The job of not caring what voters want
Don't let opinion polls keep us from pursuing the policy that levels up humanity
Before you read this article, watch Brian Almon of the Gem State Chronicle interview Mountain States Policy Center CEO Chris Cargill, or at least go to the 37 minute mark and watch the brief discussion about work requirements for medical welfare recipients, for which, according to Mountain States’ latest public opinion poll, there is broad support.
During the conversation, Almon referred my criticism that adding work requirements for welfare recipients is “boring.”
To refresh the readers’ memories, I wrote that Idaho legislators should aim to do much, much more, like get out from under Medicaid entirely or, at least, eliminate the prescription drug benefit that has thousands of Idahoans and millions of Americans hooked on pills. Both are plausible solutions under existing federal law that would actually lead to hundreds of thousands of fewer people on government medical welfare in Idaho.
Almon asked if there’s a path for unwinding welfare benefits, as I suggested. Cargill responds:
Oh I definitely think there is a path. “Is there an appetite?” I think is the better question and the appetite may not be there, and the reason for that is because unfortunately …. it all comes down to PR. If you’re seen as wanting to put, you know, work requirements, for example, on Medicaid benefits, you know, one side or another says “oh you’re heartless” or “oh you want to do this, and you want to feed grandma dog food.”
Because people and organizations face criticism for wanting to eliminate government programs and benefits, Cargill reasons, a “work requirement” is a solution for which there might be an appetite instead of the wholesale dismantling of the welfare state.
Here, Cargill presents the single most harmful mistake that policy think tanks make: proposing something based on what there appears to be “an appetite” for instead of a policy because it is the correct one.
Adding a work requirement to a program subtly signals that government welfare would be an acceptable function for the state and federal governments if only there were a work requirement included. But government welfare is not OK. Government welfare necessarily involves the use of force to take money from people who earned it and giving it to those who didn’t. There is no place for the use of force against people in order to achieve a policy goal.
Moreover, I’ve noted that shifting the responsibility for the poor and the needy to government agencies is inherently harmful to the human condition. It causes individuals to delegate their compassion to politicians and bureaucracies. This is damaging to society. It cuts at the core of who were are meant to be as families, friends, neighbors, and communities.
Equally harmful is the fact that the medical welfare program as it exists in the US is one built for the advancement of hospitals, pharmaceuticals, other parts of the medical industrial complex. Once on the government welfare program, people are expected to take part in unhealthy western medicine rituals such as the over prescription of depression and anxiety medications. The program thrives on the fear that welfare recipients might lose access to the program and therefore the medications and doctors’ visits that they’ve been conditioned to believe they need to live.
Cargill argues that the idea of ending welfare has a PR problem. But how would he know? Has he ever polled anyone on the question? And how can a public policy idea ever become popular if people are unwilling to talk about it? Think tanks are supposed to propose correct solutions, even if they happen to be outliers. Such solutions don’t necessarily have to be popular, and employees of a think tank — who don’t stand for election — are the perfect people to promote an idea, regardless of the idea’s popularity.
Yet think tanks across the country thrive on mediocrity when it comes to policy ideas. They love to sell politicians on the idea of work requirements because it’s not as “crazy” as eliminating a program. The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Foundation for Government Accountability all propose work requirements. They don’t push for the elimination of programs that the government shouldn’t be in. So almost no one is actively pursing that goal, which too bad.
Why? Because proposing something short of ending a program gives them a policy solution that elected officials can leap toward without any significant risk of losing an election. And if the think tank is so blessed as to have those same politicians adopt the policy, they can then raise money arguing how effective they were at getting a policy passed. It doesn’t matter how useless the solution is in practice — which is generally true of existing welfare work requirements — or if it cements the welfare program in place.
Someone has to do the job of not caring what voters think about a particular policy. Let the critics say that we want grandma to eat dog food. We know that’s not true. We know we want grandma to actually be in a better system — one in which her neighbors and community are invested in her wellbeing — instead of the one that applies an algorithm and bureaucracy and regulations to determine what kind of care she gets.
I’m also not convinced that ending government welfare is as unpopular an idea as Cargill imagines. We all know this country is $36 trillion in debt, and more and more people are understanding that such debt is raising the cost of everything. Government welfare is not affordable now, if it ever was. A poll might show that a majority voters want to eliminate government-run welfare programs. Then again, a poll might show that only a handful are supportive. I’d still advocate that solution, either way.
It’s super easy to argue for a policy for which there is an appetite. It’s another thing entirely to argue for a policy that the public might not be ready for, simply because it’s the one on which a well-functioning society depends. Don’t let opinion polls be the thing that keeps us from pursuing the policies that level up humanity.