The Political Interest

By Michael Kramer

Was that a new Newt delivering his inaugural address as Superspeaker last week? It certainly seemed to be. The meanspirited rantings Gingrich's conservative audiences eagerly expect were gone. In their place, as Representative Charles Schumer says, was a speech "most any liberal Democrat" could have given, a talk remarkable for its professed compassion. "You can't believe in the Good Samaritan," Gingrich said, "and explain that as long as business is making money we can walk by a fellow American who's hurt and not do something." Newt even acknowledged that his pet project, a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, lacked "the moral urgency of coming to grips with what's happening to the poorest Americans."

Has the Leader of the Revolution gone soft? Don't count on it. In the midst of passing overdue congressional reforms, for which Gingrich deserves great credit, the Republicans approved a bill requiring a three-fifths vote to raise income taxes. A great idea -- if you're rich. The change applies only to the most progressive form of taxation, the one that forces the well-off to pay more than others. All the government's other revenue raisers -- from national- park admission fees to gas and cigarette taxes -- can still be hiked by majority vote. Those levies, which will probably rise if Newt's other tax- cutting schemes become law, are the regressive ones, which hit the middle class and poor hardest. Make no mistake. Upward income redistribution -- leaving the less fortunate less protected -- is part of what Newt's revolution is about.

By definition, revolutions revolt against something. Newt's target is the "current welfare state," which owes its shape to Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. Thirty years ago to the day of Gingrich's speech last week, L.B.J. urged Congress to pass Medicare, one of the many programs he promised would "eliminate poverty from the land." They haven't, of course, and that's what spurs the G.O.P. critique. Between 1965 and 1992, the gross national product grew 53.2%. Yet 38 million Americans (including 14.6 million children, or 1 of every 5 kids) still live in poverty -- a higher percentage of the population than when L.B.J. left office in 1969. Therefore, say the Republicans, the war failed, and its programs should be cut or wiped out entirely -- which is the clear import of the fiscal policies Gingrich proposes.

For openers, Gingrich would cap the antipoverty programs' expenditures. The poor would still be entitled to help, but benefits would decrease, in some cases dramatically. The crunch would really come as Gingrich moved to balance the budget by 2002. With Social Security deemed untouchable and defense spending scheduled to rise, about a trillion dollars would have to be cut over the next seven years to meet that goal. The antipoverty programs would be whacked severely. A White House estimate the G.O.P. does not dispute projects that 5 million children, half of those supported under the $23 billion-a-year Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC), could be denied assistance.

Some of the nation's antipoverty programs require overhauling. But before the cleaver is swung, it would be wise to consider some facts about poverty and its causes:

Far more than a lack of morals, as claimed by critics, it is the declining number of decent-wage jobs and an increasingly inequitable distribution of wealth that account for the pervasiveness, persistence and growth of poverty. "For the first time," says Northwestern University's Rebecca Blank, one of the nation's leading poverty economists, "decreases in poverty no longer accompany economic growth. This is because the median family income, which registered almost no growth in the 1970s and 1980s, is now actually declining. The welfare rolls are not increasing because of generous benefits or because single mothers are working less. They're working more," while the inflation- adjusted value of the main antipoverty programs, food stamps and AFDC, has declined by 26% between 1972 and 1992.

As staggering as the numbers are, the situation would be far worse if the War on Poverty had not been waged. Medicaid, for example, is responsible for ending malnutrition-related diseases, which were rampant before L.B.J.'s war began. Is that a program we really want to cut? This is just one of the many questions the better-off had better think seriously about before the anger and frustration so many Americans feel about their own financial status causes the nation to look at the poor and say, "The hell with them."

For "them" is really "us." Millions of Americans are only one disaster away from poverty. A divorce, an arrest, a disabling illness can destroy a working family's financial resources. It's fine to be charmed by Newt's revolution -- some of his prescriptions deserve support -- but we should think twice before we cut. "Poverty," said that ancient futurist Aristotle, "is the parent of crime and revolution" -- a wise warning about an upheaval far different from the one Gingrich has in mind.