 I am told it's time to start. I'm absolutely delighted to welcome everybody to our talk today. I'm Rebecca Blank. I'm the Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and those of you who haven't been over to Weill Hall before, we welcome you to our new building here. Today is going to be a great event. Ron Haskins I've known for many years and I know that if nothing else he certainly gives a good talk. Ron is a senior fellow in the economic studies program, co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution and a senior consultant at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. He's also senior editor of Future of Children, a journal on policy issues that affect children and families. If you know Ron, you're actually surprised there are only four things he's currently doing on his resume. There have been times in the past the list was longer. He worked as a senior advisor to the president for welfare policy in 2002, spent 14 years on the Hill of the House Ways and Means Human Resources Subcommittee, which is the group that actually oversees the welfare programs. Most importantly of all was really one of the key persons, if not the key person, who wrote the 1996 welfare reform law and was very important in getting that through Congress over a two-year process, which he's written about and which we're going to hear about this afternoon. He has his PhD from the University of North Carolina in Developmental Psychology and has won quite a variety of awards. My favorite one is this 1997 award right after the welfare reform bill was passed, where the National Journal listed him as one of the 100 most influential people in the federal government. Here he is at the Ford School. He's been co-editor of a variety of books, New World Welfare, which he was foolish enough to co-edit with a Democrat who just come off of Clinton and some council of economic advisors. He's also co-edited the book Welfare, Reform and Beyond. His most recent book, which he's going to talk about today, there's a bigger picture of it there, Work Over Welfare is actually one of ... I read it when it came out. It's just, this is a great book. Even if you don't care about welfare reform, if you want to understand something about how legislation gets made in Washington, D.C., this is definitely the book to read. We are selling copies of this afterwards out in the Great Hall. Nicola Books has been kind enough to bring copies over. If you're real nice to Ron, he might even autograph it for you. I'm also absolutely, I'm delighted. Ron grew up here in Michigan to welcome his mother, Mrs. Black, who I understand is here today, so we're delighted to have you as well. Anyway, we're in for a treat today. I must say that after President Ford and after my husband, Ron Haskin, is my favorite Republican, so I'm delighted he's here. Thank you for that nice introduction. It usually takes me six or eight minutes to overcome these fine introductions, so we'll see how long it takes me today. I have to call attention, though, to the phrase, if nothing else, he gives a good speech. I'm not quite sure what she meant by if nothing else, but I'll try to overcome that, too. Well, I'm very pleased to be here. My mom is here. It's always exciting to say something in front of your mother. Normally, I'm listening when I'm in front of my mother. My mom was born many, many years ago in Ohio, and she was raised in Ohio, but she's been denying it for several decades because she's afraid someone will think she's a Buckeye fan. I've never met any female who detested Woody Hays more than my mother does. And also, my nieces are here. My twin nieces, Errol and Ivy Haskins, they have overcome their genetic background and managed to be students here at the University of Michigan. They went to different high schools. They were both valedictorians of their high school graduating class, so they're quite a pair, and I'm very proud to have them here today. And then our good friends, actually relatives, I can't get into possibly explaining this, but Chris and her black are here as well. Her black is, we went to high school together. He was a year ahead of me in high school, and he was the most popular guy, the best athlete, the smartest guy, and I always was running in his wake trying to catch up, but he did make a grievous error at age 18. He went to Notre Dame, but he's been trying to make up for it ever since because he's lived in Ann Arbor, so I'm not sure if he's a Wolverine fan or not, but I know who he was for when they played Notre Dame. How'd you like the game this year? So it's great to be here at the Ford School, especially so soon after Gerald Ford died and really the coverage of his life and what he meant to the country in Washington, you see, I think it's the only sign of nonpartisanship I've seen in several years in Washington. It was really quite remarkable. And then his children, I don't know how many of you know this, but his children, they displayed his body, of course, in the Capitol building, and his children spent many hours there just introducing themselves to people, regular citizens, who walked through the building. And that really impressed a lot of people. There were a lot of editorials and so forth about that. So it was a wonderful thing. And it's a great privilege to be here at the Ford School. Here's my plan. I want to talk about the book itself first, then if I run out of time, I did what I really want to do, which is talk about the book. And then I want to talk about what happened in welfare reform. That part may be somewhat more controversial. Maybe people hear some students, perhaps, that don't agree with my interpretation of what's really happened. So we can have, well, leave time at the end for a big argument. Normally, when I give a talk, if I have an hour, I try to talk for 59 minutes and 30 seconds, and give 30 seconds for a question. But Becky has ordered me to leave at least 15 minutes at the end. So I'm going to try to do that. Let me begin with why I wrote this book. First of all, I went to Washington 20 years ago. I was a professor at the University of North Carolina. And I went on a fellowship for one year, a fellowship from Society for Research and Child Development. I saw John Hagen here, who's a very important official in the society, and been here at Michigan for, he just told me for 42 years, if you can believe that. And my intent was to write the definitive book about the use of social science evidence in formulating public policy. That was my goal. It's now 20 years later, and I never achieved that goal. What happened is I basically got Potomac fever. I loved Washington. It was very exciting, very interesting. And I had a chance to work with the Ways and Means Committee, which was really almost a pure luck situation. So I seized that and stayed with the committee for 14 years, and I went to Brookings, and I worked with the president for a year. I'm sure the president's very popular on this campus to be President Bush. And I escaped from the White House after one year, and I've been back at Brookings since I also am affiliated with the Annie Casey Foundation. So I wanted to write this book and didn't, but I've always had a desire to write a book about the policy process. I think about half the people that have been in Washington would love to do that because it's such an amazing experience and most citizens have only a very poor understanding, if any understanding of how the government actually works. And the news media certainly does not do justice to it. They play up the conflicts and everything, and there's a lot more to it than that. So that's the first reason. And second reason is frankly defensive. As you'll see in a few minutes, Republicans were under unmerciful attack. I've been in Washington 20 years and I cannot think of anything except the war now, where the rhetoric, both on the floor of the House and somewhat the Senate, less the Senate, but especially the House and in the nation's media and from scholars all over the country, including this very campus, were really harsh against the bill, how bad the bill was and how it was really gonna harm children. I'll read you some examples of that in a few minutes that I think will amaze you. So I intended to defend Republicans against those charges. And then third, the opposite of being defensive. I wanted to be offensive. I wanted to go on the offense because I think the ideas that Republicans had for passing this legislation were very solid. The country needed them. The American public agreed with us, even if scholars and the editorial page writers did not agree with us. The country agreed with us. And we passed legislation I think has done, has done a lot of good for the country and has the potential for doing good in the future. And then the fourth thing is I really, whenever I got tired of writing, which happened frequently, I would think about young people, college students especially, because that's what I'm most familiar with, but even people who are in high school and thinking about telling them about the way the policy process really works and the quality of the individuals, because this is not what you hear in the media. You hear the Duke Cunningham story on his