Past Retaining Grip on Gore, Bradley in Critical Areas Requiring Reform

Blind spots can be fatal for drivers on the highway. They can be just as dangerous for those trying to navigate the road to the White House.

At their best, Al Gore and Bill Bradley both look at old problems with fresh eyes. But in the last few weeks each has demonstrated a glaring blind spot in his vision of America’s future. On separate, critical issues, each has shown himself trapped by conventional wisdom in his party, unwilling to challenge favored constituencies that are resisting needed change.

Gore reveals his blind spot in his drive against Bradley’s proposal to spend (at least) $65 billion a year expanding health care coverage for the uninsured. Gore starts on solid ground by questioning whether we can afford the program and stressing the importance of maintaining fiscal discipline while pursuing an activist agenda. “One of the things that Bill Clinton and I have been successful in doing,” Gore said recently, “is in convincing our political party that fiscal responsibility is good for progressive causes.”

In at least two distinct respects, fiscal responsibility has been good for “progressive causes.” The elimination of the budget deficit has taken away conservatives’ best argument against new spending. And Washington’s fiscal discipline has contributed to the tireless economic boom that’s done more to widen opportunity than any social program ever could.

But assuming that the budget should remain in balance doesn’t mean that health coverage for the 44 million uninsured shouldn’t receive higher priority. It’s here that Gore starts looking backward. He argues that Bradley’s health care plan would “shred the social safety net” by soaking up money from the federal surplus needed to bolster Medicare. In his budget plan, Gore allocates his money accordingly. Of the $1.1 trillion in surpluses projected for Washington’s operating budget over the next decade, Gore would provide $374 billion to Medicare, compared with $146 billion for his own plan to expand health coverage.

It’s not clear why devoting nearly three times as much of the surplus to Medicare as to the uninsured is inherently more “progressive.” Indeed one can argue precisely the opposite. Gore, in effect, is telling uninsured workers--most of them low-income--that their tax dollars should go toward funding health care for the elderly (regardless of income) before health care for themselves and their families.

Surpluses that large may never materialize. Yet Gore’s choice of priorities is still revealing. The growing number of seniors ensures that Medicare will need more money in the years ahead. And those costs may indeed leave too little room for a health care plan as large as Bradley’s. But Gore, if elected, would have more money available to enlarge his own plan for the uninsured if he restrained the cost of Medicare and Social Security with reasonable reforms, such as raising the retirement age or increasing the use of means-testing.

Gore, though, like President Clinton, has shown no inclination to challenge the Democratic lobbies--starting with the elderly and organized labor--that are resisting any entitlement reform. Last week, when Bradley mildly refused to close the door on raising the Social Security retirement age, Gore immediately denounced him. Yet the limited funds available to Gore for his own health care program show how progressive priorities inexorably will be squeezed in a balanced-budget world if Washington doesn’t control the cost of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid--which are on track to consume two-thirds of federal spending by 2020.

Though forward-looking in his willingness to consider entitlement reform, Bradley remains stuck in the past on another central issue: welfare. So much so that it threatens to render incoherent his agenda to combat childhood poverty.

In the long run, the best way to reduce childhood poverty is to reverse the erosion of marriage and ensure that more children benefit from the increased security--economic and otherwise--of two-parent families. But in the near term, the most relevant fact is that no state pays enough in welfare benefits to lift a family above the poverty line. That means the most immediate way to liberate more children from poverty is to move more families from welfare to work.

On one level, Bradley seems to recognize this. The plan he unveiled last month to reduce poverty among children is centered on supporting work: raising the minimum wage, enriching the earned-income tax credit for the working poor, increasing subsidies for day care. None of those changes would do anything for families that aren’t working.

Yet Bradley continues to withhold his support for the work requirements and time limits in the 1996 welfare reform bill, which have helped move millions of former recipients into the labor force. Though he’s recently fudged his position, Bradley--who voted against the bill as a senator--has clearly left open the possibility of loosening those requirements as president.

Bradley’s criticism of the welfare bill wins applause from liberals who still consider its demands for personal responsibility mean-spirited and even racist. But it ignores the economic and political power of work. Now that everyone has to work, it’s easier politically to make the case for rewarding work through such steps as raising the minimum wage. “Bradley doesn’t want to support the fundamental change that has to be made in order for all of our programs to be retargeted at supporting work,” complained Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.), who heads the House subcommittee that oversees welfare.

Even more important, as poverty expert Isabel Sawhill writes in a coming Brookings Review, “work remains the most powerful antidote to poverty.” Census Bureau figures show that after all government income supports (from food stamps to tax credits) are figured in, only 1.9% of families headed by full-time, year-round workers last year were poor; the number was 27.3% for those where no one worked. Simply raising families to the poverty line is too meager a goal; much more can be done to bolster working poor families and to expand opportunity for their children. But the indispensable first step remains moving more dependent families into the work force. Bradley’s failure to acknowledge that fact completes a strange parallel. When it comes to programs for the elderly, Gore’s thinking is poor; when it comes to programs for the poor, Bradley’s thinking is ancient.

*

See current and past Brownstein columns on The Times’ Web site at: https://www.latimes.com/brownstein.