Really, Schumer?

Jon Stewart effectively sums up the utterly mindblowing reaction to a Democratic supermajority getting two of their amendments knocked down in the Senate Finance Committee, while somehow supporting another $50 million for abstinence-only sex education.

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Today, I have to prepare for a discussion of rhetoric surrounding welfare reform. Somers and Block wrote "From Poverty to Perversity," an article citing how the 1834 New Poor Laws in Britain and the 1996 Clinton welfare reform act embraced rhetoric that began blaming the poor for miring in their own condition. Britain was too spooked by the Napoleonic Wars, thinking that the poor were just moments away from wrecking political dining room tables. In the United States, Gingrich's Contract with America turn compassion on its head, arguing that it was compassionate to get people to work instead of letting them rot on the dole (that provided just enough benefits to keep families afloat while they were looking for work anyway).

The mindblowing thing about all of this is not that politicians enjoy enough diffuse political power to do the very opposite of what public polling suggests. It's that, at the end of the day, all it takes is enough political bluster to get a point across. Somers and Block make it clear that in the course of changing political direction on what a value like "compassion," policymakers pay less attention to the empirical values and instead wage war on ideas.

On its face, Clinton -- even Gingrich -- wasn't saying anything fundamentally wrong about the problem of welfare. People don't mind working so long as they work a job that doesn't leave them sore and broken all the time, mentally drained, or struggling to figure out how to stretch a minimum-wage rate. Work is a means to economic security. People like the idea of having a consistent, stable, and reliable means of getting expenditures handled while being able to save a little for the future. People like having benefits that will take care of them after retirement, so that they can exit the work force with dignity instead of dread. Yet these concerns and frustrations about the world of work don't make it onto the ideological battle.

While I accept the degree of political complacency by our leaders and indifference on our citizenry, I wonder if the authors could've said a lot of paper and just summed up by saying, "The loudmouths always win."