern with an issue, or a collection of related issues, not ongoing loyalty to a party. It may be tacitly recognized that certain interest groups attract mostly liberal Democrats, while others attract conservative Republicans, but the groups remain officially non-partisan. At the national level, this officially non-partisan stance provides interest groups with an opportunity to exert leverage on members of Congress of both parties, since they are not automatically recognized by one party or the other as being part of the enemy camp. At the local level, avoidance of partisan politics can be even more important, because groups are appealing to the civic mindedness of a range of public and private community leaders, and any hint of a group’s being political, in the partisan, electoral sense of that term, can quickly alienate key supporters. Secondly, a segment of the potential middle class supporters for assistance to the poor may be alienated by the very process of the politicization of demands for such assistance. The overt attitudes of noblesse oblige that accompanied middle class aid to the poor in the nineteenth century have become less common, but there is still a sense in which most socially concerned middle class citizens view themselves as voluntarily bringing their resources to the table to assist persons in need. The notion that the poor should aggressively demand such assistance, utilizing the electoral process to make those demands effective, runs contrary to this middle class notion of voluntary sharing. Political demands for assistance also suggest an ongoing relationship of assistance between the poor and the government, whereas many middle class citizens believe that aid should be a temporary intervention in the normally selfsufficient life of a household. Finally, in the current political milieu, it is hard for politically minded citizens of any class background to imagine a meaningful connection between the concerns and needs that are important to them and the national political process. Even if a coalition of citizens could make the transition from a nominally non-partisan issue or service oriented group to an organization with overtly political goals, how could such a group hope to have an impact in the multi-million dollar, media dominated campaigns

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that put the President and members of Congress into office? If candidates only meet with local groups to generate a photo op for the evening news, rather than to genuinely solicit their support, then how can such groups even imagine themselves with any influence over the outcome of an election? Despite the overwhelming bias of the current political process against grass roots organization, it is still possible to imagine a candidate running for office through an entirely different strategy than by solicitation of large donations to launch a media campaign for name recognition. This strategy would involve developing sophisticated mechanisms for direct communication with voters. Decentralized electronic media such as the Internet could be utilized to attract supporters, but, in the end, some form of direct, face to face interaction among voters would be necessary. It could involve recruitment of supporters through informal meetings between the candidate and small groups of neighbors, leading to larger meetings within neighborhoods. Organized community groups that are currently focused on services or issues would have to be involved, but they would have to provide indirect support through parallel organizations, so as not to disrupt their other relationships with the community or violate their technically non-partisan stance. Such a campaign could actually be fueled by the disgust and alienation that many voters feel for regular campaigns. Volunteers would be energized by the fact that the candidate was trying to connect with them in a meaningful, personal way. Like any other radical notion of politics, the idea of a candidacy for office that was genuinely based on support from grassroots citizens groups will have to be pursued by individuals who are willing to be viewed as tilting at windmills by others who are active in the political process. Such a campaign would probably only achieve initial success in situations where some special set of circumstances weakened the normal competitors for office. (One thinks, for example, of the success of the grassroots campaign in 1992 of Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone, of Minnesota, against a divided Republican Party.) However, American politics has seen many examples of successful local innovations that were quickly diffused throughout the political system. One candidate’s success might stimulate imitation by other candidates who were eager to bypass the normal channels leading to political power. Lest these ideas seem totally quixotic, it must be remembered that grassroots mobilization of poor and working class voters has been an important part of the American political process in the past. The New Deal coalition that gave Democrats majority support in the electorate from 1932 to the early 1970s was based on strategically placed urban party organizations and unions that could get out the vote for Democratic candidates. Local political organizations were often corrupt, but they did