way to prison. And there are people like that in Washington. Washington's like any other sample people that has a bunch of scoundrels, but it also has some really great people. And they work very hard here, both on both sides, and I wanted to tell about them. I wanted to tell it in a way that young people would be interested and would understand how interesting and important the process of passing laws is in Washington. And then fifth, of course, on November 10th, 1994, when I woke up in three o'clock in the morning and the first thing I heard on the TV, I tell the story in the book, was Speaker Gingrich. And my first thought was, oh my God, we're gonna pass welfare reform. We had the bill essentially written, we'd been working on it for several years, and I got up immediately and took a shower and went to the house and for two years worked on this legislation. So I knew it was historically an extremely important law. I knew if we were able to pass it and the signs were good, because Clinton said he wanted to pass a law like this and I believed him. A lot of Republicans did not believe him, but I believed him. I knew his staff and I'd been in meetings with Clinton and I really thought that he was sincere in his desire to change the law and to end welfare as we know it. I don't know if many of the students here are probably too young to remember that, but that was one of the main themes in his presidential campaign. American Republicans were in shock and awe about a Democrat saying he was gonna end welfare as you know it. He absolutely stole our issue and I think that's the beginning of the reason Republicans disliked him so much is because he took many of our issues and welfare reform was exhibit number one in his stealing Republican issues. And then finally, I've had a lifelong ambition ever since I left and I remember I came here as an undergraduate and didn't do very well on left and I graduated to the Marine Corps. So I've always had an ambition ever since and to come back and to give a speech at the University of Michigan. And I knew that if I wrote a book that Dean Blank was interested in that I might get an invite. So thank you very much, the check is in the mail. All right, so I would like to begin by giving you a flavor of the book and in each of these cases what I'd like to do is I'd like to set the scene for you and I'd like to read you brief passages out of the book. The first one is about social science and I did manage to fit some material in here about social science. I don't think it's quite of the nature that I anticipated when I went to Washington. But this first example requires a lot of background which I really don't have time to give here but I'm just gonna give you a flavor of it. There's a wonderful gentleman named Charles Murray that people on this campus including the two sitting in front row here are not too impressed by. And in 1984 he wrote a book called Losing Ground in which his recommendation was that the country should end welfare, end welfare. Now this is probably according to the two people in the front row and millions of others I assure you is probably the most cruel recommendations ever been made by a credible analyst. I know Charles Murray well I'm not sure. I think some of the effects would be cruel but in his argument is in the long run they would not be cruel because he was really concerned about non-marital births and somewhat non-work. And he thought the only way to stop them was to stop rewarding people and paying them. So his book Losing Ground which got a lot of attention recommended that we end welfare. Well in the welfare debate we had a couple of small proposals. We certainly didn't propose anything that radical but we did propose that we stop cash payments to any unwed mother under age 18 and stop her cash payment completely. Well of course this horrified not only scholars but editorial page writers and frankly it's a pretty tough policy if you're 18 and all your friends for your whole life growing up had a child when they were 15 or 16 or 17 and they got welfare and they got Medicaid and so forth some might even on occasion get an apartment and now suddenly you're not gonna get any cash. I mean there would be a very difficult transition that's for sure. And there was a huge internal fight within the Republican Party about this because a lot of people thought it was too hard so there's a lot of fight within the Republican Party. I'd like to read just a little bit about both of those things. One of the main perpetrators I'll use that term, Becky will like that of this policy which I call Murray Light. Murray Light because it's just under 18 completely ending welfare was Bill Bennett and Bill Bennett called Clayshaw and Mia and asked to set up a panel and he wanted to have on this panel Glenn Lowry a famous black economist from Boston University I believe at that time previously of Harvard and James Q. Wilson said by Daniel Patrick Moynihan on the Senate floor to be the smartest man in America and he is truly a brilliant social scientist and quite conservative. So Bennett's vision is he's gonna come rolling into Washington with him of course being a quarterback and announcing the panel and James Q. Wilson and Glenn Lowry and they're gonna show the members of the Ways and Means Committee in this hearing why the country needs to cut off all mothers and actually Bennett wanted to cut them all off under age 25 and not just catch but food stamps as well. So his was really a harsh policy and he was gonna demonstrate why we should do this. So here's what happened. The Bennett Lowry Wilson hearing did not turn out as I thought it would. Bennett cannot have been too pleased with the testimony of Wilson and Lowry because both were skeptical about whether Murray Light and the family cap of similar policy would actually work. They were not against trying them on a limited basis but were clear in saying that there was little evidence that would lead one to expect big impacts. Lowry's testimony on this point was superb. He compared ending well for benefits to reduce non-marital burst of trying to push thread back into a piece of unraveled cloth. Even if pulling the thread would end quoting unravel the garment, pushing on the thread will not put the weave back together again. Thus, at quoting again, we must not be too saying when an almost arrogant that was directed at Republicans for sure, almost arrogant about our ability to push and pull and manipulate maneuver in order to fix what is very subtle and complicated problem. If anything, Wilson was even more frank in his views. He said he could support a few carefully controlled experiments but that experiments had to be conducted first or he would oppose a blanket federal ban that would deny benefits. In other words, he directly opposed both our Murray Light policy of turning cash benefits for moms under age 18 as well as other policies that were associated with that. So he was directly opposed to it. And now here's what I conclude from this episode. Here's a prime example of why social scientists often make indifferent witnesses in hearing over highly partisan issues. Both Lowry and Wilson were social scientists in the single most important sense. They based their position on policy issues on good evidence. Both were so concerned about illegitimacy and its effect on the nation that they were willing to support tough policies. But both also knew that there was only modest evidence that cutting benefits would reduce illegitimacy, would reweave the garment to use Lowry's phase. Until such time as stronger evidence existed, they supported limited experiments but no more. Clearly, good social scientists are deeply flawed. They believe in being guided by empirical evidence rather than political philosophy. You just can't trust them. And I think Bill Bennett learned that lesson that day. The very next witness was Dean Blank. And she was supposed to be on the first panel and this gets into a long story that I tell in the book here but Bennett did not want any Democrats on a panel and disrupt this magnificent show he was gonna put on to make sure that everybody saw how great it was to cut off benefits for moms under age 18. So here's what happened when Becky Blank test fined and balanced if a major purpose of the hearing was to establish the wisdom of our provision on illegitimacy, I don't think we won many converts that day. This is especially the case. Since the testimony of Rebecca Blank, a professor at that time, she was at Northwestern, when we had banished from the first panel was such a spirit attack on both Murray Light and the family cat. Blank, a former member of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers who is generally considered to be one of the best labor economists in the nation completely rejected the idea of cutting benefits to reduce illegitimacy. Once you control for other variables, she said, the cause of declining marriage and rising illegitimacy is not welfare. The effects are either small or simply not existent. Rather, she argued, illegitimacy has complex roots and is related to women's ability to find jobs and decline in men's ability to support a family because of low and falling wages and a decline in