Focus 580; Searching for Americas Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope

How's America fairing with the war on poverty. Did we lose the war in the sixties as some have suggested. Do we even declare a war on poverty in the first place. And how is the welfare reform enacted by Bill Clinton in 1996 affected the fortunes of the millions of Americans who remain even in this prosperous time below the poverty line. During this hour focus 580 will be talking with someone who has been on the front lines of the effort to address poverty in America since the 1960s. Peter Edelman was an aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy from his campaign for the U.S. Senate until he was assassinated in 1968. Peter Edelman has held various posts in Washington most recently as assistant secretary for planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton administration. In 1996 he resigned that position in protest over Clinton signing of the Welfare Reform Act ending in Clinton's word welfare as we know it. In 1997 Peter Edelman wrote a cover story for The Atlantic Monthly about that episode entitled The worst thing Bill Clinton has done. And you may have seen that article still available on the web by the way. A professor of law at Georgetown

University Peter Edelman has continued talking and writing about the problems of poverty in America and about the concert policies needed to effectively address it. He is also author of a book on the subject which also covers his time with Robert Kennedy in titled searching for America's heart RFK and the Renewal of Hope recently published by this one. Peter Edelman gave a public lecture last night here in Champaign Urbana which was the 11th Annual Daniel S. Sanders peace and social justice lecture on poverty and welfare policy challenges for the new century. We're glad to have him here to talk with us about that during this hour as we talk with Peter Edelman You are welcome to join the conversation. The number around Champaign-Urbana to call 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 3 3 3 wy A Well if you match the letters with the numbers we also have a toll free line anywhere you hear us around Illinois Indiana parts of the other states or signal travels 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Again around Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 0 elsewhere. 800 to 2 to

tell you all well and good morning. Good morning I'm glad to be here. Well we're delighted to have you. We're just to start the conversation and then we can talk about a lot of different aspects of this. But. Maybe I could just kind of threw this out and see if you think what has been the impact of the 1996 Welfare Reform Bill. It's mixed. It's not as bad as I thought it would be for a very simple reason. We've had an incredibly prosperous time in this country fortunately for two of us really in relation to this because people who were pushed to get off welfare have been able to go out and find jobs when when before that they might not have been are and many times weren't available. So that's been the good news in all of this but the bad news is that because these policies they differ from state to state they're not not the same everywhere and there are some states that really have tried to help people get often and stay off and make a better life for themselves because nobody really likes welfare. It the bad

news is that there are too many places where people have been pushed off or or can't get on when they go to apply because there's no there's no legal obligation anymore to to help them and so they end up not working and they also don't have cash assistance and that's a big number. The welfare rolls you know have gone down by over 50 percent and of course that's what the proponents of how wonderful the laws tell us all the time all the welfare rolls have been cut in half we have to ask a few more questions. So the ones that don't have jobs and don't have welfare and are over 3 million people about a million adults over a million moms who are really are worse off and I think that's very troubling. What we know about those people and their situation we don't know enough it's hard to follow people who have disappeared in this way I really call these people America's disappeared again because of the hot economy I think most of them have been able to move in with extended families so

you're not seeing 3 million people 2 million children out in the streets. But the fact is that. It's deeply troubling to me the homeless shelters all over the country are absolutely packed. They're absolutely bursting at the seams and there's another reason for this which is another problem that we ought to be addressing and that's the skyrocketing cost of rental housing it's just amazing what's happened. It's of course a side effect of the boom of recent years and that's made a lot of people who are technically not in poverty unable to both afford the rent and feed their family at the same time and they end up homeless but some of it is because a woman and her children have lost their welfare haven't been able to find a job and don't have anywhere to go. And they end up in the homeless shelters. There are also women I think who probably have done things they shouldn't have done because they were desperate. So it's a mix of things. And I worry that we seem to have a recession coming now Jack

in and. People have moved in. Moms have moved in with extended family where somebody did have a job you know and they could somebody was putting soup on the table and they were thinning the soup but somebody's going to lose that job maybe in those families and so and the time limits that are built into this welfare law are coming around the country and kind of hitting at the same hit at the same time here so I'm. We already have a problem but I'm really worried about having increasing problems here. There's been a lot of discussion about the number of jobs created since 1996 and because the economy has been pretty robust There have been a lot of jobs created and so forth but what kind of jobs are they and are they the kind of jobs that enable people to really you know those those people who are on welfare too to move up into you know live the American dream so to speak. That's a serious concern. We have a huge number of people who were on welfare who were working because we're talking about large numbers of people so about

