Inside the Three Myths the GOP Campaigns About Poverty
Here’s a look at the real costs of the GOP’s views on poverty.
February 15, 1986: Ronald Reagan addressed the nation about welfare reform. During his 15-minute radio speech, Reagan described poverty as a family crisis, one that is “concealed behind tenement walls or lost in the forgotten streets of our inner cities.” Children were being born to children, he said, many of whom were underweight and malnourished. Without serious reforms to the welfare system, America was on the brink of “creating a permanent culture of poverty as inescapable as any chain or bond; a second and separate America, an America of lost dreams and stunted lives,” Reagan warned.
The 40th President of the US claimed the welfare system paid low-income families too much in benefits, thereby incentivizing them to not work. Reagan trashed the War on Poverty championed by former President Lyndon B. Johnson as a mechanism that made people depended on government handouts rather than hard work. Instead of solving poverty as it aimed, the poor now depended on the expanded welfare system, which had “ruptured the bonds holding poor families together,” according to Reagan.
Yet within those 15 minutes, Reagan solidified the GOP’s policy platform on poverty and promoted the three myths about poverty still parrotted by Republicans today. Welfare recipients are seen as “takers” not “makers;” the needy lack self-reliance; and, poverty only comes to those who can’t make good economic decisions.
Jonah Shepp, a writer, and editor who lives in New York said in an article for Politico that these myths artfully neglect to mention the most common way people escape poverty in the US: pure dumb luck. Acknowledging this fact made it difficult for Shepp to accept the praise of others for “escaping poverty” when he told them about how he was once on food stamps as a child. As he writes:
“Implicit in that praise is the notion that it was all up to me — that I “pulled myself up,” and that if I had failed to improve my lot, I would somehow be at fault — that it would be a consequence of my life choices. That’s precisely the sort of high-minded scolding we can expect to hear from the food-stamp-cutting millionaires…There’s no denying that poor people make bad choices all the time. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter much because we don’t actually have that many choices to make, economic or otherwise. This, more than anything else, is what our moralizing politicos fail to understand about American poverty: how often we get stuck in situations where we have no options. ”
With over 46 million people living in poverty in the US, Shepp argues that both political parties must shoulder some of the blame. During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton shared nearly identical views of the impoverished — the best way to help them is to get them off welfare and into a day labor program. Clinton even supported her husband’s gutting of the welfare system during the 1990s. With this in mind, it’s no wonder politicos would rather talk about the middle class.
But, outside of both party’s misunderstandings about poverty, the GOP has consistently used these myths about poverty to advocate for policies that increased poverty over time. Cutting taxes for the wealthy, gutting social safety nets, and resisting wage increases all heap a heavy burden on low-income families. And the pandemic has only made these issues worse.
Here’s a look at the real costs of the GOP’s views on poverty.
Myth #1: Welfare recipients are “Takers” not “Makers.”
Reagan’s views on poverty can be summed up in his infamous Welfare Queen, an indigent BIPOC woman with multiple children who collects enough public benefits to pay for a nice car and flashy outfits.
He built this overtly racist Straw Woman to argue that US tax dollars were being spent wastefully. Therefore, Reagan argued, the US should stop collecting as much tax from the wealthy — those who make the economy run— and allow them to reinvest the savings in their businesses.
However, this argument is built on the premise that welfare recipients do not work. Research by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that a majority of public benefits recipients hold employment. The problem is they are employed in unstable jobs, many of which are occupied by the elderly and disabled.
GOP Policy: Tax cuts for the wealthy
Armed with this narrative, the GOP has consistently been the party of cutting taxes, even when market conditions make the policy position a disastrous one.
A working paper by the International Inequities Institute (III) found that cutting taxes for the wealthy — a central tenant of Reaganomics and the modern GOP platform — fundamentally increases income inequality and “do not have any significant effect on economic growth and unemployment.”
Instead, these tax cuts result in 1% annual income gains for top-tiered income earners, according to the study.
The paper includes over five decades of comprehensive economic data and considered tax policies that impacted personal income, inheritance, tax rates, and revenue generation. Overall, it concludes that nearly two generations of tax cuts for the wealthy have failed to trickle down to lower-wage earners and have increased poverty across the country.
When Reagan entered office in 1980, he inherited an economy with an 11.6% poverty rate, according to the Library of Economics and Freedom. By the time he passed his hallowed tax legislation during his first term, the US economy entered a steep recession and the poverty rate increased to 14%. Upon leaving office, the poverty rate had declined to 12.8%, a net gain of 1.2% over four years. By 1990, the year Reagan left office, the poverty rate was up to 13.5%.