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provide some leverage for less advantaged people in the national electoral process. The use of protest and disruption by the poor or working class (e.g. strikes) was not irrelevant to their electoral power, but stood as a resource that could be used to counterbalance the vast financial resources of more privileged groups. The opening decades of the twenty-first century will be a different world than the one in which these older organizations existed. Changing social and economic conditions, such as the growth of suburbia and the decline of Fordist industrial organization contributed to their demise, as did their own reluctance to open up and incorporate the demands of new groups. New organizations will have to be flexible and creative to adapt to the changing social environment. Progressive coalitions composed of the organized poor and their middle class supporters will probably never represent a majority of the electorate, but they can, perhaps, come to occupy the position of strategic minority in a broad enough coalition that their demands will be heard. It took the massive crisis of the Great Depression to forge the Democrats’ majority coalition, and even then the coalition contained sufficient reactionary elements in its southern wing to subvert much of its progressive agenda (Skocpol 1995). As sad as it may be to contemplate, it may take another severe economic crisis (perhaps this time combined with elements of ecological disaster) to forge a new progressive coalition. The growing income inequality of the 1980s and 1990s has not been sufficient to activate such a coalition. It has led, instead, to increased alienation of lower income voters from the political process. Perhaps this is because the steady prosperity of the last fifteen years enables people to get by and to hope for better things, even though the benefits of this prosperity are much more unequally shared than those of previous eras of economic expansion. Government assistance to the poor should not be the product of crisis but, rather, an integral part of the functioning of an advanced capitalist economy. However, in the United States, it appears to require an economic crisis to generate broad enough coalitions to enact social legislation. In contemplating a new progressive coalition behind community support for the poor, one must honestly admit that the social legislation of the past has often had far less than a progressive impact on the poor, even though this legislation was passed due to the strength of progressive coalitions. Such programs as AFDC and public housing have ghettoized the poor, disrupted their families and communities, and discouraged their reentry into productive roles in society, at the same time that they have provided a vital lifeline of support. Many of the destructive features of these programs have derived from concessions that progressive forces have been compelled to make to gain passage and implementation of the programs, not from the nature of the progressive impulse itself, as many

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conservatives would have us believe. However, careful attention to the structure and implementation of future programs will be necessary in order to avoid some of the glaring mistakes of the past. This is where the integration of local and national organizations into an effective policy subsystem could be important. With a constant flow of information from the grassroots to national interest groups, feedback on the true impact of program implementation would become part of the process. These national interest groups would, in turn, be able to shape the legislative response, so that a steady learning curve about social policy would emerge. Like any other policy system, the demands of this one might have to be restrained occasionally by political leaders in the name of broader national goals. However, the inclusion of such a subsystem in the interest group universe would bring the overall configuration of political forces much closer to the ideal of a representative interest group system that was embraced by the pluralists. One cannot help but admire the dedication and perseverence of the national groups that regularly attempt to bring the needs of the poor to the attention of national decision-makers. These groups have continued their struggle to raise these issues in the face of an increasingly hostile political environment. One can sense their frustration at the obtuse reactions they often elicit from decision-makers, and yet they continue to present data and logical arguments that they hope will sway those in power. And, they have succeeded in at least slowing and modifying the rapid retreat from national concern for the economically disadvantaged. However, these groups may be condemned to fight a rear guard action against retrenchment unless political conditions change fundamentally. In addition, unless political strategies to reconnect both the poor and much of the rest of the citizenry to the political process, the particular drama of declining aid to the poor will be played out against a background of increasing popular disengagement from a process that seems irrelevant to their lives. Bringing about such a political realignment seems impossible, yet one cannot help but imagine along with John Lennon, or, along with Robert Kennedy, “dream of things that never were and say “‘why not?’” It is the nature of radical changes to seem impossible until right before they succeed.