60 percent of those have gone who've gone off that's the other story I was talking about the 40 percent of those who've gone off who have nothing now. So people emphasize Well 60 percent of those who went off are working and yes that's a good thing. It's not as big a number as I'd like to see. And then you have to ask that next question that you're asking which is how well are they doing now. That's the beginning of a story that can be a good story because it's better to be working than not working. Whole lot of those people are only working part time but they're counted as employed. A lot of people get a job and lose it and then they don't have support for a while and they get another job. So the average wage of those 60 percent who are working and that is about old may be somewhere over a million and a half people who've gotten jobs coming off welfare. That's about $7 an hour. It's average which means a lot of them last and the average amount of work they have is a little over 30 hours a week this is National these are

national kind of composite numbers. It's easier to see what to do except we haven't done it. You can add to their income we can make the Earned Income Tax Credit which we have on the books better especially for larger families and we can do more with the childcare assistance that people need and and make it available to everybody who needs help because childcare is very very expensive and we're not doing that yet. And we can get health care to the parents as well as the children which is something that we should do and we can help people with the cost of rental housing and all of that would make these people more successful. It's really important to stop and say why is it that we have in this really rich country so many lousy jobs. And that's not something we can fix right away but we ought to focus on it because there's something wrong when people are doing their very best working as hard as they possibly can and they're really still unable to meet make ends meet and the poverty line which is $14000 for a family of three. Now that's kind of an artificial structure or construct that's ridiculous

$14000 for a family of three. You can earn a whole lot more than that and really really not make it. Well you raise the question about the nature of these jobs and why it is that they don't offer more in the way of salary and livability and you know a living wage as as people are are terming it. What has happened structurally that has led us down that path that goes back really I think to the early 1970s. Big story of the economy in some ways further than back back than that as we started to lose manufacturing jobs they went abroad they were destroyed by technology automation and they were replaced by. Less good jobs by service jobs jobs in the service economy that are basically minimum wage or minimum wage plus jobs that's the that's the basic story that's happened so the poverty story in the

sixties was really you know it was more racial than it is now although there's still a racial aspect to it because people of color African-American Latino do less well they're poor at higher rates still and that's a serious problem. But the poverty story has become much more related to work. Seventy percent of kids who are poor live in families where there's some income from work. And in fact probably a quarter of kids who are poor live in a family where there's somebody working full time and they can't get out of poverty so. So it's because of the structural changes in the economy and we have all of these jobs that one way or another it's you know it's that it's like a two tier economy there's the people who are making the big bucks and then there's the people who do service in one way or another working in hotels and restaurants and retail places and. Who really serving the rest of the population. And I don't mean to say that we can just decree to those employers tomorrow that they could pay a whole

lot more because they can afford to. The way we've structured things we can't. We could raise the minimum wage son. We should at least a dollar right now will not destroy jobs and would not even get us back to where the minimum wage was in real terms back in about 970. But we need to say OK the reality is people are doing their very best they're not making it and we've got to figure out what to do to get some help to all of them not just people been on welfare that's not the welfare is a small subset of the issue. Poverty really isn't even the whole issue it's about the millions of people in this country who are having a very tough time it's fairness. We started talking about the 1996 Welfare Reform Act and the fact that you resigned in protest over Bill Clinton's signing of that act. I wonder if you can talk about your thinking about that what was it about the bill about the change that was made in the welfare system that so moved you that you left your position with with the government basically two things boiling down to one it destroyed a flawed system which needed to be