social stigma against illegitimacy. If the benefits of Republican policy were uncertain, she argued, cutting or terminating the benefits of young mothers and their babies would have devastating effects. These would include an increase in abortion. That was a especially clever argument to make the Republicans. Women being forced to live with boyfriends who abuse them and an increase in homelessness. She referred to our policy as scorched earth approach to illegitimacy. Blank concluded by urging the committee to recognize the complexity of this problem and resist simple, easy, and wrong answers that only increase economic need. These are the standard arguments against the Murray approach, although reading both her oral and written testimony is in itself quite persuasive. The full effect could only be achieved by watching her performance before the committee. I suspect that neither of them would approve of this comparison, but Blank reminded me of Kate O'Burn. You know who Kate O'Burn is? She's on a lot of the talk shows, very conservative, extremely aggressive. Y'all wouldn't like her very much. Both talk exceptionally fast while conveying an atmosphere of knowledge and aggressive readiness to defend their views. Even members of Congress would be well advised to hesitate before publicly disagreeing with either of them. And indeed the members were noticeably cautious in their questioning of both women she had testified earlier. So that is your own Dean Blank. And that is how social science influences public policy. So next I wanna talk about this rhetoric that was used against Republicans and how nasty some of it was. And this particular scene that I wanna talk about two scenes. One was when a bill goes through Congress, there were first hearings and then in ways of means they had a big committee so we have subcommittees. And the subcommittees do something called mark up the bill which means the chairman introduces a bill and the goal of the Democrats is to change the bill or completely ruin it. And the goal of the Republicans is to support the bill and make sure the Democrats can't amend it. So this is the first time this massive Republican bill that was under such attack had actually been before a committee and it was about ready to be passed. And as this tradition when that happens the leader of the minority party and the leader of the majority party make a closing statement. And typically the minority attacks the majority are being stupid and having ridiculous legislation and so forth. And so here is what Harold Ford. This is Harold Ford, the father, not the son. The father very different, very extremely liberal. The son's quite moderate in many ways. Ford then launched into a severe condemnation of the Republican bill. He said the bill was mean spirited, short-sighted and cruel. He said the bill punished children for sins committed by their parents. Even worse the bill used the nation's children as guinea pigs and crash test dummies. But worst of all, the bill destroyed hope. The only thing that the poor could not do without. Ford showed considerable emotion as he read his prepared text. He had barely finished when Shaw, who was the Republican chairman of the committee, let loose. At that point I knew Shaw quite well for six years and was to work closely with him for another four years. My own experience confirmed by the opinions of everyone who knew him, including Democrats, was that he was one of the nicest and most respected members of Congress. But this was the maddest I'd ever seen him or whatever see him. He told Ford that he was so disappointed at the end of such a fine markup, which lasted three days, by the way. They were in that room for about 40 hours, I think. During which members had conducted himself so admirably that Ford would make such an extraordinarily partisan statement. It was Democrats who had created and jealously guarded a bankrupt system that hurt children. Even after their party leader, President Clinton, and promised in welfare as we know it, Democrats in Congress, including those on the Ways and Means Committee, had refused to lift a finger to help people get off welfare and into jobs. And now, without providing a bill, they're only simply sat on the sidelines and attacked the Republican bill. Shaw then looked directly at Ford and told him that no Republican was mean-spirited. And then to talk that way was to question their commitment to the well-being of the nation's children. In fact, to do so was itself mean-spirited. Shaw predicted, and in this he was correct in the long run, that a majority of Democrats would end up voting for a bill very much like the one that Ford had just criticized and that their own president would sign it. So that would give me an idea of some of the partisanship. Then after the bill comes out of the committee, it goes to the floor of the House of Representatives. And that debate on the floor of the House of Representatives for the first bill, and somewhat for the second bill, I'll get to that in just a minute, was really one of the bitterest debates. If you go through the congressional record for the last 20 years, there were very few that were as bitter. And one of the most remarkable statements that Democrats made about the bill was made by John Lewis of Georgia, great hero of the civil rights movement, greatly respected by Republicans. And he got up and here's what he said about the bill. Lewis opened his remarks by saying the bill was mean-spirited, cruel, wrong, and downright low-down. The bill was angry and devoid of compassion and feeling. Worse, the bill takes money out of the pockets of the disabled, takes heat from the homes of the poor, and takes food out of the mouths of children. Lewis then warmed to his main point. German Protestant theologian Martin Niemeler, describing Nazi Germany before World War II, said when they came for the Communists, he didn't speak up. When they came for the Jews, the trade unions, or the Catholics, he didn't speak up. Then when they came for the Protestants, there was no one left to speak up. Then Lewis said, read the proposal, read the small print, read the Republican contract, they are coming for the children, they are coming for the poor, they are coming for the sick, the elderly and the disabled. That is the contract with America. So Shaw stood up and rebutted his comments, but it was really quite a remarkable moment in the history of the House representatives to have the entire Republican Party accused of being Nazis. And it led to some really very strong feelings on both sides, what I think persists to this day. All right, so enough for the partisan stuff. Now I wanna talk about the fighting among Republicans. It wasn't just differences between Republicans and Democrats that motivated this debate. There was a lot of fighting behind the scenes among Republicans, which always happens. And in the end, let me just say here, in the end, the difference between Republicans at that point and Republicans today and Democrats at that point was that Republicans were united, and in part because of delay, I'll talk more about that in just a minute. Delay's probably, Tom Delay's probably another person, very popular on this campus and a hero of the faculty of the Ford School, I'm quite sure. But this is a story about Phil Graham, another very popular Republican among liberals, a very strong Democratic Senator from Texas. And the scene here is this happened late at night, it was probably 11 o'clock at night, and there were 20 people, roughly half from the Senate and half from the House and a couple of staffers, and cutting the final deal. When the House passes the bill and the Senate passes the bill, the House and the Senate get together in conference committee, it's supposed to be bipartisan. We didn't invite any of the Democrats to these meetings and they're gonna return the favor, I assure you, we won't be in there when they decide on the final bill. And so we're making the final deal. And Shaw and Graham are sitting right across from each other at the table, and here's what happened. In a meeting full of friendly banner and sharp disagreements, the most memorable exchange occurred between Shaw and Graham. Widely feared for his verbal skills, his quick wit and use of power and influence to deal harshly with those who crossed him, Graham was a major presence in this meeting and every meeting I ever sat in with him. He was especially animated in this meeting because he was concerned about a provision he was intent on getting into the final bill. Specifically, he wanted to deny welfare to anyone who had a felony drug conviction. Many, perhaps most Republicans supported drug provisions of this type. The instant Graham finished his spirited explanation defense of his drug provision, the mild manner and gentlemanly Clay Shaw hit the table with his open hands, startling everybody in the room, seated directly across from Graham, he looked him in the eye and delivered an impassioned little speech that began with a simple statement which he virtually shouted out that his bill is about the future and about hope and that he would not allow a provision that condemned people for their past behavior in the bill. When Shaw finished, I think