While household incomes have continued growing since the Great Recession, research by the Pew Research Center found the number of middle-income earners has decreased from 61% in 1971 to 51% in 2019. Meanwhile, upper-income earners saw income gains nearing 50%.
Myth #2: The poor lack self-reliance, not money
A recent paper by Douglas Holtz-Eakin at Stanford University argues that the rise in poverty is attributable to poor economic policies passed during the Obama administration.
Obama expanded the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which helped millions of people qualify for government assistance overnight. He also helped increase social safety nets as the economy recovered from the Great Recession of 2009.
However, Holtz-Eakin’s argument belies all science on poverty. In fact, it purposefully ignores the condition of poverty altogether. The GOP still sells a zero-sum economic theory where there are clear-cut winners and losers. Therefore, poverty is a natural and logical conclusion to a series of bad, albeit unfortunate, economic events.
As Holtz-Eakin says, the problem isn’t poverty itself — because how can a man question a natural condition such as poverty? — the problem is that too many Americans are not self-reliant. He posits tying taxpayer investments in poverty to accountability outcomes such as finding work.
GOP Policy: Gut social safety nets
Following their defeat at the ballot box in 2020, many politicos began asking: Are the Republicans the working-class party now?
Sen. Josh Hawley (MO) said as much in a tweet while Sen. Marco Rubio (FL) said he wants to build a “multiethnic, multiracial, working-class party.”
But, the GOP has consistently fumbled when it mattered most. House Democrats passed several COVID-19 relief measures while former President Donald Trump was in office, all of which former Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnel (KY) refused to bring to the floor.
And this bungled response likely cost people their lives, according to research by the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government.
In a recent podcast, professor William Howell said the GOP’s ineffective policies went beyond the president and are instead “rooted deep in our political incentives and institutions.”
“We’ve seen lots of disinvestment in public health. We’ve seen lots of disinvestment in administrative expertise. We also have a system of separated powers that makes coordination very difficult. That’s a fixed feature of our politics that makes it very hard for elected officials to get on the same page with one another. I mean, there’s dysfunction all over the place,” Howell said.
In practice, the GOP’s refusal to step up to bat for relief funds during a global pandemic caused the US to experience a 2.4% rise in poverty in five months, the largest increase since the 1960s. This translates to over 7.8 million people joining the poor ranks — in five months.
And this growth in poverty was not equally dispersed either. Blacks saw a 3.1% increase in poverty while those with less than a high school education saw an increase of 5.1%, according to research by Notre Dame in conjunction with the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.
Myth #3: Poor people simply make bad economic choices
As Shepp argued, poor people often do not have many choices in life — economic or otherwise. Most of the day is spent looking for life’s necessities: shelter, food, and water. Choosing to go to work or even take a shower oftentimes doesn't fit into the equation.
But, the problem runs deeper than simple decision-making. When poverty is seen as a moral failing, it really doesn't matter what choices someone makes.
“What’s the point in trying to prove yourself worthy of that welfare check when so many of your fellow citizens have prejudged you otherwise?” Shepp asked.
GOP Policy: Keep wages low
A study by The Brookings Institute found that America has two economies — one for the wealthy and the other for the poor — and they’re diverging fast.
Between 2008 and 2018, the study concludes “Democratic-voting districts have seen their GDP per seat grow by a third since 2008, from $35.7 billion to $48.5 billion a seat, whereas Republican districts saw their output slightly decline from $33.2 billion to $32.6 billion.”
Similarly, tax and monetary policies enacted by GOP-controlled legislatures have taken money out of the pockets of their voters. In the 10 years of data the study covered, Democratic districts saw their median household income increase from $54,000 to $61,000.
By contrast, “the income level in Republican districts began slightly higher in 2008, but then declined from $55,000 to $53,000,” according to the study.
Part of the reason for the increase in income in Democratic districts is that the districts themselves raised their minimum wages. Meanwhile, Republican districts maintained the status quo, according to the report.
The real cost of poverty
According to The Poor People’s Campaign, poverty takes an unyielding toll on the US economy.
Child poverty alone costs over $1 trillion in lost economic productivity. Meanwhile, unstable housing and hunger take an additional $270 billion out of the economy.
Public assistance programs spend over $153 billion annually to help families survive these predicaments. Even so, over 250,000 people die from poverty every year.
One simple way to end poverty for millions of Americans is to raise the minimum wage. Raising the bottom wage from $7.25 to $15 per hour would generate $107 billion in higher wages, according to the Economic Policy Institute. As a result, 59% of impoverished families would get a pay raise and the average worker would take home more than $3,300 per year.
However, until poverty is seen for what it is — an unfortunate circumstance rather than a permanent condition — these myths will continue to be debated as the poor wait for relief.