reformed. It's not that I I really. I can say I hated the old system I thought it was just awful it didn't get people out of poverty didn't get people jobs didn't really protect children. Recipients hated it. Taxpayers hated it. We needed to really fix it so that it was more dignified and so that it really was what it was intended to be which was a safety net but work oriented but in a constructive way well that wasn't this law what was put on the president's desk. After a lot of back and forth over the years 1905 and 96 was a law that said instead of there being a right to assistance which the previous federal law did provide even though it was inadequate in so many ways and even though States could set their benefits wherever they wanted. Now the states could do whatever they wanted. Have a program not have a program have a time limit of one day if they want and have whatever sanctions they want

and in some states took up the invitation really with a vengeance after that. So that was one piece of the so-called block grant aspect of it which said people there's just no longer a right to get help. And the second piece was the time limit. Five years. No matter what. In the course of a mom bringing up her kids that's all she was entitled to be needing. Now we're going to see as that plays out that there are women all over this country families all over this country that run into rough patches the way this economy is structured and it's going to be for them more than five years during during the bringing up of their children but that was just arbitrary. And I thought that was also totally unacceptable so it's those two things combined that were at at the heart of why I just I said you can't do this as Democrats and as decent people and I can't stay here if this is the policy of our country.

We're talking this morning with Peter Edelman He's a professor of law at Georgetown University long been involved at the federal level and at the state level in issues of poverty and welfare reform a former legislative aide to Robert F. Kennedy and he's all of a wide variety of public service positions. And we're talking about poverty and welfare policy during this hour we have one caller waiting. We'll talk with them and also welcome others if you'd like to join us. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 around Champaign-Urbana toll free anywhere here is 800 to 2 2 1 4 5 5. Let's talk with a listener in southern Illinois. Online number four. Good morning you're in focus for today doing good. I was born in 1973 and so far as I can remember I was raised on welfare and my dad was in prison my mother. She had no desire to go to work. I mean now she's before the elections you say Oh well I don't want to vote for Bush because he would take away my full security I thought mother you know I the work that then you're like you don't deserve that Social Security but yet they haven't taken away you know. But what I'm saying is

you know I've come out of that poverty level on my own with the desire to work and as I was coming out of that poverty level I've worked with many people in restaurants and everywhere else and all of them just complain complain complain no nobody's satisfied with what they have and you know. If you can't be if you're not content then then then there's no there's no desire to to do any good. You know there's nothing that pushes people out of bed to go only what they want they want they want you know I call it the democratic mentality. Gimme gimme gimme you know ah ah you know I'm so I'm raising a family of four with one on the way with twenty three thousand dollars a year I'm satisfied my bills are paid on continue on buying the house that my car's paid off everything you know I I'm not I don't know if I really totally out of need but I'm satisfied and I work regardless of if I'm tired or sick or whatever. But everybody I've ever worked with nobody wants to work they're always easy and that's my opinion of course and I guess it can change but I've never seen anybody really

attempt to change at all going out and see what you have to say because the people you're talking about that. I mean there may be some legitimate ones out there but there's no desire that I've noticed in all the my years of working I've been working since I was 14 because I quit school in the seventh grade. Because my mother could not take care of me. But I still came out of that hole and everybody else cared that they got to change their mentality and change the way they think because nothing is free in this world you gotta work for it but you can't waste your time on all the drugs and the junk that gets you off focus. And it's there and I can prove it. The obvious hang up and was OK well thanks for call. I have to say that that that's a lot of what the caller is saying is why a lot of us who are on the progressive side did not like the welfare system that we had in place. And so it may surprise him. But I agree in part with what he's saying I wonder where he lives being able to make it as well he says on $23000 a

year because there are immense differences in the cost of living. If you're in a smaller community in a place where housing costs are lower it makes a tremendous difference. If you're in a large city and you're trying to survive on that kind of income with the number of children that he has I think it's tough. But you know it's I would not paint with that broad a brush. He's talking from his experience I can't argue with that of course but it seems to me that most people really really do want to work and indeed most people that I've talked to who have been on welfare or on welfare would much prefer to be working. And I don't see the gimmee gimmee gimmee kind of mentality obviously it's out there on the part of some people but I have to say that what we need to have in place I think if we're going to speak in generalizations that give us kind of policy framework is we need a policy that does push people to work without pushing them off the

