Katherine S. Newman and Steven Attewell: Obama's Health-Care Gamble: History Is on His Side
[Katherine S. Newman is a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and author, with Elisabeth S. Jacobs, of "Who Cares? Public Ambivalence and Government Activism From the New Deal to the Second Gilded Age" (Princeton University Press). Steven Attewell is completing his Ph.D. in history at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he is working on the history of public employment.]
The package of health-care reform that crossed the finish line in Washington several weeks ago represents a major triumph in the history of American social policy, but one that nearly came undone through the combined efforts of the insurance industry and the popular protests of conservatives dedicated to pushing government out of the business of social protection. Lobbying by business interests that see their grip weakened on a lucrative trade comes as no surprise. The vociferous opposition of the Tea Party movement is perhaps somewhat more perplexing. Europeans are rioting in the streets to prevent the dismantling of pension guarantees (in Greece), the left has declared victory in France's regional elections, and thousands of British rail and airline workers are going on strike, demanding that the government raise taxes on the rich to insure continuity of state expenditures on health and other benefits.
Yet here in America, an antigovernment movement has emerged that spares no effort to derail a comparatively weak (though nonetheless important) expansion of citizen access to health care, especially for lower-income people, on the grounds that it would eviscerate a "freedom to choose" that is already so compromised by the market power of the health-care industry as to be almost meaningless for millions....
They are the very people for whom rising unemployment, downward mobility, declining access to higher education for their children, and, above all, enormous fragility in access to health care pose profound obstacles. Oddly, many of the Tea Party sympathizers who fear government power and oppose public spending want Washington to be more active in creating jobs and clamping down on Wall Street bonuses.
The picture that emerges is less of a coherent antigovernment ideology or opposition to helping the poor than of a deep sense of confusion and ambivalence as to what the government does and should do, and a profound fear of change.
We have been here before.
Indeed, virtually every episode in the development of the American welfare state has been surrounded by contentious politics. In many instances, the opposition won the day. In the 1940s, New Deal Democrats hoped to establish universal health care and a "cradle to grave" welfare state through the Wagner-Murray-Dingell Bill, but they were torpedoed by Congressional opposition, as was the establishment of a "right to a job" when the Full Employment Bill was gutted in committee. Harry Truman's Fair Deal—which sought to build on the New Deal by including health care, public housing, and a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee—was blocked outright by a Republican Congress. Both of those reforms were condemned as first steps toward "creeping socialism" and the destruction of "the American way of life."...
In the meantime, though, we can expect to see exactly the firestorm of opposition that is apparent in the headlines today. With luck and tenacity, we will look back on this period as a watershed in social policy and in leadership itself. The great architects of the American safety net deserve their hero status not just for designing the programs in the first place, but also for soldiering on in the face of organized opposition and declining (or just unreliable) public support.
The rose-colored glasses through which we sometimes view the legacy of the New Deal, the Great Society, or even Nixon's improvements of Social Security often obscure how contentious the debates were, and the persistence of controversy long past the passage of the key legislation. What leaders like Obama have to do is push on anyway, just as their forebears did, to the everlasting benefit of the rest of us.
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Education
The package of health-care reform that crossed the finish line in Washington several weeks ago represents a major triumph in the history of American social policy, but one that nearly came undone through the combined efforts of the insurance industry and the popular protests of conservatives dedicated to pushing government out of the business of social protection. Lobbying by business interests that see their grip weakened on a lucrative trade comes as no surprise. The vociferous opposition of the Tea Party movement is perhaps somewhat more perplexing. Europeans are rioting in the streets to prevent the dismantling of pension guarantees (in Greece), the left has declared victory in France's regional elections, and thousands of British rail and airline workers are going on strike, demanding that the government raise taxes on the rich to insure continuity of state expenditures on health and other benefits.
Yet here in America, an antigovernment movement has emerged that spares no effort to derail a comparatively weak (though nonetheless important) expansion of citizen access to health care, especially for lower-income people, on the grounds that it would eviscerate a "freedom to choose" that is already so compromised by the market power of the health-care industry as to be almost meaningless for millions....
They are the very people for whom rising unemployment, downward mobility, declining access to higher education for their children, and, above all, enormous fragility in access to health care pose profound obstacles. Oddly, many of the Tea Party sympathizers who fear government power and oppose public spending want Washington to be more active in creating jobs and clamping down on Wall Street bonuses.
The picture that emerges is less of a coherent antigovernment ideology or opposition to helping the poor than of a deep sense of confusion and ambivalence as to what the government does and should do, and a profound fear of change.
We have been here before.
Indeed, virtually every episode in the development of the American welfare state has been surrounded by contentious politics. In many instances, the opposition won the day. In the 1940s, New Deal Democrats hoped to establish universal health care and a "cradle to grave" welfare state through the Wagner-Murray-Dingell Bill, but they were torpedoed by Congressional opposition, as was the establishment of a "right to a job" when the Full Employment Bill was gutted in committee. Harry Truman's Fair Deal—which sought to build on the New Deal by including health care, public housing, and a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee—was blocked outright by a Republican Congress. Both of those reforms were condemned as first steps toward "creeping socialism" and the destruction of "the American way of life."...
In the meantime, though, we can expect to see exactly the firestorm of opposition that is apparent in the headlines today. With luck and tenacity, we will look back on this period as a watershed in social policy and in leadership itself. The great architects of the American safety net deserve their hero status not just for designing the programs in the first place, but also for soldiering on in the face of organized opposition and declining (or just unreliable) public support.
The rose-colored glasses through which we sometimes view the legacy of the New Deal, the Great Society, or even Nixon's improvements of Social Security often obscure how contentious the debates were, and the persistence of controversy long past the passage of the key legislation. What leaders like Obama have to do is push on anyway, just as their forebears did, to the everlasting benefit of the rest of us.