Appendix

Table A-1 Interest Groups Testifying on Housing Assistance: 1970–1997

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Table A-2 Interest Groups Testifying on Food/Nutrition Programs: 1970–1997

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Table A-3 Interest Groups Testifying on Cash Assistance: 1970–1997

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Table A-4 Resources of Most Active Interest Groups: Housing, Food, and Welfare

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Appendix Table A-1 Interest Groups Testifying on Housing Assistance: 1970–1997* By Category and Frequency of Testimony

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243 Table A-2 Interest Groups Testifying on Food/Nutrition Programs: 1970–1997* By Category and Frequency of Testimony

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247 Table A-3 Interest Groups Testifying on Cash Assistance: 1970–1997* By Category and Frequency of Testimony

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251 Table A-4 Resources of Most Active Interest Groups: Housing, Food and Welfare

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Appendix

References

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Index

Affleck, John 162 AFL/CIO 68, 108, 131, 160, 188 African Americans, groups representing 70, 188 aging U.S. Senate Committee on 14, 105 U.S. House Committee on 105 Agriculture Committees, U.S. House and Senate 104, 209 Agriculture, U.S. Department of 73, 206, 208 Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) 14, 50, 56, 89–94, 184–206 State waivers 201 Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workers 132 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) 119, 120, 128 American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) 71, 108, 130, 145, 160, 165 American Bar Association 142 American Dietetics Association (ADA) 128 American Enterprise Institute (AEI) 61, 136, 139, 196

American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) 207 American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) 132 American Institute of Architects 118 American Jewish Committee 69 American Public Human Services Association, see American Public Welfare Association American Public Welfare Association (APWA) 76, 125– 126, 142, 162, 187, 194, 202, 208, 210 American School Food Service Association (ASFSA) 127 Ashley, Thomas 173 Banking Committee, U.S. Senate 104 Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, U.S. House Committee 14, 104, 164 Bennett, Wallace 187 Bentsen, Lloyd 193 Bethune, Mary McCloud 70 Brady, Sarah 216 Bread for the World 112, 135, 142, 201

271

272 Brooke Amendment (to Housing Act of 1937) 182 Brookings Institution 136 Budget Committee, U.S. House 209 Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. 26 Bush, George 169, 176, 179 Business Roundtable 68 Carter, James E. 175, 191, 208 Catholic Charities USA 69, 115 Cato Institute 196 Center for Law and Social Policy 136 Center for Community Change (CCC) 182 Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 136 Center on Social Welfare Policy and Law 136 child support payments, debate over 198 Child Welfare League 135, 162, 186, 188 children’s lobby 93 Children’s Defense Fund 136, 204 Christian Coalition 131 Cisneros, Henry 180 clientele-based organizations 221 Clinton, William J. 179, 181, 192 Coalition for Human Needs 197 Cohesion (in interest groups) 28 communitarians 8, 31, 64 Community Action Programs 55, 56 Community Development Block Grant 89, 169, 174 community development corporations (CDCs) 176

Index Community Nutrition Institute 112, 208 Contract with America 161, 199, 201 Council of State Chambers of Commerce 190 Council of Economic Advisors 56 Council of Large Public Housing Authorities 124, 145, 182 Cranston, Alan 169, 177, 179 Cuomo, Andrew 180 culture of poverty, definition of 200 D’Amato, Alphonse 177 dependency, as an effect of welfare 196 direct vs. surrogate representationby interest groups 215 disabled persons, groups representing 71 distributive policy 24 Dolbeare, Cushing N. 178 Dukakis, Michael 193 Earned Income Tax Credit 185 economic individualism, defined 43 Education and Labor Committee, U.S. House 14 elderly, groups representing 71 Emily’s List 35 Employment Act of 1946 53 empowerment of citizens, role of interest groups in 32, 227– 231 ET program (Massachusetts) 193 Fair, Clinton 188