most of the people present knew he opposed the Graham provision. For his part, Graham responded in very reasonable and calm manner, arguing that something had to be done about drug use by welfare mothers and that the real victims of the drugs were the children and so forth. And we did include a version of the provision but we cut it way back so it was much less not as tough a provision in the final version. Now, I'd like to read after we got the bill and finally reached agreement and we brought it to the floor and we're about ready to pass this bill. Now, I haven't told you, but if you read the book, you'll see we passed the bill through the House Senate Conference, passed it again in both houses which you have to send it to the President, he vetoed it. We did the whole thing again, sent it to him again, he vetoed it again. So now this is a year later, we're through the third time going through the whole process again, hearings, markups, through the House, through the Senate and now through the House and Senate Conference Committee and we're on the floor for the final vote on the final bill, this is on July 31st, 1996. So you could imagine how we felt after working on this legislation for all this time and I mean, it's right within grasp that we're about to pass this bill. So here is the story of what happened. So we're on the floor, in the house, you can members can come to the floor and give one minute speech at the beginning of the day. They can talk about anything you want to but only for one minute and there are all kinds of rules that are regulated. So that we're in just one minute speeches are just coming to an end. We were next and the finish line was in sight. Another three hours or so and the final vote would be over. But wait, what is Democrat? I should say Democratic, otherwise I'll be accused of being like the President. Lloyd Doggett, the last of the one minute speakers doing with a big poster board to use an exhibit during a one minute speech requires unanimous consent or recorded vote. That's when limitations you couldn't have any displays or props. Doggett rose to the podium and asked for unanimous consent to use a chart. Gradually it became clear that Democrats were not ready for the home stretch. The reason as we were informed by Republican floor staffers who had talked with their Democratic colleagues was that President Clinton had not yet told the Democrats whether he planned to sign the bill. Democrats were determined not to allow the debate to begin or the vote to occur until they knew what Clinton would do. And in the meantime would use parliamentary maneuvers to burn time. After Doggett asked for unanimous consent to use a chart on the House floor, Harold Volkman, a Democrat, notice a Democrat from Missouri, objected to the request and asked for a recorded vote which would eat up 20 minutes or 25 minutes. 386 members voted to allow Doggett to use a chart. Robert Wise, a Democrat from West Virginia then offered a motion to reconsider that vote. Well, up on Mike Castle, who've delayed that motion on the table? Another recorded vote followed. This time on Castle's motion resolving in the wise motion being tabled. The previous vote stood. Doggett could use his chart. Now Volkman offered the motion to adjourn which was defeated by yet another recorded vote. At this point with members growing a little impatient and waiting and walking back and forth, the members have to walk all the way from the house which is roughly a box home or two blocks and come back over. They have to be physically present to vote and then go back and forth and back and forth. So they're getting a little tired of this. So finally, Doggett gave his talk which happened to be on the topic ironically of terrorism. Ostensibly clarifying his argument by use of the chart. Careful observation and study, however, revealed that Doggett's chart was not likely to clarify very much about his speech. It was blank. When Doggett finished, Democrats offered another motion to adjourn. This motion too was defeated by a recorded vote. Nearly an hour and a half had been used up by these delays. But the Democrats had still more delaying tactics. The whip, David Bonnier from Michigan, no less, offered another motion to adjourn which was haily defeated by yet another recorded vote. Scott McGinnis from the Rules Committee gained recognition to offer a procedural motion. In the course of his talk, he mentioned that Joel Mowkley of Massachusetts, the Democrat leader on the Rules Committee, the senior Democrat in the Rules Committee had endorsed the rule. When McGinnis finished speaking, Mowkley leaped to his feet and said that his support for the rule had been conditioned on getting the report by eight o'clock the previous night because Democrats didn't get the report until nearly an hour before midnight. He could no longer support the rule. Mowkley yielded to Democrat Mike Ward of Kentucky who also wanted to use the chart. Like Doggett's, Ward's chart was blank. You might even have used the same chart on the ground instead of blank chart that Doggett used could be used with speeches on any topic. But no, Democrat Rosa DeLau from Connecticut objected to these preposterous charts and called for a vote on whether the blank chart should again be allowed to be displayed on the floor of the House of Representatives. This series of events prompted Dave Weldon, the Republican from Florida, to observe that it seemed a bit much to have recorded votes over blank charts. He asked the Speaker Pro Tem to rule the vote out of order on the grounds that it was dilatory, a class of actions that are prohibited under paragraph 803, section 10 of Jefferson's Rules of the House. But Lloyd Doggett, so far as I know the inventor of the blank chart, raised the point of order that Weldon was out of order. The Speaker Pro Tem evidently siding with Jefferson blank charts in delay, denied Weldon by ruling for the vote to proceed whereupon the House turned to its six recorded vote in two hours, the older members were panting by the time they put their card in the slot to vote to allow Ward to use his blank chart. But before Ward could hold forth on the beauties of nothing, Jim McDermott leaped into the fray by seeking recognition and calling once again for a vote to be reconsidered. Steve Largen of Oklahoma, catching the parliamentary ping pong ball in the manner he previously caught NFL footballs, asked to lay the McDermott motion, if not McDermott himself on the table. The seventh recorded vote of the House version of the filibuster sustained Largen's motion. This is my favorite. Mowgli, growing tired of blank charts, decided to reclaim the time he'd given to Ward in the first place. He delivered a peppy little talk on how those rotten Republicans had filed the report late and were now trying to jam it down the Democrats' collective throw before they had time to carefully study it. This is the third time it had been through the Congress in two years. During his talk, he referred to our welfare reform bill as no small potatoes. Surely one of the most accurate characterizations of legislation to be used on the House floor by a Democratic speaker. So that was the nature of the debate and they eventually did. They had delayed from another half an hour and the President announced that he would sign the bill and half of the Democrats voted for the bill in both the House and the Senate. So the bill finally passed by a larger bipartisan vote than the bipartisan vote on Medicaid and Medicare in 1965. So it truly was a bipartisan bill and signed by a Democratic president exactly as Shaw had predicted. But now I'd like to turn for the last selection from this book to tell you how Clinton made this decision. It's a fascinating story and especially for people in public policy, I think you might find some inspiration in this. So they're in the cabinet room and Clinton has his top advisors in there, several cabinet secretaries and several political advisors, including Bruce Reed, who is his most important advisor on welfare and was head of something called the Domestic Policy Council. After an hour or so of discussion, Clinton turned to Bruce Reed, arguably, oh, by the way, and he went around noon and had everybody say what they would do and the only person that supported Clinton signing the bill in the entire room other than Bruce Reed who hadn't been heard from yet was Mickey Cantor and everybody else recommended the President not sign the bill. So now it gets, it comes to Bruce Reed. Clinton turned to Bruce Reed, arguably, his top advisor on welfare policy and he asked him to review the arguments for signing legislation. An opportunity like this is what draws many young people to politics, including those like Bruce Reed who could have chosen distinguished careers in fields with shorter hours and much longer bank statements. Whether on the staff of the most junior member of a city council or the President of the United States, policy advisors spend their time preparing for the occasions when they will be asked to explain and justify a specific recommendation on a specific policy. It was the fate of Bruce Reed to have the opportunity to bring all the welfare reform arguments together in an