Down on the Downtrodden

By Richard Lacayo

As somebody who likes to play rough with words, Newt Gingrich, the incoming Speaker of the House, can be counted on to make speaking a big part of the job. This, after all, is a man whose political-action committee once drew up a list of labels -- sick, pathetic, bizarre, insecure -- for Republican candidates to use against their opponents. But even Gingrich seems to be having second thoughts these days about the tone of the Republican revolution he is leading. Lately he has been arranging for members of Congress to hear talks by Morris Shechtman, a conservative management consultant and psychotherapist, who advises them on how to advance the Republican agenda without looking heartless. For example, he tells them that since people still think "caring for" others is good, government programs should be described as "caretaking," which sounds paternalistic.

So maybe all Ebenezer Scrooge needed was a spin doctor, someone who would warn him to stop calling the Christmas spirit "humbug" and reterm it "misguided compassion." But Gingrich is right to be concerned about whether the G.O.P. revolution is seen as spirited or mean-spirited. House Republicans have come roaring into Washington promising not just to remake welfare but to pull down the whole edifice of federal poverty programs. They say that in doing so, they are merely carrying out the mandate of the voters who sent them to Congress. To the extent that there is clear voter sentiment for change, they have a point. But in their unbridled willingness to go after immigrants and the poor, the new House firebrands may be getting out ahead of the public mood.

That's because the mood is mixed. Even in a year of mostly favorable economic indicators -- a 2.6% inflation rate, 3.9% third-quarter growth, 5.6% unemployment for November -- a middle class fearful of losing its economic footing is plainly of a mind to hunker down. In a TIME/CNN poll last week, 61% of those surveyed agreed with the statement that "the way things are today, people have to worry more about themselves and their families and less about helping others." That's a sentiment that speaks not so much of the Christmas season as of the dead of winter, marked by something dark, bristling and a little chilly. Given enough encouragement, a good many Americans might be persuaded to vent their anxieties upon the classes just beneath them.

Yet the poll also found that on specific issues of welfare and immigration reform, there's not much support for the harshest measures. Fully 78% of those questioned thought the welfare system was in need of a fundamental shake-up, and 52% thought government should spend less on it. But 52% also said it would be unfair to end payments after two years to people who had no other sources of income -- 38% didn't mind the idea -- and majorities opposed denying welfare benefits to unwed teen mothers or to children whose fathers could not be identified. All of which are proposals in the House G.O.P. "Contract with America."

Taken together, the numbers suggest that Americans are of two minds. Though still attached to the idea that the poor can and should be helped, they are open to urgings from the right that the effort is pointless or misguided. The air these days is full of that kind of talk, and not just in Washington. On the best-seller list, The Bell Curve argues that government should quit much of the antipoverty business because the poor are doomed by their mostly hereditary low IQs. Now that California voters have approved Proposition 187, which would deny schooling and medical care to illegal immigrants and their children, similar proposals are being promoted in Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas.

"The fact that government is no longer going to be so generous with taxpayers' money may be Scrooge-like, but it strikes me as rather responsible behavior," says Republican strategist William Kristol. "For too many years, some liberals have felt they were doing good by generously spending taxpayers' money. Now Americans, want to take a much harder look at what really does good and what does harm."

To a point, most people would agree with him. There's good reason to ask whether the welfare system has contributed to the burgeoning problem of children without fathers. "The Republicans are saying that we have a helluva problem, and we do," says New York Senator Daniel Moynihan, a Democrat. And at a time when the yearly number of immigrants, both legal and illegal, tops 1 million, it's not xenophobic to wonder how large an influx the nation can reasonably accommodate. Whatever the slender merits of California's Proposition 187, desperate measures are not surprising from a state that each year must cope with a third of the nation's new arrivals. The last time the U.S. faced a comparable flood, from 1901 to 1910, it set off years of jingoistic reaction against the newcomers -- Italians, Jews and other East Europeans -- until Washington tightened quotas in the 1920s and gave the nation time to absorb the influx.

A prime danger for the Republicans, however, is in the easy passage from debate to demagoguery. Political discourse these days has a saw-toothed edge. When politicians don't mind sounding like radio talk- show hosts, the distinction between a search for solutions and a hunt for scapegoats gets lost in a blizzard of invective. An even more serious problem for Congress is whether the most radical G.O.P. proposals are really in keeping with what voters wanted. Democrats came to Washington two years ago claiming a mandate to remake health care, only to discover that most people didn't want it remade nearly so thoroughly as the Clinton Administration proposed to do. The same fate could befall Republicans ready to whip the underdog.

It's a fate they aren't afraid to test. Giddy with the momentum of their Election Day victories, House Republicans are already venturing beyond the welfare-reform plan outlined in their contract, which is itself a blunt instrument. Like the White House reform bill that was introduced earlier this year, the G.O.P. plan would deny benefits after two years. Unlike Clinton's plan, however, it would not provide jobs for those who can't find them. In a far more radical move, Republicans are also seeking to abolish more than 100 federal programs and replace them with grants to states, which would be free to do with them what they pleased, even if that meant not much.

That would eliminate the federal safety net that guarantees a base line of support to the poor even if the state they live in slashes its share of benefits. "The states will compete to show who is toughest," predicts historian Arthur Schlesinger. "It will be an invitation to economic warfare among them." Republicans would also end the entitlement status of welfare programs, meaning that when a fixed amount allocated in a state's annual budget for welfare or food stamps ran out, anyone still unprovided for would stay that way.