Index Fair Market Rent, HUD 172 Family cap (1996 welfare proposal) 202 Family Assistance Plan 90, 161, 164, 184–191, 167, 170, 194, 199, 221 Family Support Act of 1988 91, 167, 184, 191, 199 Federal Home Loan Bank Board 172 Federal Housing Administration (FHA) 75, 86, 117, 172 Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) 75, 86, 172 Field Foundation 73 Finance Committee, U.S. Senate 14, 104, 186 FMAC (Freddie Mac) 172 food stamps 14, 56, 82–86, 205–211 Food Research Action Center (FRAC) 73, 74, 136, 160, 207, 210, 215 Food Stamp Act of 1977 167, 206–209 Ford, President Gerald 174– 175, 206 foreign assembly plants, role in labor market 58 Frank, Barney 180 free rider problem 3, 24, 25, 30, 44, 216, 223 Friedman, Milton 170, 185 Full Employment Act of 1945 53 generalist social policy groups 67, 128–134, 208, 210, 218 Gonzalez, Henry 169 Government Affairs Committee, U.S. Senate 14, 105

273 Government Operations Committee, U.S. House 14, 105 Great Depression 51, 57, 86, 235 Greenstein, Robert 204 Gueron, Judith 195 Handgun Control, Inc. 216 Hearnes, Warren 190 Heintz, Stephen B. 194 Heritage Foundation 27, 61, 74, 136, 139, 144, 182, 196, 203 HOME program 179 homelessness 175 HOPE I-HOPE VI programs 179 Housing Act of 1937 183 Housing Act of 1968 169, 171 Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 167, 169 Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Department of Republican proposal to dis-mantle 181 Housing Assistance Council 136 Hudson Institute 203 Hunger and Nutrition, U.S. Senate Committee on 14 Hunger lobby 73 Information resources, of interest groups 28 Institute for Women’s Policy Research 133 Inter-Religious Task Force on U.S. Food Policy 208 interest group, defined 12 interest group liberalism 12, 23, 24 Intergovernmental Groups 77, 137–138, 190, 210, 218

274 iron triangle, definition of 22 Ishtook, Ernest J. 135 Johnson, Lyndon B. 55 Johnson, Dr. Clifford M. 204 Judiciary Committees, U.S. House and Senate 105 Kemp, Jack 176 Kennedy, Joseph 180 labor, interest groups representing 131–132 labor unions 59, 188, 131–132 Lally, Monsignor Francis 208 Lazio, Rick 180 Leiderman, David 162 Locke, John 4 Long, Russell 164, 186 Mack, Connie 180 Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) 136, 195, 201 Martin, George, President, National Association of Home Builders 171 Marx, Karl 5, 47 Material resources (of interest groups) 28 Material incentives (for interest group members) 25 Medicaid 56, 198, 205, 210 Membership base (of interest groups) 29 men, groups representing 133 Mills, Wilbur 186 Morano, Cynthia 197 Morris, William R. 173 Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) 117, 178 Mortgage Insurance Companies 178

Index Mother’s Aid programs 90 Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) 216 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick 192, 198 National Affordable Housing Act of 1990 155, 167, 169, 175–179 National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO) 76, 121, 174, 182 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) 132, 145, 173 National Association of Counties (NACO) 77, 78, 137, 192, 218 National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) 75, 87, 117, 171, 177 National Association of Manufacturers 68, 133, 139, 189, 210 National Association of Realtors (NAR) 75, 86, 117, 145, 172, 177 National Association of Retail Grocers 207 National Association of Social Workers (NASW) 126, 188, 208 National Center for Policy Analysis 138, 203 National Coalition for the Homeless 135, 173 National Coalition on Women, Work and Welfare 197 National Conference of State Legislators 77, 192, 218 National Congress for Men 197

Index National Congress of Parents and Teachers 186 National Council for Children’s Rights 196 National Council of State Housing Agencies 122 National Council of State Human Service Administrators 194 National Council of Churches of Christ 131, 165 National Council of Local Human Service Administrators 125 National Council of Negro Women 70 National Council of State Public Welfare Administrators 125 National Federation of Independent Businesses 144 National Governors Association 77, 91, 94, 115, 190, 192, 194, 201, 210, 218 National Governors Conference, see National Governor’s Association National Housing Law Project 136, 182 National Housing Coalition 178 National Housing Conference 171 National Housing Task Force 177, 178 National Labor Relations Board 59 National League of Cities 77, 137, 164, 174, 192, 218 National Leased Housing Association 123, 171 National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) 74, 115, 135, 173, 182

