'Why a War on Poor People?'

Daniel Little:

Why a war on poor people?, Understanding Society: American conservatives for
the past several decades have shown a remarkable hostility to poor people in our
country. The recent effort to slash the SNAP food stamp program in the House (link);
the astounding refusal of 26 Republican governors to expand Medicaid coverage in
their states — depriving millions of poor people from access to Medicaid health
coverage (link);
and the general legislative indifference to a rising poverty rate in the United
States — all this suggests something beyond ideology or neglect.

The indifference to low-income and uninsured people in their states of
conservative governors and legislators in Texas, Florida, and other states is
almost incomprehensible. Here is a piece in Bustle that reviews some of
the facts about expanding Medicaid coverage:

In total, 26 states have rejected the expansion, including the state of
Mississippi, which has the highest rate of uninsured poor people in the
country. Sixty-eight percent of uninsured single mothers live in the states
that rejected the expansion, as do 60 percent of the nation’s uninsured
working poor. (link)

These attitudes and legislative efforts didn’t begin yesterday. They extend
back at least to the Reagan administration in the early 1980s. Here is Lou
Cannon describing the Reagan years and the Reagan administration’s attitude
towards poverty:

Despite the sea of happy children’s faces that graced the “feel-good”
commercials, poverty exploded in the inner cities of America during the
Reagan years, claiming children as its principal victims. The reason for
this suffering was that programs targeted to low-income families, such as
AFDC, were cut back far more than programs such as Social Security. As a
result of cuts in such targeted programs-including school lunches and
subsidized housing-federal benefit programs for households with incomes of
less than $10,000 a year declined nearly 8% during the Reagan first term
while federal aid for households with more than $40,000 income was almost
unchanged. Source: The Role of a Lifetime, by Lou Cannon, p. 516-17, Jul
2, 1991

Most shameful, many would feel, is the attempt to reduce food assistance in a
time of rising poverty and deprivation. It’s hard to see how a government or
party could justify taking food assistance away from hungry adults and children,
especially in a time of rising poverty. And yet this is precisely the effort we
have witnessed in the past several months in revisions to the farm bill in the
House of Representatives. In a recent post Dave Johnson debunks the myths and
falsehoods underlying conservative attacks on the food stamp program in the
House revision of the farm bill (link).

This tenor of our politics indicates an overt hostility and animus towards
poor people. How is it possible to explain this part of contemporary politics on
the right? What can account for this persistent and unblinking hostility towards
poor people?

One piece of the puzzle seems to come down to ideology and a passionate and
unquestioning faith in “the market”. If you are poor in a market system, this
ideology implies you’ve done something wrong; you aren’t productive; you don’t
deserve a better quality of life. You are probably a drug addict, a welfare
queen, a slacker. (Remember “slackers” from the 2012 Presidential campaign?)

Another element here seems to have something to do with social distance.
Segments of society with whom one has not contact may be easier to treat
impersonally and cruelly. How many conservative legislators or governors have
actually spent time with poor people, with the working poor, and with poor
children? But without exposure to one’s fellow citizens in many different life
circumstances, it is hard to acquire the inner qualities of compassion and
caring that make one sensitive to the facts about poverty.

A crucial thread here seems to be a familiar American narrative around race.
The language of welfare reform, abuse of food stamps, and the inner city is
interwoven with racial assumptions and stereotypes. Joan Walsh’s recent column
in Salon (link)
does a good job of connecting the dots between conservative rhetoric in the past
thirty years and racism.  She quotes a particularly prophetic passage from Lee
Atwater in 1982 that basically lays out the transition from overtly racist
language to coded language couched in terms of “big government”.

Finally, it seems unavoidable that some of this hostility derives from a
fairly straightforward conflict of group interests. In order to create programs
and economic opportunities that would significantly reduce poverty, it takes
government spending — on income and food support, on education, on housing
allowances, and on public amenities for low-income people. Government spending
requires taxation; and taxation reduces the income and wealth of households at
the top of the ladder. So there is a fairly obvious connection between an
anti-poverty legislative agenda and the material interests of the privileged in
our economy.

These are a few hypotheses about where the animus to the poor comes from. But
there is an equally important puzzle about the political passivity of the poor.
It is puzzling to consider why the millions of people who are the subject of
this hostility do not create a potent electoral block that can force significant
changes on our political discourse. Why are poor people in Texas, Florida, and
other non-adopting states not voicing their opposition to the governors and
legislators who are sacrificing their health to a political ideology in the
current struggles over Medicaid expansion?

Two factors seem to be relevant in explaining the political powerlessness of
the poor. One is the gerrymandering that has reached an exact science in many
state legislatures in recent years, with unassailable majorities for the
incumbent party. This means that poor people have little chance of defeating
conservative candidates in congressional elections. And second are the resurgent
efforts that the Supreme Court enabled last summer to create ever-more onerous
voting requirements, once again giving every appearance of serving the purpose
of limiting voter participation by poor and minority groups. So conservative
incumbents feel largely immune from the political interests that they dis-serve.

This topic hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves in studies of American
politics. One exception is the work of Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward.
In Poor
People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Failthey offer
a powerful interpretation of the challenge of bringing poverty into politics.

Most poor people are “working poor” and are not homeless. But there are hundreds
of thousands of homeless people in the United States, and their living
conditions are horrible. Here is a powerful and humanizing album that captures
some of the situation of homeless people in America. Give
US Your Poor is worth listening to. Here is the title clip of the album:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfeALzkl9TI