edge. That really does say to people we're going to arrange the incentives and we're even going to maybe have some sanctions but we're also going to recognize that there are some people I don't know whether it's the caller's mother or somebody else but there are some people who really have difficulty finding a job or are not in a position to work for one way one way or another it's a delicate balance between pushing people helping them keep the job when they get it with all the extra kinds of things that for many people need to be there or they're not going to succeed. And having a safety net for kids in place and you know I obviously admire a man who's done what he's done that's really really important. When you first started working with Robert F. Kennedy and the two of you and the rest of the staff of RFK were addressing these issues as you recount your book work was central to his ideas about addressing poverty. But it wasn't just simply telling people that you know you

had to change your ideas and you know start to go to work. It was an attempt to address the structural issues that kept people either in locked in a personal path ology or in a for example in the central city where the jobs had essentially evaporated and there were no structural supports for people who even if they wanted to work and were move motivated do so. But work was really central to his ideas about addressing absolutely central. He came to see particularly as the years passed through his time as attorney general as and a senator that that the heart of. What we need to do is to is to stress jobs and he believed he saw at the time the chronic unemployment that there was even then in the inner city and of course it was even more connected to racial discrimination then and solely. He talked about if we if necessary we needed to have some jobs that would be paid for with public money but things that would enable people to succeed in it.

It's partly a matter of of helping individuals but also one of the great insights I thought was a lot of people live in places where the sense of community has really been destroyed where they don't have the supports from their neighbors and from from churches and others that are right there in the community and that we needed to work on the jargon would be place oriented policies but I really mean rebuilding neighborhoods and rebuilding a sense of community in neighborhoods and that was a part of it. He was really I think it's so interesting Jack he was really the first new Democrat you know it's become so popular now Bill Clinton and talking about the third way and something that's not traditional liberalism and yet not conservative and in my view the kind of contemporary third way is an abdication of the public part of the responsibility. That was not Robert Kennedy. He said we needed to have public policy national policy but we also needed individual responsibility and community responsibility. We

needed to have the business community involved. We needed to have the faith community involved. And so there was a three dimensionality to his insight about how we move ahead with jobs at the center of it that we've seen that we've lost. You know in reading the early part of your book where you know you're visiting Mississippi and some of these other places it just it really strikes me that the notion that there were even poor people in America seemed so foreign to Washington that when you found people who were actually malnourished people just didn't believe it. Yes these certainly at the beginning of the 960 said when you think about what it was like in this country after World War 2 and the tremendous optimism that we had in word and upward we had we had defeated the Axis powers of Nazi Germany and and all and and we could do anything. And so I think it was a shock to people. First you had the civil

rights movement where where black Americans said we're not going to live with apartheid anymore and that forced itself on the national consciousness. And then you had books like Michael Harrington the other America who came along and said well it isn't just a racial question. There are people of all races all diverse backgrounds in this country who aren't making it. And Jack Kennedy went to West Virginia and campaigned in 1960 and was quite shocked by what he saw there of former miners who were unemployed who were up in the hollows and in really desperate shape. And so there had been. Well President Kennedy was you know office and alive. Robert Kennedy had started working on these issues about poverty. He had a group of people working in his office very quietly. It started around the idea of juvenile delinquency of how do we help young people who get into trouble or prevent that but it really turned into how do we do something about poverty. And Robert Kennedy

was really the leading public official in this country who was the driving force behind what became the war on poverty the Economic Opportunity Act. So that was all in the background when I went to work for Robert Kennedy in 1965 in the Senate. We already had something called the war on poverty on the books we were starting with programs like Head Start and community health centers and legal services for poor people and so on. What we did was essential to go a step further and it was my privilege to go with him to go out there and see that even though we had said we had discovered poverty we really hadn't as as a country opened our eyes to see what was really out there. And there was a changing agricultural economy at the time in Mississippi and the powers that be in Mississippi at the time wanted to push black people out because of the civil rights which they regarded as as agitation in very threatening.

