I remember listening to Rush Limbaugh years ago while driving across country, on the only radio station I could pick up in eastern Montana. Congress was debating Obamacare, and Limbaugh was against it. He devoted his entire show to ranting about how Bill Gates would be eligible for the program. (Why not? I thought. Doesn’t Gates pay enough taxes to deserve government benefits?) He never once mentioned the millions of uninsured working poor would, for the first time, have health coverage. It was one of the most profoundly dishonest arguments I’ve ever heard, and I turned it off.
Equally dishonest is the “welfare queen” myth propagated by Reagan in the 1980s. (Read background here.) There are, of course, welfare cheaters — just as there are crooked bankers. But stereotyping welfare recipients as thieves is just as dishonest as arguing Obamacare is “socialism for the rich” because Bill Gates might be eligible for it. (By the way, why would he want it? And what are the chances he would ever sign up for it?) I remember reading studies, around the time Bill Clinton was implementing “welfare reform,” showing the average welfare recipient spent 17 months on the program, and once off, never returned. Many of those recipients were battered women fleeing abusive relationships who need some time and financial assistance to settle into jobs and lives of self-support, which most of them did.
Only a few months into his presidency, Joe Biden is emerging as potentially a more consequential president than most in our nation’s history. Most of the attention is focused on his Covid-19 policies and infrastructure proposals, and flying under the radar is the fact he’s “now boldly going where no contemporary Democratic president has gone before, and he’s destroying one of the GOP’s most effective political attacks in the process.” He’s busting the “welfare queen” myth.
That myth is central to the Republican argument capsulated by Reagan in the phrase, “Government is the problem, not the solution.” While that can be true in certain situations, it’s mostly not true. Recent events have proven that, and given Biden an opening to reverse that argument and use it against the GOP: No private company could have developed a Covid-19 vaccine, carried out its mass distribution, and provided economic relief to sidelined workers and businesses. That took government resources, organization, and authority.
Now Biden wants to extend that constructive government intervention to other societal problems. He’s thinking big. “The heart of Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ agenda is three massive plans that would use huge sums of government money to help working families, including people of color,” CNN says. “‘The American Rescue Plan,’ which was signed into law in March, includes direct cash payments to struggling families. Two other plans would rebuild the country’s infrastructure and expand tax credits to help working families and make education more affordable.”
It’s ambitious, but Republicans are making it easier for him, even though they won’t supply a single vote for any of his proposals. CNN says, “What’s fascinating is how Republicans have responded. It’s not what they’ve said: that Biden is a ‘radical’ and a ‘socialist’ and his proposals are a ‘sloppy liberal wish list.’ It’s what they haven’t said that’s revealing. They haven’t successfully deployed any Welfare-Queen-like stories about people of color mooching off pandemic aid to turn a critical mass of White voters against Biden’s plans. If there have been such attacks, they haven’t gained traction. ‘[The Republicans] don’t have a coherent pushback,’ James Carville told the Daily Beast in a recent interview, describing three right-wing lines of attack against the President. ‘It’s all CBS: cancel culture, the border and senility.'”
Now, they’re in danger of a guy they call “senile” pushing a Second New Deal right past them.
Here’s their problem: “A majority of registered voters still think he is more moderate than Obama, though his policies so far have been more progressive. As a White, elderly man, Biden is a difficult target for Trump-loving conservatives who like to portray racially diverse Democrats as a threat to what they see as Anglo-Saxon cultural traditions. What was once seen as Biden’s vulnerability as a Democratic candidate — his mixed record on race — has become a presidential asset. It’s easier for him to propose plans that help people of color without sparking a White backlash.” Also not to be forgotten is the fact he set up a woman of color as his potential successor.
This summons echoes of LBJ, a southerner who turned out to be a champion of the blacks and poor. (And who ended up being reviled for his miscarried Vietnam policy, a warning lesson for any president tempted to sally forth into a foreign war; Biden seems very cautious in this respect.)
“This is remarkable. A Democratic president is talking boldly and unapologetically about using government aid to not just help millions of working people but also people of color. It’s a big departure from past years, when Republican leaders kept Democrats on the defensive by deploying varying versions of the same Welfare Queen story that blended racism with contempt for the poor.”
That was a powerful argument that Republicans used effectively for decades. Now, Biden isn’t tip-toeing around it, he’s driving right over it. He saw in the public embrace of the government’s Covid response an opportunity to defang the political power of the GOP’s government-is-bad mantra, and he’s using it.
Not bad for a senile old guy.
Read story here.
Image below: Artist’s portrayal of actual welfare queens
