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Paul Ryan, Big Brother, and the Safety Net
Paul Ryan is a smart and sincere man. Famously, he is one of the few people who understands the Federal budgeting process. (How profoundly disturbing is that?) He is a tireless proponent of changing the system from within, producing plans, budgets, and reform proposals that conform to the status quo while pushing the boundaries of what is considered acceptable. His latest self-appointed task is to show how Catholic Social Teaching is consistent with the Reformicon-Republican vision of America.
A recent foray in this direction is his article for America, ‘Preferential Options.’ (Ryan had the good fortune to have his article published alongside one titled ‘Dignity for All‘, penned by a progressive regurgitating talking-points writing under Rep. Joe Kennedy III’s name; American Thinker has a review.) In it, Ryan outlines one of his recent proposals for reform of the federal safety net.
It is the way Big Brother seems to be baked into this proposal that concerns me: not because I don’t think Paul Ryan is a committed small government reformer, but because I think he is. I fear the state has become too big, too powerful, and too pervasive for anyone — even someone with the right sort of worldview, like Ryan — to effectively shrink.
After a gesture towards the concepts of solidarity and subsidiarity — “Solidarity is a shared commitment to the common good…. Subsidiarity, meanwhile, is a prudent deference to the people closest to the problem.” — Ryan sets out the problem:
Each year, the federal government spends almost $800 billion on at least 92 different programs to help people in need. And yet the poverty rate is the highest in a generation… Today, technology is changing constantly—and with it the global economy. But… our safety net still works according to bureaucratic formulas set in the 20th century… [T]he federal government is… not helping people get back into the workforce; in fact, it is effectively encouraging them to stay out [because of the perverse incentives of means tested benefits].
Ryan offers part of a solution (“I do not have all the answers. Nobody does,” he writes): a pilot program to give States flexibility in getting people off welfare and into work.
But to qualify, states must meet certain requirements (they can be trusted only so far with the people’s money, I suppose). The most interesting of these is that “the state would have to offer at least two [welfare] service providers. The state welfare agency could not be the only game in town.” He goes on to suggest Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services as two possible providers a state might select. Delegating the actual service to competing non-profits, he explains, would ensure that the federal government would no longer “try to supplant our local communities. Instead it would try to support them.”
Next, Ryan suggests that states adopt a “case management” model. He gives an example:
Earlier this year, I saw the benefits of case management in action when I met a woman at Catholic Charities in Racine, Wis. When she first came to Catholic Charities, she was homeless and unemployed. So she sat down with a caseworker and put together a life plan. With the caseworker’s help, she and her fiancé each found work, and now she is earning her degree in health management.
A happy ending — to a spooky story.
Look at the outlines of this ‘reconception’ of the federal government’s role. The federal government is the inevitable source of welfare funds. It distributes them, with strings. The job of community organisations is to administer government funds, with all the problems of capture we have seen in healthcare and the ‘compassionate conservatism’ of the George W. Bush years. And if you are a person unfortunate enough to fall into the safety net, your way out is via a government licensed caseworker who will produce a government approved “life plan” for you. Oh, and all the while “a neutral third party would keep tabs on each provider and its success rate [via] key metrics”.
This is a fundamentally technocratic and centralized conception of solidarity and subsidiarity, where the relationship between government and supplicant citizen is one of patron and statistic.
And it may be the best we can reasonably hope for.
Image Credit: Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com
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Agreed. My problem with Paul Ryan is that he sets his goals too low. He seems to recognize the danger of Big Government, but doubts that government growth can be arrested or reversed, rather than merely slowed and redirected.
He would be an excellent right-hand man to the firebrand this country needs.
Just out of curiosity, Aaron, who’s the ‘firebrand’ you have in mind?
Apologies for the formatting. Today’s random selection of TinyMCE buttons has
strikethrough, but nothing to remove formatting. At least, as far as I can see.Edit 2014-10-10: Thank you editor-person.
I didn’t have anyone in mind. I doubt that any of the current crop of suspected 2016 candidates have the brass to eliminate a single government agency or significant program.
Ted Cruz and Rick Perry at least make noises in that direction. Cruz is bolder but lacks Perry’s track record. So, even if we were to overlook Cruz’s inexperience, I’m guessing that only Perry could possibly win the nomination. Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, others have effected reductions in spending, but those are only tweaks that Democrats will soon tweak back. Figure adjustments and 10-year fantasy plans, like Romney and Ryan favor, aren’t enough.
Democrats can accomplish twice as much in half the time, and Republicans surely can’t hold onto power for decades at a time, so Republicans cannot afford long-term and gradual strategies. If Republicans won’t smash the status quo quick and hard, then they are just babysitters.
I don’t even care anymore. Wake me when we spend a trillion less on it per year.
Till then its just pointless nonsense to look active while doing nothing.
Well, that gave me the shivers.
Say, Aaron, why don’t you run? Run on a platform of eliminating social security and Medicare. Slash all other programs by 20%. Eliminate half of the federal agencies. Cut taxes and eliminate the deficit. And after the election, you and all the people who voted for you could get together in a small bar somewhere and have a drink.