And so in 1967 in a country that was already quite wealthy we went in saw children in Mississippi who turned out to be near starvation with swollen bellies and sores that wouldn't heal and. Doctors went on down and found exotic diseases like kwashiorkor and Moran's Munson and rickets and we did bring that to the attention of the country and indeed when we started to look at and George McGovern and others following Robert Kennedy's death kept on looking at it. It turned out that these were problems in too many places around this country. So yes we had started a war on poverty but but you know we really didn't know the depth and extent of the problem until there was that incredible commitment that Kennedy had to go out and look and see for himself. President Johnson following the death of John F. Kennedy. If if we look at the historical recollection of these days it's said that he essentially took on that mantle that

he carried for with the war on poverty and to certain extent civil rights legislation in legacy of John F. Kennedy. In your book you. Essentially fault Johnson for yes he did take certain steps and did some important things in the war on poverty but he was only willing to go so far that there was a certain point beyond which he was almost as if he were working against the greater effort. I don't want to overstate that. I think Lyndon Johnson. Well I personally was deeply opposed to the war in Vietnam and and I think he bears enormous negative historic responsibility for for that. He was the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln anyway that we ever had for civil rights in this country. You know he went to to Congress and gave a speech in which he said We Shall Overcome and he meant it. So he was deeply committed to the enactment of those incredibly

important laws the Civil Rights Act of 64 the Voting Rights Act of 65. He was also very concerned about poverty but he was also concerned about keeping his budget in balance. And so when people came to him and said we want to do the war on poverty in 1064. Secretary of Labor Willard words said well you have to have a jobs program. And the historians recount that that he literally pretended like he hadn't been in this cabinet meeting like he hadn't heard words say that. So what they did was limited but I don't want to be too 20 20 hindsight about it. After all they did Medicare and Medicaid they did the first. This is the great society not just the war on poverty. They did the first federal aid to education that we ever had and these were huge historic initiatives. And so we don't want to be too tough on him and then the war began to sap the resources that were needed to continue the investment.

And so you got this competition and resources were drained away from really addressing the poverty questions. So I think the record is mixed there but yes I do have that criticism I would just put it in that kind of balance and framework for Good Will past our midpoint here with Peter Edelman He's professor of law at Georgetown University longtime on the front lines of the policy battles dealing with poverty and welfare policy. And we have about 20 minutes left in this hour to talk with him if you'd like to join the conversation. You can calls around Champaign-Urbana at 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free elsewhere 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Last night you talked a bit about what happened after the 60s too. What played out in the economy and what played out in people's attitudes about welfare and certainly by the time nine hundred eighty rolled around with the election of

Ronald Reagan the country's attitude about the war on poverty and about welfare had certainly taken a turn for the worse. Absolutely. I think we've had what I call the Thirty Years War on welfare that started in the late 1960s and at the same time a backlash about crime that that was in part justified by Maybe we weren't tough enough but I think we've gotten to the point where where we've really overdone it and haven't focused enough on prevention and investment in children and so on that would prevent crime from taking place. So we've had this competition of two stories. We've had the one story that I want to say it was very racially tinge to people who were afraid to talk in overtly racial terms. Started to talk in terms of well we have to be tougher about crime

and we have to do something about this awful welfare. And who were they what was their image Who were they talking about. We shouldn't kid ourselves that they're poster people if you will were people of color. So that's been the drumbeat for 30 years is that there are these that these are the greatest problems of the society and if we can just cut people off the welfare make them stop being too dependent they will fend for themselves and everything will be fine. Well the fact is that the story of the last 30 years is is not that story the right story is what's happened economically to the country what's happened to the job market why it is that we have so many lousy jobs in this country what we were talking about before the manufacturing jobs that that went away and replaced by by the lousy jobs in millions of people in a difficult economic situation that we haven't responded to sufficiently with public policy. And so that's been the competing stories on the politics of the last 30 years and and I think that there has been an

imbalance in our politics unfortunately that is to say I think whatever you want to call it the Democrats are the progressive side haven't held up their end of the bargain in really saying not just about poverty not just about welfare I'm talking about millions of people who got the short end of the stick. You know this country is twice as wealthy in real terms as it was 20 years ago but you know how many of the American people are twice as well off as they were 20 years ago. Very few in percentage terms very very few. So that it's all stuck at the top. And so the politics has been the people who have been running who what should we say represent the people at the top I don't want to be too. Pejorative here have gone around saying if you want to look saying to the electorate you want to look below you not above you as to where the problem is and the problem is these people below you are collecting all this welfare and and if we can just stop that you'll be fine. Well that wasn't the right right story and there wasn't enough there

