Our complex system of government assistance for families in need could be so much simpler if we could eliminate politics and use common sense. For example, how much time and resources went into the policy debates, the crafting, the vetting, and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act? And then how much cumulative time has been spent fighting about it, both in congress and in the media?
How much simpler if we had gone directly to a single payer, Medicare-for-All system of medical care? Cheaper too. It's not a new idea. Neither is the idea of a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans.
When Richard Nixon was president (1969-1974), Daniel P. Moynihan was his Assistant for Urban Affairs. Moynihan had a PhD in sociology and had served in the administrations of four presidents, beginning with Jack Kennedy as Assistant Secretary of Labor. He later went on to be our Ambassador to the United Nations, Ambassador to India, then was elected as a Democratic senator from New York for three terms.
Despite being a Democrat, Moynihan had influence with Richard Nixon and was part of his inner circle. It was probably his influence that gave Nixon the idea that conservative leaders can sometimes do progressive things that more liberal leaders cannot. Many have said that only Nixon could have made that first opening to China because he would not be dismissed at home as a communist sympathizer.
Just as the Republican Nixon, voted into office in large part because of his scorn for the dependency of poor people, was the president to introduce the idea of a guaranteed minimum family income as a pragmatic, not an ideological, solution. He announced his Family Assistance Plan the day after commenting that "Tory men and liberal policies are what have changed the world. " Moynihan later wrote the 1963 definitive book: The Politics of a Guaranteed Income: The Nixon Administration and the Family Assistance Plan.
The proposal was approved by the House Ways and Means Committee by a vote of 21 to 3, and it was subsequently passed by the full House. But then it ran into trouble with conservatives in the Senate Finance Committee. As changes were made to gain conservative votes, support from liberals slipped away and ultimately defeated the plan.
Moynihan's book details and analyzes the politics of this complex subject. The idea was put into practice in the Canadian province of Manitoba from 1974 to 1979. Individual families were given an annual amount based on their needs to provide a basic floor of support. Unfortunately, records were poorly kept and an academic researcher has been unable to arrive at much usable data of this five year experiment, which was ended when the political party in power changed.
It is a complex subject, but compared with any of our government assistance programs it may be an idea worth taking another look at. What fascinates me most is that, at least for a brief moment in history, it seemed to a Republican president like a practical solution to a real problem.
Or was Daniel Patrick Moynihan just a superb salesman of liberal ideas dressed up in conservative pragmatism?
Moynihan went on to have a long career as a public intellectual who cast a wide pathway through public administration, academia, elective politics, diplomacy, and sociological theory and policy-making. He was a prolific author of 19 books. Hitorian Michael Barone wrote in the Almanac of American Politics that Senator Moynihan was "the nation's best thinker among politicians since Lincoln and its best politician among thinkers since Jefferson.
I don't know whether someone like Moynihan could do much with our current, insanely reactionary political state; but wouldn't it be great to see some such bold idea come as a next president's sequel to Obama's Affordable Care Act?
It's a bright thought as we begin the slog towards the 2016 presidential election: A bold new idea (that isn't new at all) for a Happy New Year.
Ralph
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment