Homes, Health, Schools: How Candidates Differ

You could call them the real “family values,” the issues in this year’s presidential campaign that most directly affect average, middle-class Americans: The traditional dream of home ownership. Access to good, affordable health care. Better educational opportunities. Time to handle family emergencies without jeopardizing your job.

For decades, good schools, adequate health care and homeownership have been such accepted facts of life in Middle America that presidential candidates seldom had to mention them, except in the most general terms. But in 1992, polls show, these voters are up in arms, fearful that these staples of middle class hopes and expectations may be slipping away.

As a result, President Bush and Democratic challenger Bill Clinton have laid out detailed programs for improving the nation’s schools, guaranteeing access to health care, assisting Americans in buying homes and helping them care for their families in times of crisis.

By and large, Bush takes a free-market approach, while Clinton advocates a bigger commitment on the part of government. But neither candidate has been able to come up with solutions that do not require the government to spend additional funds or forgo tax revenue it now receives.

Independent candidate Ross Perot, meanwhile, demands more of middle-class families than he promises them.

“Shared sacrifice”--the central theme of Perot’s campaign--has proved disconcerting to many voters in the middle-income brackets, who feel they have already sacrificed enough. While Perot talks vaguely about plans for reforming the education and health care systems, he makes little or no mention of the other middle class issues addressed by Bush and Clinton.

As these candidates see it:

--To reform the health care system, Clinton would require all employers to provide benefits while giving unemployed workers federal assistance in securing private health insurance. Bush would provide low- and middle-income people with a tax break to help them purchase their own health insurance. Perot would do neither, but he--like Clinton--would establish a national board to control health care prices and determine a minimum package of benefits.

--To reform the schools, Bush proposes to give at least 500,000 of the nation’s 40 million elementary and secondary students vouchers valued at $1,000 annually to spend at whatever school they choose--public or private. Clinton proposes to provide a larger federal subsidy for some school programs and to permit parents to choose between public schools. Perot endorses the idea of school choice, but he does not embrace any specific plan.

--To help families in times of crisis, Clinton would mandate that firms with 50 or more employees provide their workers with unpaid leave. Bush would encourage employers to do so by offering tax incentives.

--To spur home purchases and simultaneously stimulate the economy, Bush offers a temporary tax credit for first-time home buyers. Clinton has no comparable proposal, but he--like Bush--is promising a general tax break that would help the middle class.

While many voters may find the details hard to grasp, there is little doubt that Clinton’s sympathetic rhetoric has enabled him to forge a bond that threatens to deprive Bush of much of the suburban and other middle-class support he and other Republicans have come to expect in recent years.

“More than any Democratic candidate in my memory, Clinton has hit on the issues that matter to the middle class,” said Mark Baldassare, professor of sociology at UC Irvine. “He’s somebody who seems to understand the practical realities of the middle-class lifestyle of the 1990s.”

Political analyst William Schneider noted that Clinton has avoided alienating the middle class, as 1988 Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis did, by not proposing programs that sound like giveaways to the poor.

“Middle-class voters don’t really trust government programs because they suspect these programs are going to help people who are poorer than they are,” he said.

Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle, meanwhile, have drawn attention away from some of their more substantive proposals by initially stressing a family-values theme that has more to do with morality than practical issues. Even though the Republicans are now soft-pedaling their family-values crusade, polls show that it already has soured some middle-class voters.

“We have scared a lot of middle-class voters by embracing the agenda of the religious right,” acknowledged a Bush campaign strategist, who declined to be identified by name. “It was an enormous mistake.”

But if Clinton or Bush wins the election, experts predict that either faces a long, arduous struggle to make good on the promises he has made to middle-class families. Faced with a severe economic slump and record deficits, neither will have sufficient resources to answer all of the middle-class demands for change without increasing taxes substantially.

“They are all going find themselves terribly restrained by the budget situation,” said John E. Chubb, an expert on education issues. “Unfortunately, my feeling is that very little is going to change.”

It also remains to be seen whether the election would break the political logjam between Republicans, Democrats and special interests who hold widely differing views on how health care, education and other family issues ought to be approached.

The one thing middle-class voters seem to want most from their new President is a program that will promote economic recovery and revive U.S. businesses, restoring regular paychecks to millions of unemployed workers and peace of mind to those who fear they may be laid off.

But the discontent among middle-class voters is not likely to be quieted solely by an economic recovery. Pollsters say suburbanites also are looking for a President who will take steps to reverse what they see as a deterioration of the institutions they relied upon to sustain their family life.

In a sense, Perot has helped to give voice to these frustrations by criticizing the institutions that the middle class relies upon--the government, the schools and the health care industry.

“Education and health care are issues that add up to the general feeling that the country is not on the right track--a feeling of general decay,” said Baldassare. “They are the issues that reinforce voters’ general concern that government is not working and hasn’t been taking care of the concerns of the middle class.”

It is doubtful that either Bush or Clinton could keep all his pledges to the middle class and still make good on promised tax cuts. Perot would have no such problem, since he is promising to raise taxes. He is relying upon the notion that middle-class Americans would be willing to pay more if government worked to their satisfaction.

In fact, it is possible the next President will not be forced to cut taxes for the middle class if he keeps his pledge to solve some of the other problems plaguing families in suburbia.

“When people recognize there is a problem and they feel the money is going directly to solve that problem, they are willing to pay more,” said Baldassare. “But they have to feel that they are going to get their money’s worth.”