attempt to persuade the President in front of an audience that was to say the least, not sympathetic, to sign the most important social legislation and at least half a century. Reed began by stating flatly that the parts of the legislation that required and supported work, including the new childcare funds that Clinton and other Democrats had helped secure were good. If the legislation passed, the impacts on work were likely to be substantial and the nature of welfare was likely to be revolutionized exactly the goals that Clinton had been working toward since at least 1992. Reed also pointed out that the child support provisions, many of which looked a lot like they had come from the word processors at HHS, were superb and alone nearly justified signing the reforms. Reed also pointed out that reforms would give states a huge amount of money and sweeping new flexibility create tough welfare to work programs. Further, the nightmare of scenarios being pushed by critics were just not likely to happen like Ford and Lewis and the New York Times and so forth. Despite all the consternation over the time limit, given the now growing pressure from within the nation's welfare bureaucracy from others to leave welfare for work and given the financial inducements provided by their income tax credit and childcare funds, which we'll talk about in just a minute, few families would still be on the rolls at the five year limit. Reed then made an argument that must have landed with some force on Clinton. Although pundits tend to be cynical about the promises made by politicians during campaigns, those who work with politicians on a regular basis know they take their campaign promises seriously and usually do everything they can to hold to them. Clinton then made a highly distinctive, surprising, and popular promise to end welfare as we know it. That's the money robbed from the Republicans. Reed pointed out that if Clinton did not sign the report now, it might be a long time before he or any other president had a chance to so deeply reform welfare and convert it to a work program just as he had promised to do during the campaign. The opportunity to sign revolutionary welfare reform does not come along often. Presidents since Lyndon Johnson had been tempted to do something big and bold about welfare and all had failed. Now Clinton could be the one to achieve major reform. Soon the president ended the meeting by thanking his advisors for giving him such sincere and thoughtful advice. Clinton then retired to the old law office with the vice president, Reed, another guy named Hilly and Leon Panetta, who was his chief of staff. After Reed and Panetta had reviewed the argument, she had again, the president asked Vice President Gore what he recommended. Gore equivocated, but the president pushed him to answer what he should do. Gore then said that it was the president's responsibility to represent all the people and that some people with no voice, non-citizens problem among them would be hurt by the legislation. Even so, on balance, the welfare system was so bad and it already hurt so many people that the president should sign the reforms. After a few more minutes of discussion, Clinton said, that's it, I'll sign it. And we were back in the floor of the house and I was watching, I kept dashing in on the back of the floor is a place where the members go for coffee and drinks. Oh, sorry, coffee. And I kept opening the door and looking at her because there was a television hanging from the ceiling because I knew he was gonna have a press conference and he announced that he would sign the bill. So that's what happened now. Let's see what happened as a result of this legislation. I think this is supposed to work, but these things never do when I touch them. So, oh my God, is that amazing or what? All right, one more thing, let me barely go here. Okay, I do not have time to talk about the entire bill, but I want you to know the scope of this bill. These are some of the major provisions in the bill. Any one of these provisions would have made it major legislation. And to have all these in the bill is really completely unheard of. I don't think there's ever been a social, legislation on social policy that was this broad and sweeping. Let me just give you an example. Supplemental security income for children. This is the one that drove Newt Gingrich completely crazy. He urged us over and over again to drop the provisions because what we were doing was we were reducing number of kids getting supplemental security income. And they're supposedly disabled kids. Argument was that they weren't disabled. We were wasting billions of dollars a year giving guaranteed annual income and Medicaid coverage to kids who were not disabled at all, as you could imagine. That's a very dangerous argument to make. It passed and about something like 140,000 children lost their SSI benefits. Welfare for non-citizens, about a million non-citizens were cut off welfare benefits. Republicans were very clear that non-citizens should not qualify for welfare. They should become citizens. Once they become citizens, they should qualify for welfare. If people come to America for opportunity, taxpayers do not have an obligation to give them welfare. So we ended welfare for non-citizens and as I say, there have been a huge decline in number of non-citizens receiving welfare benefits. Drug addiction for alcoholics. There were 210,000 drug addicts and alcoholics who received guaranteed annual income from the SSI program and Medicare or Medicaid coverage depending on their situation. 210,000 because they were addicted. All they had to do was show that they were addicted to alcohol or drugs. They were all dropped from the rolls. And then you probably have, oh, absence education, how could I be on a college campus and forget the pitch, absence education? I know how popular absences on campus is, right? My niece, is that right? Republicans appropriated $50 million a year to establish absence programs around the country and would you believe it that absences actually increased? Teen pregnancy has dropped every year since 1991 so there are other factors involved. And most scholars now agree that teen pregnancy has declined about half because teens are more effective in using means of birth control and about half because they delay sexual debut and they have fewer partners. So there is actually something to be said for absence despite what students at the University of Michigan might think or do. And charitable choice, which was another huge argument and Republicans greatly broaden the ability of the federal government to give grants to religious organizations. They have not fully taken advantage of but it's still quite a remarkable provision. So what I would like to do though is to talk primarily about the TANF program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families that replaced the old aid to families and dependent shown program. This is a long program, lots of statutory language. Five major provisions. And this is the revolution that people were really upset about. First in the cash entitlement, this is the single most important thing. The concept of welfare, both by the statutes and by the courts getting involved was that people who meant the qualifications program, roughly speaking, they didn't work and they had children they couldn't support, that they had an entitlement, a guarantee, a legal right to a cash benefit. And Republicans said flatly, no, that's wrong. That should not be the basis for policy. They should have to do something to get the benefit. Namely, they should have to go to work. And if they don't, they should lose their benefit. Second block grant funding is through the mechanism to give money to the states and give them a lot more control. Republicans always are federalists. They'd like to get control out of Washington and to the states and local government. Third, work requirements, very strong requirements. States had to have half their case load in work programs or the state itself would be sanctioned. That means they would lose part of their money. And sanctions is probably the most important part that every state had to have provisions that if the moms did not do what they were supposed to do, namely prepare to work or actually take jobs that they would be sanctioned. They would lose their benefit. And 37 states, states had flexibility. But 37 states passed laws that allowed them to completely terminate the cash benefits if the moms did not try to work. And then of course, a very controversial part of the provisions was a five-year time limit. Republican vision was that when the mom came in the first time for welfare, the social work would say to her, you have five years. And after five years, you don't get benefits anymore. There are some exceptions. There's a little bit of flexibility. But temporary assistance for needy families should be a very clear message from the very beginning. So that is what really was causing all the trouble. That is why Republicans were accused of being mean and cruel and so forth. So what has happened is a result of that. God, I cannot remember. Okay, first of all, the welfare roles, as you can see, declined very substantially. They're still declining. They have declined for 11 consecutive years. And if you look previously, starting in 1962, the roles virtually never declined before. Welfare just went up and up and up. And now they've declined like mad. Now that's not evidence that the legislation worked, but the first requirement of successful legislations to get people off welfare. So clearly it did that. Now, where did all those moms go? Here are data from the Census Bureau untouched by Republican hands. 