weren't enough people on the progressive side who said wait a minute wait a minute there's a question of fairness that cuts across here. People have needs for health care people have needs for childcare people have needs for housing. People have needs for better schooling for their children people have need the need to send their children to college all of that. And we need to address that for a big big chunk of American society. I don't think our politics has been what it should have been and all of those scores and in many ways the the more what should I call it the more conservative side has has won the argument because they've done the politics more effectively when they also have a simpler explanation for what's going on. Absolutely absolutely Their story is very simple. Welfare welfare welfare. Our story as well as you know the economy went south it was there all those problems and problems developed in the inner cities for reasons that are complicated to explain and and on and on. And yes there are there are simpler stories

tend to win. We have a couple calls to talk with let's include them in our conversation. We'll go next to a listener banned on line number one. Good morning unfocussed 580. Hi how you doing. I look forward in reading your book and I'm wanting to say hi from a mutual friend Carrie Langston from Washington. I wanted to ask you what you feel the solution to the health care system would be as another year of helping to to help solve the crisis that we're in and I'll just hang up and listen. Thanks very much. Thanks for the call Terry Langston said good friend. I have two answers to that one is why in the world don't we have national health insurance why we are the only advanced industrialized or post-industrial country that doesn't have a national health insurance in so on a kind of simple level of principle. Done it. You know when why haven't we just done that. Well it's complicated you know where you are that's a trillion dollar industry now it's got a lot of political

power. You move to a single payer solution as the jargon has been and a lot of political power comes out of the woodwork to oppose it it's change it is in the American Medical Association anymore the way it was in the 50s and 60s and before that it's now small business and the smaller insurance companies. So what we are consigned to particularly after the fiasco of the Clinton health experience in 93 and 94 and how badly that was done. And then the fact that Clinton absolutely walked away from it after that. It's going to take us a while to get back I think to really being able to say let's just cut through and and maybe the managed care situation is going to get bad enough so that it will sort of fall over of its own weight and will be able to to make a more comprehensive change in the meantime. We need to be talking about adding to what we have on the table we have a good although somewhat flawed program of

insurance for children that was enacted in 1907 the so-called asked Chip or State Child Health Insurance Program and that and Medicaid have gotten insurance coverage to children who previously didn't have it. But there are seven million children who are currently around the country eligible among the 10 to 11 million uninsured children 7 million children are actually eligible for either Medicaid or chip and haven't been signed up because they don't know about it or because bureaucratic restrictions in barriers get in the way. And we need to work on that. And I think we could get enacted this year if people would pull together about it getting is a matter of national policy parents coverage as well of the same income where we're covering the children. Parents have health needs and one reason they're not signing up to children is because they themselves don't see it as being as much in their interest as they would if they had coverage as well so we need full family coverage. And I think there's the possibility of getting that I hope the Bush

administration would support that. We have a couple other people to talk with go next to a listener in Champaign County on line number two. Good morning you're on focus 580. You know I actually wouldn't mind if you elaborate on that some more. But when I wanted to get in was something you just touched upon the idea that working poor and lower middle class people sort of identify. And I think there are actually studies that show you know when a safety net goes away that you know of living wages go up go down for the for people just above that notch just above that. Percentile whatever. The other thing is a heard Barbara Ehrenreich speak just recently about Wisconsin and infant mortality has gone up in Milwaukee and. As you mentioned there's no tracking of the not adequate tracking of people who are falling through. But Person Mises that it was study closely that this would be linked