For better or worse, we live in a democracy. Railing against things that have massive public support is the political version of schizophrenia — hallucinations and voices in your head.
Paul Ryan is someone I want to like more than I do.
He’s no Eric Cantor, but in the larger scheme of things, he is strictly Junior VP material.
Then again, for all his Media Savvy, so is Rand Paul – that doesn’t mean he should not be consulted about how to handle the media, but better by someone who actually has a real vision for America.
So is Ted Cruz. he is a fantastic prosecutor, but walking out on that Christian group shows he does not handle opposition with grace.
And I am not quite certain if Marco Rubio truly understands that Chuck Schumer saw him coming from a mile off the way State Senator Clay Davis and his cronies saw Stringer Bell coming with his bags of money from a mile off.
Peter and Rob Long are right. It will be the governors who can run and win in 2016.
I want to see if Scott Walker wins, and what he does afterwards. I am paying a lot of attention to Bobby Jindal.
Oh, and yes, Scott Walker is right. It is a question now of taming government rather than cutting its legs off. At least, right now in a Pre-Apocalypse world. Radical Reforms happened after the collapse of the Roman Empire. And essential engineering advances, like separating clean and waste water were forgotten, and not rediscovered for upwards of 1800 years. I would not want to return to that world.
It is if we have guys like Paul Ryan writing the plans.
“…not because I don’t think Paul Ryan is a committed small government reformer, but because I think he is.”
So what evidence is there that he is? I don’t think it’s this plan, it’s certainly not Mitt Romney’s endorsement of him.
Based on his actions, I’d have to say that Ryan’s a Republican Progressive of the flavor that keeps the New Deal and Great Society going. They all throw bones to small government reformers to get elected, but they never actually cut government.
Walker’s the only one I can see actually doing something radical.
“Plague Helped Bring Down Roman Empire, Graveyard Suggests”
“As the taxation base shrank dramatically, financial pressure on the cities also increased. In an effort to economize, civic governments curtailed salaries for teachers and physicians and slashed the budgets for public entertainment. ”
Of course we don’t have to worry about anything like that happening today.
True enough. But you got to call em as you see em
sometimes I think the emperor has no clothes,
sometimes I think the sky is falling.
Dang, I’ve got the schizophrenia! Can ebola be far behind?
So far we’re not looking at Plagues of that scale (although Enterovirus 68 is very alarming – more alarming than Ebola, frankly).
The tax base has not yet shrunk so dramatically, and need not do so. California itself does not yet have to collapse. The lifestyle of the average public service union member there does, but they’ve brought that on themselves.
The Apocalypse is not inevitable, not yet.
But people like Paul Ryan can only help to prevent it, as advisers to those who understand the gravity of the situation and the need to treat enemies as enemies.
We make no progress on this point because we refuse to ask the fundamental questions at the heart of the problem. Why is the federal government maintaining a safety net at all? Is that a proper role for the federal government? Do they even have the constitutional authority to do it? When you start from the assumption that the federal government should be involved, you have given away the game. At that point all that is left is dickering over the amount of involvement, and that always leads to programs’ expansion.
My assumption is that the Federal Government is involved. Deeply involved. Too involved.
To simply end all of its involvement all of a sudden would be too harsh.
To begin the withdrawal and to not step back in once it has withdrawn is still possible.
But a lot of people with a lot of bad ideas and too much at stake in continuing bad ideas and bad policies need to be seen as what they are.
I am not certain Paul Ryan is capable of seeing them as what they are.
I suspect that Scott Walker does.
This time I agree with Larry. Whatever the merits of the plan, we can’t just liquidate welfare overnight, because it’s a democracy and most of the people don’t support that.
I understand the dangers of propping up private organizations with public money. Still, Ryan is trying to open a space for more decentralization in a way that *might* possibly persuade the people. It would be good to get the states experimenting more with a wider variety of poverty-relief strategies, so that we can at least compare results. I’m not saying that Ryan is definitely going about this the right way, but it’s a better idea than just sitting on the curb crying about how big government is.
It’s an insulting and stupid criticism of what Aaron said. He said “a single” agency or program, implying you could pick something way more unpopular with the people than Social Security and Medicare — something like the IRS for instance (via a flat tax). But no one, including the brassiest potential candidates out there, even whispers the possibility. Probably not even in pillow talk with his wife. We just have to live with the (horrifying, approaching train-wreck) status quo.
Exactly right.
Lucky no one is suggesting that, then.
Is no-one else concerned by the idea of government approved life plans administered by government licensed caseworkers?
If Aaron means to single out a specific program, he should tell us what program that is. But if it isn’t social security or Medicare, it isn’t going to make a difference. Why? Like Willie Sutton once said, “because that’s where the money is.”
And by the way, lots of candidates have supported a flat tax. They lose. Quickly.