275 National Milk Producer’s Federation 119 National Multi-Housing Council 181 National Organization of Women (NOW) 35, 197 National Rifle Association 216, 217 National School Board Association 127 National Urban League 70, 133 National Welfare Rights Organization 189 National Women’s Political Caucus 35 Negative Income Tax (NIT) 185 neighborhood groups 64, 221 Nelson, Herbert U. 86, 178 New Deal coalition 234 New Federalism proposal [of Ronald Reagan] 210 Nicks, Dr. Roy, President, American Public Welfare Association 187 Nixon, Richard M. 169, 184, 185, 190, 199 Nutrition and Human Needs, U.S. Senate Select Committee on 104 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 120, 206, 209 Orshansky, Mollie 54 Parents without Partners 196 Peak associations, definition of 67 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 91, 120, 167, 184, 198–206 pluralist model (of interest groups) 20–23

276 policy communities 27 policy entrepreneurs 27, 44 policy networks 27, 79 policy subsystems 34 poverty, definition of 40 private sector service provider groups 75, 117–121 public interest groups 29, 73, 134–137, 208, 218 public housing program 118, 175, 181 1998 restructuring of 167, 179–184 Public Housing Authority Directors’ Association 124, 182 public sector service provider groups 76, 121–128, 209, 210, 217, 218 purchase requirement (for food stamps) 207 purposive benefits (of group membership) 26 Reagan, Ronald 175, 191, 206, 209, 215, 231 Rector, Robert 203 redistributive policies 24, 67 Rees, Susan 197 regulatory policy 24, 25 Reid, Joseph 186 religious interest groups 69, 131, 208 Reuther, Walter 53 Rivers, Mendell 23 ruling elite model 21, 23 Ryan, Mrs. Edward F. 186 school lunch program 14, 119 Section 221 (d)(3) program 75, 87 Section 235 program 118, 169

Index Section 236 program 87, 118, 169, 176 Section 501 (c)(3) [tax deductible status for nonprofits] 135, 218 Section 8 certificate/voucher program 14, 118, 175–176 Section 8 New Construction Program 87, 169, 175, 176 Seidman, Bertrand 188 Smith, Adam 5 Snyder, Mitch 232 social capital (definition of) 8 social costs (of poverty) 51 social policy, defined 4 Social Darwinism 51, 200 social status (as a group resource) 29 solidary benefits (of group membership) 25, 30 Stangler, Gary T. 162, 202 Stuard, Dale 177 subgovernments 22, 34 Supplemental Security Income (SSI) 71, 105 Talmadge, Herman 207 Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) 14 Thatcher, Margaret 177 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 26 U.S. Catholic Conference 69, 142, 210 U.S. Chamber of Commerce 68, 133, 139 U.S. Conference of Mayors 77, 136, 142, 163, 174 United Auto Workers 68, 131 United Mine Workers 132 Urban Institute 136 Urban League 188

Index Veterans Affairs Committees, U.S. House and Senate 105 Veterans’ Affairs, U.S. Department of 71 veterans groups 71, 133, 141 Vincent, Deborah 182 Wallace, George 55 War on Poverty 55, 56 Ways and Means Committee, U.S. House 14, 104, 186, 193, 195 Weigand, Nestor R. 177 Welfare Law Center 136 welfare state, characteristics in U.S. 51–52 Wellstone, Paul 234

277 Williams, John B. 174 Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program 14, 82 women, employment status of 58 women, groups representing 70, 133, 197 Work Incentive (WIN) program 192 working class (defined) 47 Working Seminar on the Family and American Welfare Policy 196 Young, Whitney, Jr. 188 Zigas, Barry 178