As a cost-cutting measure, targeting welfare makes only modest sense. Payouts to the poor are just a sliver of the federal budget. Two of the largest programs, Aid to Families with Dependent Children and food stamps, account for 2.7% of the federal budget. But when Congress shies away from tougher kinds of budget cutting, the sort that would nick the middle class and the wealthy, only the poor and the outsiders are left to take the hits.

As a political statement, cutting welfare may make more sense. For voters who moved into the Republican column in November, welfare has a significance that goes beyond the numbers. For some, of course, it's just a racial code word, even though most beneficiaries are white. For many others it's a symbol of how government programs can promote dependency and fatherless children in the name of compassion. For Americans to insist upon welfare reform doesn't represent "hostility to people who are poor because of bad luck," says Douglas Besharov, a senior policy analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "It's a deep concern about the future of America because of what looks like very problematic changes in behavior."

By moving to the right on welfare, the Republicans have also forced the White House and congressional Democrats to shift in the same direction. And the movement picked up speed last week. The White House is considering abolition of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a Great Society creation that is devoted mostly to problems of the inner cities. Chief of staff Leon Panetta is also promising that the Clinton welfare-reform plan will be revised so that the cost of job training and child care would be covered by cuts in other programs for the poor. "Any welfare proposal worth its salt," he says, "has to save money." Yet most Americans may have more patience in that regard than politicians give them credit for. In the TIME/CNN poll, 69% of those surveyed said it was important to train welfare recipients for jobs, even if that means spending more money in the short run.

The President's rightward move is tempered, however. His advisers have convinced him that he can win points by presenting himself as a centrist conciliator on welfare. In his weekend radio address, he denounced the Gingrich idea of orphanages for poor children -- "governments don't raise children," he said, "parents do" -- but stressed again his plan for a time limit on benefits. Earlier in the week he met at the White House with Governors from both parties to talk about welfare reform, then announced plans for a bipartisan meeting of Governors and mayors next month to help refine a plan. That could not only help Clinton regain a leadership role on the issue, but also provide an opportunity for him to drive a wedge between radical House Republicans and more cautious Republican Governors.

Immigration isn't prominent in the House G.O.P. contract, but it does turn up in one important provision. To help pay for their welfare-reform proposal, which would cost money for things like job training and orphanages, the House G.O.P. would cut off many federal benefits, including student loans, school lunches and disability payments for the elderly, to legal immigrants. Clinton has also proposed tightening these to a lesser extent. Yet these are people who pay taxes and, with the exception of the refugees among them, use welfare less than native-born Americans.

What about giving me your tired, your poor? "The inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty was written before welfare," says Florida Representative Clay Shaw, incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on human resources and the man who will have a great deal of say over welfare reform. "People came to this country to work. Now the question becomes, Are these handouts a magnet that is bringing people into this country? To some degree, they are."

That position doesn't present much political risk for Shaw, who represents a mostly white, non-Hispanic district that includes Miami Beach. Other Republicans are less comfortable with the possibility that their party might become so identified with the anti-immigration sentiment that it turns off the Hispanic voters the party hopes to attract. Though California's Republican House delegation is likely to push for a national Proposition 187, Gingrich himself is opposed.

When all the benefit slashing is over, who picks up where government leaves off? Many private charities that focus on the needy report dangerous signs of slippage in donations. At food banks across the country, there has been a sizable drop-off. At the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, for example, this year's funding drive brought in $450,000, a decline of $70,000 from 1993. In Toledo, Ohio, the number of families asking for emergency food baskets increased 10%. Donations? Down by almost half. Food baskets that used to include whole turkeys now provide turkey parts and surplus government commodities. Much of the decline in giving is explained by tighter efficiency in the food industry, which provides a good part of the food-bank inventory. Imperfect goods -- underbaked cornflakes, dented cans -- that food processors once donated are now sold to new "secondary" retailers like Pick 'n' Save. Checkout scanners help retailers keep better track of inventories, which means the nation's millers, bakers and canners overproduce less. Organizers also sense a grudging mood among private donors. The attitude, says Joyce Ruthermel, executive director of Pittsburgh's food bank, is "not only do we not want our tax dollars to do it, we don't want to do it either."

A large population of the poor, cut off from government help and thrown onto the meager capabilities of private charity -- it's not a pretty picture. "I see a lot of anger and bitterness," warns Doris Bloch, executive director of the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank, where donations are down 41% this year. "If people can't get jobs and enough to eat, they feel they have a very little stake in our society. If we think we have trouble now, hold on."

At Ford's Theater, not far from Capitol Hill, a stage version of A Christmas Carol is playing this week. When a delegation of Londoners comes calling at Scrooge's office seeking alms for the poor, literature's best-known misanthrope shoots back his famous retort: Are there no prisons? No workhouses? No orphanages? On some nights the line, with its obvious echo of the latest ideas from Congress, has been bringing gasps and mutters from the crowd. In the months to come, Scrooge is a role Gingrich and his followers won't be afraid to assume. The only question is how many Americans will applaud the performance.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 800 adult Americans taken for TIME/CNN on Aug. 17-18 by Yankelovich Partners Inc. Sampling error is plus or minus 3% Not Sures omitted

CAPTION: Do you agree :"The way things are today, people have to worry more about themselves and their families and less about helping others"?

Is it fair to cut off government payments to people who have been on welfare for two years, even if they have no other source of income?

Should welfare reform start saving taxpayers money immediately, or is it more important to train welfare recipients for jobs, which means the government would spend more money in the short run

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Washington, Margot Hornblower/Los Angeles and Joseph R. Szczesny/Detroit