Aaron Miller: #1 “My problem with Paul Ryan is that he sets his goals too low.”
I am going to assume that if someone went for the jugular of safety net programs that someone would not be elected in our lifetimes. If a pinch here and then a pinch there would get us to the right place, and not preclude electability, then that someone might have a chance at getting something done.
The Department of Education, for example. The Department of Energy, for example. Some programs and agencies are threats not so much because of their direct expenses but because of the way they empower central authorities and disrupt free market forces.
Elimination of any legal tradition, however modern, is disruptive. But a free people can adapt to changes. And the costs of that disruption are not greater than the costs of those agencies’ perpetual influence (and constant expansion, like any government program). Like drug addicts facing withdrawal, dread of temporary suffering must not deter American voters from reclaiming liberty.
Certainly, unsustainable entitlements programs like Social Security and public employee benefits must be addressed. Certainly, the national income tax must be replaced by a simpler and more transparent tax system to rein in Washington’s totalitarian impulses. And just as certainly these corrections are unpopular. But these efforts must be our focus or else we relinquish any hope of regaining freedom, security, and financial prosperity.
Voters will never aspire to high standards if politicians cater to the lowest common denominators. Our representatives must lead, as Reagan did; not raise a finger to the shifting winds, like Clinton.
It might be that America is already doomed to incessant government growth and centralization. If so, I will not support Republicans’ cooperation with ruin merely to delay the inevitable. Whether or not voters will accept a lifeline, it should at least be offered… repeatedly, if necessary.
Democrats will pinch back… and harder. While only Republicans are willing to play by the rules (laws, moral restraints, etc), they are at an inherent disadvantage. Also, it is easier to create debt than to eliminate it, easier to make laws than to rescind them, easier to expand bureaucracies than to retract them, and so on.
Republicans cannot win by gradual strategies… unless you believe it’s possible for Republicans to control both Congress and the Oval Office for decades at a time.
I am with Whiskey Sam here. Why is social security, medicare, medicaid, and welfare paid for through Federal taxes? Where in the Constitution is the Federal government authorized to do any of these things. The general welfare preamble does not count, entitlement and welfare programs don’t promote general welfare they promote individual welfare. I would love to see these programs (and their taxes!) devolved to the states. Let the states compete.
Not really, no. You’d prefer the government just handed out checks w/o trying to help people get jobs and get off welfare?
It would be tricky to implement Social Security at the state level. If Bob works his whole life in New York and then retires to Florida, can he collect SS there? Does he collect it from N.Y. or Florida? If you worked in 10 different states do you collect checks from each one? Or are Florida and Arizona stuck with paying for all the people who move there to retire?
a. Why would anyone want to re-implement a government Social Security program after the experience with the current one?
b. No it wouldn’t. Government pensions are transportable between countries far more diverse than the US states.
So, I think I’d divide my response into the intra-Catholic sphere and the extra-Catholic sphere.
From inside the Catholic view, I think what Paul Ryan is doing is commendable and we need an awful lot more like him. He is presenting, and standing forward publicly in defense of, an interpretation of Catholic social thinking that harmonizes its prescriptive teaching with a free market and liberal democracy–something which has not always happened, especially in the Church’s discomfort with the modern State throughout the 19th century, some dalliances with fascism early in the 20th, and occasional forays into liberation theology’s Marxism lite in the 60s and beyond. We need more men like those at the Acton Institute!
Since I think the free market economic approach surrounded and ennobled by a liberal, representative constitutional republican order is the best solution available to us in modernity of the political problem, I am happy to see him marshaling the intellectual and moral resources from his own religious tradition to backstop that order.
From outside the Catholic standpoint, I think genferei’s criticisms of the substance of Ryan’s proposal is accurate, especially in the last two paragraphs. Those criticisms will apply to any of the younger reformers who are attentive to public policy: they are not proposing that we do away with the welfare state in principle. I share his concern that the relationship between citizen and state is already undergoing a serious transformation into clientelist politics, and that’s bad for the health of our entire civic order.
I also think there are perfectly understandable reasons why Ryan proposed this path: he is an ambitious Congressman who wants to retain his own influence and therefore puts forward “sober” solutions; he doesn’t want to spook the sheep (the average voter) more than they’re already spooked and wants to convince rather than alienate; he wants to make some headway practically toward his goals and not simply complain from the sidelines; he thinks a measure like this could genuinely lead to greater reform at the state and national level.
If by “accomplish” you meant destroy then I agree with you.
Aaron Miller: #22 “Republicans cannot win by gradual strategies… unless you believe it’s possible for Republicans to control both Congress and the Oval Office for decades at a time.”
If you cannot get elected, you won’t do anything at all. There are people who don’t vote who will vote against you if they perceive their interests are being impeded. Social security? Medicare? The list of benefits goes on and on. Nip / tuck might be the only method of getting things done. The crash of the welfare state is impending to be sure, and one suspects that we will have to go through it sooner or later but if someone elected can mitigate the difficulties by a bit here and there, so much the better.