On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 09:30:22 -0500 Seth Ackerman <sethackerman1 at verizon.net> writes:
>
> The example you use disproves your argument. Bush failed to get rid
> of
> Social Security because it was a big, comprehensive, universal
> program.
> If it had only covered, say, workers at Wal-Mart, it would have been
>
> easy to junk.
>
> That's true generally. The GOP find it easy to chip away at Medicaid
>
> because it's for poor people. They can't do it for Medicare, which
> covers everybody who makes it to age 65.
Nathan seems to have a confused notion concerning incrementalism and what sorts of incrementalist strategies make sense and which one's do not. He seems to think that we can make progress by fighting for programs that will only cover discrete, generally less affluent portions of the population. But US political history shows that it is precisely such programs that have great difficulty sustaining political support over the long haul. Many of the Great Society programs that specifically targeted poor people have had great trouble surviving under Republican administrations after the 1960s. On the other hand universal social programs like Social Security and Medicare have proven remarkably resilient. Social Security has long been referred to by politicians and policy wonks as the "third rail" in US politics because proposals to scale it back are almost invariably defeated with toxic consequences to the politicians backing such proposals. Hence, Nathan, I think, misunderstands the basis of the incrementalist strategies that have been adopted by the Right. Since they know, as reaffirmed by Bush's failure in regards to Social Security, that any attempt at abolishing or even siginficantly scaling back Social Security is doomed to failure, they are content, for the time being, at hacking away at the program on the margins with the hope that over time they may build up a constituency of people who no longer perceive themselves as benefiting from the program. Then at some future point, when this constituency has become sufficiently large, the Right is hoping that it will then be politically possible to implement much more drastic reforms.
The kind of incrementalism that Nathan seems to be advocating here, lacks the kind of strategic sense that exists on the Right. The Right is interested in building up over time a constituency that will perceive themselves as not benefiting from social programs like SS or Medicare and the way to do that is enact relatively limited reforms that will divert segments of the population out of these programs into privately-based schemes. Nathan's strategy seems to one of enacting narrowly based programs that will benefit relatively small portions of the population and hope that the beneficial consequences of these programs will convince others to support broader programs. But that seems unlikely to happens. Supposing that Nathan is successful in getting his narrow-based programs enacted into law, these programs will be very vulnerable to cutbacks and outright abolition under future Republican administrations, since the GOP will always be able to make the argument to voters as to why their hard earned tax money should be spent on programs that benefit "others," while providing no benefit to themselves. US political history over the past thirty years suggests that this has been a winning political strategy for the Republicans.
In fact concerning Medicare, people here may wish to recall that Lyndon Johnson opted for Medicare in lieu of fighting for a universal national health insurance program. Johnson reasoned that he probably wouldn't be able to win Congressional support for universal national health insurance but that he could for Medicare, while hoping to take care of the poor through Medicaid. I think that Johnson made a mistake here, and that he could have gotten universal national health insurance program enacted, given the political climate of those times. Anyway, it is interesting to compare the divergent fates of Medicare versus Medicaid. Medicare, like Social Security, remains a very popular program, which the GOP can only hope to hack away on the margins, while Medicaid remains a relatively unpopular program that is quite vulnerable to cutbacks.
>
> Seth
>
>
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