to Wisconsin works or whatever it's called up there. The other thing I don't know if you want to do this and you probably won't but I'll throw it out which is that I've heard that. Clinton really had compunctions about signing this bill that welfare so-called reform bill and that even Robert Ruben and was against signing it and that it was actually Gore that sort of pushed him over the edge and said we really need to politically sign this now and we'll talk about fixing it later which again pretty much. They walked away not to hang up and listen your kid can I just ask you before you hang up. When you say Clinton had compunctions you mean he had reservations. Yeah. OK I'll talk about that. All right. Great. Thanks Michel. Well let's let's take it in reverse order. The question about Clinton I don't think he had very real reservations about signing it. Now you know I have to say I'm somebody who's pretty much pretty

hard on Clinton. So you have to take that into account here. But I think Clinton is you know in a world of self-centered people. You know no elected official who's listening should take be personally insulted but people who run for office have ego in that world. Bill Clinton is the prize winner of all time. I mean you know he gives new definition to narcissism. And so I I just think that what was on his mind was his own survival above all above everything else so that he got advice on that occasion you mentioned Robert Ruben. The advice that he received in the Oval Office at the dramatic meeting at the end of July 1996 was overwhelmingly to veto the legislation and Robert Ruben who is quite a wonderful man and social values in addition to his financial Akam and Donna Shalala expectedly. But most importantly

three political advisors Leon Panetta Harold Ickes George Stephanopoulos said to Bill Clinton at that meeting veto the thing you can survive politically in fact you'll get some credit for it. CLINTON To me he wasn't making a judgment based on 51 to 49 or 52 to 48. He was just saying well the thing I'm not even going to take the chance that this becomes an issue that could possibly hurt me. I'm just going to go ahead in and sign it. It's really important to understand that he never said that he would improve the welfare parts of the bill what he said and people didn't hear carefully what he said after the bill was enacted is that he would fix the parts of the bill that related to immigrants. People forget that they were very very harsh provisions in the bill that cut off SSI Supplemental Security Income and in which you know his disability and food stamps to all legal immigrants where they were in the country already and all the

ones that would come in the future just actually amazing. That would have been enough of an excuse for him to veto that legislation right there. That's what he said he would fix. He never said that he would fix the welfare parts of the bill so that's on that and I've always thought. That the fact that he received political advice of course Dick Morris all everybody remembers that the Dick Morris was telling him that for political reasons he should sign it. So that's the quality of the people giving the advice to sign it. Now Wisconsin works Barbara Ehrenreich is right that we're beginning to see in Milwaukee some increases in union issues about homelessness child welfare protection foster care issues other kinds of results of W-2 Wisconsin works. And that's because you know the welfare rolls in Wisconsin are down by depending on how you count 80 to 90 percent. Yes some people have gotten jobs and of course they have 3 percent

unemployment in Wisconsin but they pushed a lot of people off the rolls particularly in the early years of it when they were really trying to to get people's attention that they were very very serious and those people are showing up with greater problems now and that has not been publicized nationally. So she's right about that. On his last point about the living wage. I don't know whether actually removing benefits causes wages to go down but it certainly causes total income and there the problem is that there are we. We don't measure poverty correctly. Fourteen thousand dollars for a family of 3 17000 for a family for those numbers are just too low. Benefits cut off if somebody gets a job that let's say at about one thousand nine hundred twenty thousand dollars. In most states they lose their health coverage they lose their food stamps they lose any housing help that they got. And they there are what we called in the jargon notches. So they actually end up worse off

because they went out there and did what we wanted them to do and so that's something that we need to take into account in this whole debate. We have just about five or six minutes left in another color and they will certainly try to get them and I just have to ask a question though about the tax cut proposal because this is something that is happening now that obviously it's a big deal and like to get your take on that. It is a big deal and I just am very. Trouble about this I started I go around to a lot of speaking Jack and and so three four weeks ago I was saying well the returns are not in we'll see which way George W. Bush is going. Maybe he'll play to a center maybe he'll play to his base of course we knew he was talking about the tax cut even then but he's made all these John Ashcroft and other conservative appointments he's made all these policy changes on the environment I'm afraid we're beginning to see a pattern here. The tax cut itself is just deeply troubling we're talking about not only