1985 to 2005, these are married mothers. And this just continues the trends since World War II, much more work by married mothers. It actually fell off a little bit after 2000. And these are all single mothers. So here is welfare reform passing. And look, huge increase. And then the recession of 2001 and a slight decrease, but even more work by all female heads of families than by single moms. And this is the most disadvantaged group. These are never married moms on welfare. And here you have a spectacular increase, 40% increase in four years of work by moms who had babies outside marriage. And these are the most disadvantaged group of mothers, least likely have job experience, most likely to have, least likely do a graduate from high school. So they're the most disadvantaged. This is data on the bottom 40% of mothers of all single moms heading families, the bottom 40%. So this is roughly below say 20,000 or 21,000 in this year's dollars. And here is their income from welfare on the yellow line. And here is their income from earnings plus their income tax rate, I'll talk about in just a minute. As you can see, every single year, their income from welfare declined. Every single year, their income from earnings plus CITC increased until the recession of 2001. And then it declined because moms lost some jobs. At this point, the difference net, adding up their welfare benefits and their earnings, the moms were about 30% better off in constant dollars. So they made their money the old fashioned way, they earned it, and their income from welfare went down. So if welfare is down, earnings are up, that's the very definition of any welfare as we know it. So on the basis of this evidence, it was quite successful. These data are, and this is why it really was successful, it's because most, the highest likelihood of living in poverty for American children is in female headed families. And you can see some years compared kids and married couple families and single parent families, there's six times more likely to be in poverty if they're in female headed families. So if you wanna make progress against poverty, you absolutely must reduce poverty in female headed families. And as you can see, there are very substantial decline in poverty among female headed families. At this point, 2000 is the lowest level of poverty in female headed families ever. It was also the lowest level of black child poverty ever. And a slight increase, even at this point after the increase, poverty was still 25% lower than it was before the decline started. So poverty declined, very substantial, the first sustained decline, actually the first sustained decline among female headed families ever. And still, even after the recession, it was still lower than it had been in 1993 by 25%. This is, I'm not even gonna talk about that. Okay, now I wanna explain to you, this will be very brief, this will take 30 seconds cause this is the liberal part of my talk. Unfortunately, this is hard to understand, liberals are hard to understand. This is done by the Congressional Budget Office again at the request of Republicans, nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. And here's the idea. We said to the Congressional Budget Office, we have changed a lot of programs other than welfare. We didn't change a squelcher. And almost all of these programs were changed on a bipartisan basis, not big partisan fighting. And what programs am I talking about? Child care, this is kind of Medicaid for families that are above the poverty level. The child tax credit, which was passed in 1997 and gives cash to families that have children. Medicaid itself, which provides health insurance. And your income tax credit, which is a cash subsidy of up to $4,500, if you can believe that, it was enacted in 1975 and expanded three times after that. So the question is this. If we take the families in 1999, the actual families that exist in the United States based on a random sample collected by the Census Bureau, and if we apply the law for these programs to those families, as the law existed in 1994, before these programs were expanded and even before the tax credit was created, how much money would we spend to support working families? And the answer is $5.6 billion. But because Congress changed all these laws, in 1999, under all these programs, we actually spent $52 billion supporting working families. So it wasn't just welfare reform and the tough requirements of welfare reform. It's the much, let's call it the carrot in a stick and carrot approach of rewarding people who went to work with cash, with Medicaid, with food stamps, and other benefits. And if you look at the difference in the height of these graphs, I think it's an accurate indication of how substantial these policy changes were. So there are really two revolutions, not one. There's a revolution that took place over more than a 10-year period where Congress is constantly passing legislation, making the programs more friendly to working families. In the old days, if you went to work, you lost almost everything. You definitely lost Medicaid. And these programs were changed so that we're providing much more support. Think of this. What policy makes you're doing? They're supporting low-income working families because they think that's a better strategy for helping families than the old strategy of letting people go on welfare. But if they leave welfare, then we're gonna cut all their benefits. So it's a much more effective approach. The families are better off, as you've already seen. Child poverty went down. What's not to like? This is complicated too, but this shows you how it actually worked, I believe. Again, this is done by HHS and the Congressional Budget Office. It's taken out of the Green Book, a weighty book that gives all kinds of information about American social policy. 1990 before welfare reform, 1990 after welfare reform. The first bar graph is the poverty level, call this life in the state of nature. This is before any government benefits. How many people would be poor based on their own work? And this is all single moms who had babies outside marriage so they're the most vulnerable group. And the answer is in 1990, half of them were poor. But in 1999, only 39. Look at the difference between these two. And that's based entirely. Government had nothing to do with that except encouraging work. But they went to work, they earned their money, they brought themselves and their children out of poverty. Now let's consider non-tax benefits from government. Some, like we saw in the other chart, this would be things like housing, food stamps, and various forms of cash benefit. And here in 90, when so few mothers are working, 13 percentage point declined to 37%, but over here, you still get a 9 percentage point decline and the poverty rate is 30% much better than 37% after considering non-tax benefits. Now if we consider the tax benefits, primarily during income tax credit that I discussed with you just a minute ago, hardly anything happens here because so few mothers work. But look at this, another 5 percentage point decline. So the combination, just as I showed in the previous chart, the combination of the sticks of welfare requirements to get people to work. And the carrots of earned income tax credit, Medicaid and so forth, cause families to work and then their earnings were subsidized and now we have a poverty rate under a broader definition than when I talked about before. 