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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 27, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Let's overturn the welfare law

An Open Letter to Peter Edelman, Former Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services

From Fred Goldstein for Workers World newspaper

Mr. Edelman, the March issue of Atlantic Monthly magazine carries your indictment of President Bill Clinton for signing the welfare "reform" law last August. We read your piece with great interest.

We are inclined to agree with the title of the article--"The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Ever Done"--although he has done many terrible things. These include the crime bill with its funding for prisons, police and capital punishment; the anti-terrorism bill that increased the FBI's repressive power and did away with the right of habeus corpus; extending the criminal blockade of Cuba by signing the Helms-Burton Act; continuing the murderous sanctions against Iraq, and many other reactionary measures.

We recognize that you were alone among high Clinton administration officials in doing the proper thing when you resigned over his signing the criminal welfare law. Your article provides valuable ammunition for the struggle against this law.

You outline its major effects. You unearth little-publicized but highly important facts about the law. You debunk myths about welfare recipients.

For example: "The magnitude of the impact is stunning. Its dimensions were estimated by the Urban Institute. ... [whose] study showed the bill would move 2.6 million people, including 1.1 million children, into poverty.

"It also predicted some powerful effects ... The new study showed that a total of 11 million families--10 percent of all American families-would lose income under the bill. This included more than 8 million families with children, many of the working families affected by food-stamp cuts, which would lose an average of about $1,300 per family.

"Many working families with income a little above what we call the povery line (right now $12,158 for a family of three) would lose income without being made officially poor, and many families already poor would be made poorer." This estimate is actually low, you point out.

You show that almost 800,000 immigrants will lose Supplemental Security Income benefits and food stamps to the tune of $24 billion over six years. And that 100,000-200,000 disabled children, mostly those with multiple disabilities, will lose SSI.

Nothing to do with 'welfare'

"So this is hardly a welfare bill," you conclude. "In fact, most of the budget reductions come in programs for the poor other than welfare, many of them affecting working families ... these are just cuts."

You do a service by debunking years of slander against people on welfare by showing who they really are. You cite a Kaiser Foundation study showing "30 percent of the caseload is composed of women who are caring for disabled children or are disabled themselves."

You show that many long-term welfare recipients are functionally disabled or trapped by poverty. They would lose medical coverage and be unable to afford child care even if they could get a low-paying job.

You show, in other words, that people on welfare are not lazy or unwilling to work. Rather, most are in some way trapped because society does not provide them with any other choice.

You also explode the myth that people will get jobs, even in the so-called boom economy. You cite the Kansas City experience where a "well-designed, well-implemented effort ... was able to put 1,409 out of 15,562 welfare recipients to work." Soon only 730 were still at work.

And there is much more in your indictment to show what a fraudulent scheme it all is.

Your analysis of the actual workings of the bill shows its Draconian character. It was designed to throw people out regardless of whether they have a job. And the right of appeal has been eliminated.

You accuse Clinton of signing a bill he did not have to sign, and the Democratic senators of caving in. All this is very useful information.

Regrettably, however, your exposition falls short.

The real source of the problem

You don't talk about the huge wealth-trillions of dollars-that keeps flowing to the other pole. To the Pentagon, that is, and to corporate welfare, bondholders, stock-market speculators.

A small minority-the rich, who finance both political parties-are behind the cuts. They are the ones who are sucking up most of the money being cut from the 12 million families you cited.

You make a very general appeal for "jobs, jobs, jobs ... and then everything that enables people to be productive citizens. Schools that teach every child as well as they teach every other child. Safe neighborhoods. Healthy communities. Continuing health and day-care coverage. ... Ending racial and ethnic discrimination" and so on.

No one can argue with this. But to whom are you appealing?

You seem to be appealing to the same heartless capitalist establishment that engineered this vicious attack in the first place. But they did it with malice aforethought, knowing in advance and fully intending the horrific results that you have so expertly exposed.

You personally are most familiar with Bill Clinton's venality and opportunism. You were its victim. But while he is personally responsible for signing the law, primarily he is an instrument of corporate and financial forces that willed this result.

You are silent when it comes to really explaining the broad problem and pointing toward a genuine solution.

It is an overwhelming fact-but little talked about-that capitalists control the jobs. They own the factories, the offices, the mines, the means of transportation and communication.

This ownership gives them the power of potentates over the indiviual worker in setting the conditions for employment.

You say in your article that "the deck is stacked against" welfare recipients. But you do not really say why. It is for the same fundamental reason that the deck is stacked against all workers-except that it is much worse for welfare recipients.

The answer is to be found in the transaction between workers and bosses carried out tens of millions of times every day.

The masses of people have to go to the bosses and ask for employment. They have to sell their labor power as a commodity to some boss.

When a welfare mother goes for a job, the boss does not regard her as a worker who has come to participate in social production to create wealth for society. The boss doesn't give her the kind of assistance she needs to enter into the labor force. Instead, the boss regards her as an object to be exploited. Profit is the bottom line.

Her labor is to be purchased at the lowest possible price.

If that price falls below the poverty level, so be it.

If the boss is just plain racist, or if a job applicant is a Black youth with insufficient education, or a Latina worker who doesn't speak much English, or a white welfare mother whose skills aren't adequate for her to be exploitable in that particular enterprise-the boss tells him or her to take a walk.

This is the social power of capital, from the tiny store on the corner to AT&T. This transaction-having to sell yourself to a ruthless power that wants to get profit out of you and has no further interest in your situation, whether your parents are sick or you need health care or schooling or child care-this is the reason the deck is stacked against welfare recipients, and workers in general.

This is the real crime. This is what causes poverty. The capitalists benefit from having their pick of low-paid labor.

In short, the problem is capitalism. The solution is to take this awesome power away from the capitalists, and to return the power to the workers, who create all society's wealth.

Mass struggle can overturn the law

Your article has one final shortcoming. It is saturated with a spirit of resignation and defeat.

You recommend that people hunker down and try to pressure state legislatures to limit the damage. This is a pretty demoralizing prospect.

You also say that you waited to criticize the president and you voted for Clinton as the lesser evil, showing that you feel limited to choosing between a rock and a hard place.

We on the other hand refuse to accept this law-as will the millions affected by it and all truly progressive elements in society. Since you want to reverse this situation we invite you to join us in addressing a clear message to the masses of people, calling on them to organize and mobilize from every corner of the country.

This is a call to come into the streets, direct the fire of mass outrage at Washington and overturn the welfare law altogether. We believe that nothing short of the methods of social protest-the same methods that compelled President Franklin Roosevelt to sign the Social Security Act of 1935, which established the welfare system-will be effective.

Nothing less than mass action will succeed. Furthermore, we believe that mass action actually will succeed-in not only overturning this law but in winning new, more expanded rights to jobs and income and protection from the ravages of the vaunted capitalist "free-market" system of plunder.

You may not agree with our analysis. But we hope we can find common ground with you when we join thousands of people in Philadelphia on April 27 to protest against the Presidents' Summit for America's Future, which is designed to put a human face on the cutbacks and whose star is the very Bill Clinton you have exposed so well.

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