a tax cut of a magnitude that will take away what the real surplus is even assuming that is that it is that bigger with a recession coming. But it gives the vast majority of the benefits of that tax cut to the wealthiest people in this country. I mean I don't understand why people literally aren't out in the streets saying I'm about to get shafted here because that's what's going to happen to 80 percent of the American people is that they're going to take a literal hosing 21 percent of the taxes are paid by the top 1 percent. Yes although some of us might say that they can afford it because that's people over three hundred nineteen thousand dollars of income. Forty three percent of the benefits of this tax cut are going to go to the top 1 percent. That's not right. When you add up that to the 20 percent you have 80 percent of the benefits that are going to go to the top 20 percent. That's not right. So we got we've got to get a debate going here that says a tax cut of reasonable magnitude pay down the

debt leave us some money to meet social needs in whatever area it is that the thing that or the other thing because it's a list of things the other thing that people I guess are not getting is that this is Reaganomics. This is destroying the federal revenue structure so that they they can then come around next year and the year after and say oh golly we'd like to have done these things but we haven't got the federal revenue to do it. You know it's like that of a person who killed his parents and went to court and defended himself because he's an orphan. The Senate just passed a budget resolution yesterday that begins to cut programs in order to make room for this tax cut. It's happening right now that is wrong. Right now is the time when we actually have the the ability to begin to meet some of these very pressing needs that we have as a society in the questions whether we have the the political will to do it. If we pass this tax cut in the way that it's been proposed We're going to cut off our ability to do it I think that's tragic.

We have a caller in just about maybe two or three minutes left will squeeze him in this one in northern Illinois on line number four. Good morning unfocussed 580. I agree with you about Ronald Reagan and I it still upsets me about the attitude that we have no more responsibility and it's not to our advantage to try to help people who are less fortunate. And I think Bush is following that and there's tremendous discontent not just like the first caller people who are making a lot of money but they aren't doctors. Lying about contracts that only offer them one hundred and eighty thousand dollars and they're all upset. You know there are other doctors who are concerned about everybody's welfare. But my other question is about unions where for years and years and years all the TV shows were about how terrible unions were and all of the ways they were cheating people. And I felt

it really down to me where if I saw a product and there'd be a 5 percent difference and if it was made in China rather than the United States I'd go for the product that was only five cents a difference. And I look back and I think I was stupid I was. Because I think that destroyed a lot of the jobs. So would you comment on that. I guess you're asking two questions. One is about about trade which I think we really that's a tough thing to go into the effects of an after and I'm basically a free trader I have to say. But the other is where we are where we stand about unions in this country and I think you have to separate out we certainly had a lot of union bashing in the late 70s and early 80s. And we had lots of protections at the high end manufacturing that were tough and made it made it harder for companies to make the adjustments that they needed to make. I don't think that's our situation now. The challenge

unions have become I think are a very important institution but they've become a much smaller force in terms of how much of the labor force that they they represent. I'd like to see and I think John Sweeney the head of the AFL CIO would like to see unions be much much more aggressive about organizing among lower income workers among people who are having such a tough time making it so that they could bargain with their employers and get a better wage that indeed that employer could afford I think that's the cutting edge for unions in the year 2001 organize and organizing particularly at the lower wage end of the labor market. We're going have to stop since we're here at the end of a time and I'm I'm sorry there's a color that we want people to talk with. But I will suggest for folks that if you'd like to read more from our guest you can look for his recent book Searching for America's heart already and the Renewal of Hope recently published by Hoden Mifflin and our guest has been Peter Edelman in his last name is spelled M-A and just so you can hopefully find it easy enough and you also mentioned that there

is a national organization do you want to plug the website or anything that you're involved. Oh yes well I thought people would check out the National Campaign for jobs and income support which is a group of grassroots organizations from around the country that are going to work hard to affect national policy on the very issues that we've been talking about this morning and that website is w w w dot national campaign. All one word dot org. And also the Children's Defense Fund which my wife heads is going to be introducing a bill to leave no child behind which is a phrase that George Bush stole from her it's the trademarked slogan of the Children's Defense Fund and so now she's putting a bill where her slogan has been and people should check that out Children's Defense Fund is in Washington D.C.. Very good. Well thank you very much for being here. Great pleasure talking all it's my pleasure thank you Jack.