Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 29, 1993 TAG: 9311290013
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SHOGREN LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
The administration has expanded or is pushing to beef up a select group of existing benefits, such as the earned income tax credit, food stamps, Head Start and federal assistance to schools to help poor children.
Some of the initiatives clearly are focused on relieving poverty - programs aimed at decreasing homelessness and stimulating business in depressed communities, for example. Other new programs, including national service, are couched in rhetoric about helping a broad spectrum of the population but are targeted at low-income individuals and poor communities.
"The Clinton administration has done more in the poverty area than they've talked about," said Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "There's a concern that if you start talking about an anti-poverty agenda, the middle class starts to think they're being ignored. People in the administration are concerned not to create this impression."
Some administration officials, members of Congress and political analysts say the administration's "stealth" anti-poverty policy reflects a deliberate attempt to avoid the stigma attached to old-style, big-spending Democrats. Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., said the strategy is a clever one.
"If he had talked about the school-to-work or national service initiatives in the rubric of a war on poverty, they probably would have been shot down," he said.
Robert Rubin, assistant to the president for economic policy, disagrees. If the president and his top aides have not articulated the links between their domestic agenda and their campaign against poverty, he said, it is merely because they have been consumed with health care, NAFTA, economic policy and crime.
The president's anti-poverty initiatives reflect the public's priorities, so there is no political reason to hide them, he said.
"They equip the poor to be part of the constructive work force," Rubin said. "That's really part of the so-called New Democratic policy."
Rather than increasing funding across the board for anti-poverty programs, the administration has concentrated on those that have been the most politically popular because they encourage people to work (the earned income tax credit) or focus on poor children (nutrition programs and child immunizations).
"It's what we were elected to do," Labor Secretary Robert Reich said. "The putting-people-first campaign was all about investing in the work force. There is a difference between this and the older Democratic philosophy of redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor. It's about giving everyone in society the capacity to be a constructive member of society."
Some critics say the administration has not made a big deal about its anti-poverty measures because they are not innovative and are too superficial to have a measurable impact on the intractable problems facing blighted areas.
"It's old Democratic stuff," said Doug Besharov, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a think tank usually reflecting moderate Republican views. "A president who wants to be a New Democrat doesn't go advertising his old Democratic policies."
Administration officials say such statements reveal ignorance of the strategy behind their new projects. They express confidence that their programs, some of which have already been approved by Congress, will take root in communities.
The initiatives appear aimed at making a big splash with relatively little federal money, many of them by requiring state and local governments or the private sector to kick in funds.
The officials stress that solutions must come from the communities, not from Washington, and that the federal government should provide guidance and coordination, not directives.
For instance, the officials said:
The school-to-work program, which has been passed by the House, would give money to school systems to develop on-the-job apprenticeships that would train non-college-bound young people for well-paying jobs.
Empowerment zones and enterprise communities, enacted in August, will push local and state governments to work with private industry to come up with detailed plans to invigorate businesses in poor communities and put local people to work.
The District of Columbia homeless initiative, which Congress has funded, will concentrate $20 million on a new strategy for trying to prevent homelessness and helping people get transitional and then permanent jobs and homes. The model developed in the district will then be replicated in other cities with large levels of homelessness.
The national service program, signed into law in September, will put 20,000 young people to work in distressed areas, with a large percentage of them working in their own communities. The administration hopes they will spark a renewed sense of civic responsibility among the people they are serving.
by CNB