12 percentage points lower than in 1990. So I argue that the system worked exactly as it was drawn up by Republicans and Democrats that voted for it. Now there are problems. I've left 30 seconds to discuss the problems of welfare reform. There are three, there are more problems than this but these are the more serious problems and we're not doing much about any of them. The first one is poor males. Males are actually worse off during this time when women are going to work in droves plus raising the kids. Males, especially minority males and inner city males were actually less likely to work. And at that time the wages at the bottom distribution were increasing for the first time in something like 25 years. So we need to figure out how to do something about males plus in many cases they seem to be, some people use the term oppositional culture and employers are clearly reluctant to hire them. So we have a huge problem and we need to do something about it. We're not doing enough. That's one problem. Second problem I call floundering families. Dean Blank has just written a marvelous paper about how we ought to focus on these families. There's no such thing as a policy that helps everybody. Every policy helps some and hurts some no matter what the policy is. And this policy hurts some much smaller group of mothers but nonetheless some others are worse off as a result of welfare reform. And who are they? It's a very, quite a simple thing really. It's moms that have not been able to work. Well, why can't they work? And in fact, the research done here in Michigan by Sheldon Danziger and his wife has really shown us very clearly that these are mothers that have disadvantages. And normally they have to have more than one disadvantage. Most mothers can overcome one disadvantage and these are things like taking care of a disabled child or someone else in the family, transportation problems, illness themselves, depression is a big one. And moms can often overcome one thing but if they have two or more that's when and it just steps down very systematically the more of these conditions they have. So we have some floundering families and we ought to do a lot more. Becky proposes a specific set of policy that costs something like two and a half billion dollars a year that would give a good chance so we could help these mothers more. And then third job retention advancement. We all believe in the American dream. Most people in this room are part of the American dream and you're gonna get out of the University of Michigan. It's great prestige to graduate from Michigan and you're gonna wind up, you know, start at $60,000 a year and you have good prospects. You make $100,000 a year within 10 years. While these mothers go to work at $7 an hour they earn about $10,000 or $11,000 a year. They get $4,500 from EITC. They get about $1,000 in food stamps. They have a total income of around $16,000 which is a lot better than being on welfare. But we would hope that we'd come back a couple years later instead of making $750 to making $10,000 and then $14,000 and then $18,000. It does not work that way. They don't advance very well. And you would think that we've spent billions trying to figure out how to train these moms and the problems are largely a failure. So we really have not figured out how to help these moms advance and that also is a huge problem. Now let me end with this last chart. What does it all mean? And I'm gonna say this very quickly. First of all, the arguments in 1995 and 96 were huge ideas. These were really big ideas for changing the very ground of American social policy. I've talked about all these and here are some of the big ideas. Second, in order to do bipartisan legislation I've been in Washington 20 years. I've read about policy long before that. Almost every major policy that we pass is bipartisan. It's very difficult to get things down on a partisan basis. This is a way of saying to Republicans especially the last four years of their reign in the House and the Senate really made fundamental errors because everything became very, very partisan. And I don't know if Democrats are gonna continue that tradition but we will not have big legislation especially about our budget issues which are gonna wipe us out if we don't do something about it. It has to be done on a bipartisan basis. Majority unity. The main difference between Republicans and Democrats is that before Republicans absolutely controlled their votes they could pass anything they wanted to in the House and almost anything in the Senate so they led the way and eventually Democrats joined them. So majority unity is really crucial. Keep an eye on how the Democrats are able to maintain their unity. And then leadership. I've not talked enough about this but there's a lot in the book about leadership especially Newt Gingrich who's not exactly the most popular man in America but he was a great leader especially for the first two years. We also had great leadership from Bill Archer the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and in the Senate had great bipartisan leadership by Dole and by Senator Kratz so we really had good leadership that leaders know where they wanted to go and they knew how to get legislation passed. A long gestation period one of the things about passing big legislation is it doesn't happen quickly. Most of these ideas have been debated in Congress for many years. It takes a long time to pass big legislation and it makes fundamental changes. And finally, in order to pass legislation it actually has a kind of profound impact that this legislation has had. The legislation must be consistent with American values and what I'm arguing here this other and gender a little debate that the welfare system we had before where we get based on entitlement was fundamentally inconsistent with American values. American public did not think that we should give things away we should require people to do something to earn them. And when we made the welfare system like that not only did it work it made it much more consistent with American values. So, questions, comments. Yes? I noticed you didn't say too much about what happened to children. You think there's any negative consequences for what's happened to children? In the state of Michigan we now have 19,500 children in foster care. We had welfare return passed we had about 14,000. We have fewer actually eligible children I mean in terms of population because we've had a declining population. Is there any relationship between the 70% of the children in Michigan who are in foster care are in foster care for neglect which is primarily related to poverty. Is there any connection to the welfare reform? Let me make three answers. First of all, the chart I didn't show you. Overall, the well-being of America's children have been declining for almost 20 years when welfare reform passed in 1995 based on their economic well-being based on crime being victims of crime based on education and so forth. Every year now of course people are gonna say it's because Clinton was elected president but starting in 1994 in every year with one or two exceptions the overall well-being of children got better. That's the first thing. Second thing, the number of kids in foster care the number of kids who had been taken away from their parents by the state had increased every year for 15 years before welfare reform passed in 1996. That continued for two more years. Every year since then the number of kids in foster care in the United States, obviously different than Michigan has declined. So we have fewer kids in foster care now than we had, yes we do. Now, okay, what's your source? This data is from the- HHS data. This data is from the, no, HHS data is in the Green Book and the number of kids in foster care is declining for the first time in 20 years and it's declined considerably since then. So, and 70% of kids in almost every state and for as long as I can remember has been caused by a neglect not abuse. So, I don't know what's going on in Michigan but in the country as a whole there are fewer kids in foster care. Next question. Yes. You showed a couple of different things about the welfare of female-related mothers over the period of time that you're interested in here. And I'm curious if some of that variance could be explained just as capably not by welfare reform, bringing mothers back to work, but just by tax from female penetration in the workforce from a lot of the trade you've put up there from the 80s until the 2000s period. Well, no, I'm not saying it's just welfare reform. I've tried to be very clear about this. It is sticks and carrots. It's the push of welfare reform to get people in the workforce but also there's earning income tax credit and all of those benefits that mom gets. So, it's both of those. It's not just welfare reform. In fact, Dean Plankas and several other economists have tried to partial this out and figure out what percentage is welfare. I don't think that's ever gonna be a successful enterprise but all of the analyses without exception show that it's not just welfare reform. There are other factors that do it but I think everybody thinks welfare reform is an important part of it. I was just curious. I mean, look, I wanna emphasize. This is a crucial point. It is not just welfare reform. It's a stick and a carrot. It's a bipartisan. I'm not arguing that. I'm not saying that you are arguing that. Right, okay. I'm just curious if you have some sense of sort of partial effect of welfare reform on its own controlling for welfare reform. Okay, that's what I'm saying. Dean Blank and others have tried to analyze that. I don't know if you wanna jump in and say something here but they've gotten very different results in terms of trying to save the percentage that's due to welfare reform, percentage due to their income tax credit, percentage due to a good economy. Normally, those are the three factors that people mention and I don't think we'll ever know exactly which it is but who cares? You can have all three and we have all three and it's worked pretty well with the exceptions that I noted on that next to last chart. Yes? I think somewhere with that, one of the things that we need to pay attention to in the next stages, one of them being job retention and advancement. Yes. I was wondering what in your perspective, what are those next steps? For instance, I guess I was reading a study by Christine Williams from the University of Texas when she did an ethnographic study specifically in a toy store retail and comparing one that was a more affluent, so that could have an affluent kind of clientele and that was one of those sort of like large box store toy stores and specifically the one that was like could have more to like working class individuals employed a number of work fair clients and so I guess my question being her determination was that the conditions in the stores and the way like their business model is set up does not provide for long-term employment or advancement and that there's issues obviously of gender and racial roles within the store. I was wondering if what in your perspective would that seem consistent or are there other things? I don't know that study but you haven't said anything that I find surprising. I think the fact remains that we don't have good programs that would cause moms to start at $758 an hour and then progress nicely acquiring more skills, building up as a common say their human capital and coming out the other end six or eight years later making $15 or $18 an hour with benefits. That's the model that we would really like to have. We do have some hints. One hint is that in terms of investing dollars, it's much more efficient and effective for employers to invest the money than it is for government to invest the money and I think what's going on here and someone else may want to have something to say about this is that they know exactly what they need in order to get you from this job to this job which they need, they're gonna train you to do that much difference and no more and they're gonna give you the exact skills you need to take that next step and make 12 or 14 or whatever it is and they figured out very efficient ways to do that whereas government programs often are training for like literacy programs or perhaps some math program or programs for things like beauticians we spend a lot of money in the old days creating beauticians and they're not things that are needed in a local economy so from this I would conclude we need programs that involve universities they're not gonna play a role in this I don't think they're way too stodgy, they're way they're too slow, they're old fashioned, they're brittle but junior colleges, community colleges might be and a lot of them have moved more quickly to establish eight or 10 or 12 week courses to focus on jobs in the local economy that are actually available and give them the training they need to qualify for those jobs and be successful at those jobs that's the kind of thing I think that in the long run it's gonna work but we don't have very many examples like that so it's necessary to be humble about it but the point that I'm making is we're not doing enough we should be doing more things like this to try to figure it out there are studies, even random assignment studies very good studies to show junior colleges sometimes make a difference and that you can get students to stay in junior colleges longer and make passing grades if you subsidize them for doing it this is a recent MDRC study in fact it's the one you were talking about at lunch I believe, other questions? Yes? I'm curious as to how the discussion went within the Republican party of taking mothers away from their children and not be able to raise them for let's say those 40 hours per week that they're at the job I'm curious as to the major... The, all the provisions of the type that I was calling Murray-Lite were defeated they were defeated on the Senate floor they did, they were all both, there were two major provisions and they were in the House bill they passed the House but they were defeated on the Senate bill so there really weren't provisions that caused families to break up as far as we know and as we just had this argument there are fewer kids who have been removed from their families in the years after 1998 than in the years before so that is an effect that a lot of people worried about but at least so far it has not occurred Yes? There have been lots of cases where women or anyone who's been receiving welfare has decided not to report a job to the government and I was wondering if your data had been adjusted for that and to look at the effect of before and after with accounting for jobs that haven't been reported or other sources of income Okay, first of all what you say is absolutely correct there are a lot of income so to speak that low income moms have and other people as well a lot of people cheat on their taxes for example that are not reported in official records so they do have more money the most effective way to get at this is to look at consumption rather than income and we do have fairly good studies in fact, Dean Blank organized a conference recently about what we've learned about consumption not only United States but internationally there are a lot of problems with the data but I think I'm correct in saying that most people agree that consumption shows roughly the same picture except at the bottom and consumption seems to show that this problem that both Becky and I are concerned about namely what I call the floundering families who moms that don't have income from earnings and don't have income from cash welfare because they were sanctioned or for whatever reason not on cash welfare that if you look at their consumption their consumption does not decline and that's curious it's bizarre but that's been the case for many years so it's an enigma I guess you know I don't know the answer to that but I don't think that detracts from the general picture that I presented here there has been a huge increase in earnings because way more mothers work in a regular economy now and their income generally has increased yes, Missy? You mentioned the problems plaguing intercity males unbelievably high unemployment rates incarceration rates, barriers to employment are there any big ideas out there now? Yes, yes I think there are two one is going to be very expensive and that is the earned income tax credit which everybody agrees both conservatives and Republican and Democrats that has made a big difference and definitely has greatly improved the financial well-being of children in fact there's some studies show that's the single most important government program that improves the financial well-being of children but you have to have a dependent to get it so dads don't get it and not only that and this is the real point they don't get the work incentive from having earned income tax credit so what if we had a program that we did give them the work incentive for having a tax credit so we gave them and a prominent person who studies welfare the head of the MDRC named Gordon Berlin has proposed that we have a policy like that where we give fathers supplement their wages to a maximum of around $2,500 a year and it would be completely separate from the mother so if they got married there would be no marriage penalty so they would have a total of almost $7,000 in cash if they got married so it would A, it would give the fathers additional incentive to work and B, it might increase marriage rates among low income couples because they wouldn't lose anything if they got married and they could combine their income the second thing is there are a lot of programs now they're not good programs yet but I think and if you asked me this question in five years I wouldn't be surprised we'll have some good models for guys coming out of prison 600,000 is that right? 600,000 coming out of prison each year going back to basically the same communities and recidivism rates are enormous and we hardly do anything we probably have fewer people on parole getting any kind of help now than we did 20 years ago it's a horrible performance and it cost the community greatly in violence and all kinds of other effects so we need better programs to help people when they're coming out of prison and a lot of people are working on this we have big random assignment studies going on and I think we'll learn something over the next five or six years so those are two answers other questions yes So Ron if you were writing this bill today would you do anything different? Knowing what you know now? I do think we ought to do I do something about the fathers I don't think it was necessarily appropriate to do it in that bill because we're a bit off enough already but I think that's something we should do I would try to have more provisions for low income moms so I'm convinced that that's been a problem a lot of, there are several conservatives that deny that but I just think the data and especially in your paper is the first time someone pulled it all together it is overwhelming I've been saying this for five or six years so I would do something more at the bottom we don't really know what to do but I think your approach is right appropriate money specifically to work with this group and hope that the state's figured out part of it is going to be much better casework I know that but our caseworkers are not generally very effective so there are all kinds of issues but that is something that I wish we had addressed more absolutely I want to thank Ron for coming we have a reception and sales of books we hope you'll all join us thank you thank you thanks for having me I really appreciate it