There are still some observers in Washington who believe congressional Republicans will be forced by President Obama’s jobs speech and proposal to cooperate with Democrats on some sort of emergency economic legislation. But that’s not the perception, and certainly is not the inclination, of the citizens of Wingnut World, who greeted the president’s speech with a combo platter of ideological hostility and mocking indifference.

Almost universally, conservative opinion-leaders insist on calling the proposal a “stimulus” rather than a “jobs” bill. Given their equally universal claim that the 2009 economic stimulus legislation did not create any real jobs (viz. Rick Perry’s claim during the Florida candidates’ debate), this indicates its dead-on-arrival nature among conservative leaders and probably the House. Once the White House made it clear it proposed to “pay” for the jobs proposal with measures that include a limitation on itemized tax deductions by high earners, conservative condemnation solidified even more.

The bigger picture, of course, is that conservatives have long settled on a message and policy agenda that insists nothing other than business tax cuts, federal spending cuts, and aggressive deregulation can possibly be considered as helpful to the current and future U.S. economy. Public investments? That’s just a code word for more spending or worse yet, pork. Temporary relief for the unemployed or the under-employed? That’s just more stimulus, reflecting the failed ideas of John Maynard Keynes. During the long GOP presidential debate on September 12, no concept beyond disabling government was mentioned by any of the candidates with respect to reviving the economy.

But aside from hostility to the specifics of Obama’s proposal, another note is steadily creeping into conservative messaging on the economic and other debates in Washington: contempt for the president’s political influence. Here’s National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson on the jobs proposal:

In truth, Obama is out of arrows. His quiver is bare, because he came into office as a rhetorical president without much experience or any ideas other than growing even bigger a tired big government. And now the public realizes that both the speeches and the big spending do not work. The result is that we collectively know what the president cannot any longer say — and it proves far greater than what he can say. He is well past the point of Jerry Ford’s WIN buttons or Jimmy Carter’s fist-pounding malaise speech.

This sense that Republicans have nothing to fear any longer from Obama (in the same piece quoted above, Hanson compared Obama today to George W. Bush towards the end of his second term) is increasingly pervasive, and will almost certainly be intensified by hype over the Republican victory in the special election to fill Anthony Wiener’s House seat in New York. If New York Jews are abandoning Obama, many conservatives are undoubtedly saying to themselves, how can he possibly win in 2012?

If, as has been convincingly argued, Obama’s jobs speech represented a definitive effort to force Republicans into a choice between cooperation and a damaging display of indifference to the country’s economic suffering, conservatives show every indication that they will happily risk the latter. This in turn could have an effect on the tone of the GOP presidential contest, where a very confident party with fewer fears about electability could indulge itself in a base-pleasing competition tilting very far right.

The CNN-Tea Party Express debate in Florida certainly showed signs of that dynamic. A lot of headlines about this and the previous candidates’ debate focused on criticisms of Rick Perry’s harsh rhetoric on Social Security, suggesting that there was in fact a limit to how far right the primary electorate would choose to let a potential nominee go. But the fact that uber-conservative Michele Bachmann has joyfully joined in the bashing of Perry for disrespecting the very existence of Social Security shows that this may be less a matter of sensitivity to mainstream public opinion and more a matter of recognizing the strong popularity of federal retirement programs among conservative base voters—who are on average relatively old. Meanwhile, Perry’s right flank was meaningfully exposed during the debate in exchanges on immigration and his aborted effort to inoculate Texas schoolgirls against the HPV virus. He’s in some danger of looking like he feels more compassion towards illegal aliens and sexually active teenagers than towards the conservative seniors who belief they have earned every nickel of their Social Security and Medicare benefits.

The skirmishing between Perry and other candidates in the debate may have helped obscure the virtual unanimity of the candidates in support of policy positions that would have been considered wingnutty as recently as the last presidential cycle. (The shouts from the audience of “Yes!” when moderator Wolf Blitzer asked if a hypothetical person with no health insurance who is suffering from a fatal disease should be allowed to die was representative of the gulf between the conservative GOP base and the rest of the country). One interesting exception was foreign policy, where first Jon Huntsman and then Rick Perry called for an end to the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan without explicit contradiction from other candidates. It will be interesting to see if Perry’s rivals, especially Mitt Romney, choose to go after Perry from the right on this subject in a direct appeal to what used to be called one leg in the three-legged- stool of American conservatism: “national security conservatives.”

As President Obama puts the finishing touches on his jobs package, let’s hope it includes a helping hand for Americans on the lowest rungs of the job ladder—those struggling to make the transition from welfare to work.

President Clinton’s landmark 1996 welfare reform ended the old entitlement to public assistance, limiting the time people can remain on the rolls. That law reconceived welfare as a way station to jobs and self-sufficiency. Strongly reinforced by a booming economy, tight labor markets and expanded subsidies for low-wage work, the new policy sparked a dramatic exodus from the welfare rolls.

Now, with unemployment nearly twice as high and job growth sluggish at best—the economy generated no net new jobs in August—the picture is very different. At a time when everyone is having trouble finding work, it hardly seems fair to expect welfare administers to sustain previous levels of job placement for people with little education and other disadvantages.

Some liberals believe the answer is to suspend the 1996 reform and allow welfare rolls to start swelling again. There’s a better way: Give employers incentives to hire welfare recipients. Until recently, many states were doing precisely that, with excellent results.

In fact, one of the most successful job-creating programs in recent years was the little-known TANF Emergency Fund included in the 2009 stimulus package. The fund provided states $5 billion over two years for basic assistance, short-term benefits, and subsidized employment. According to a joint report by the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), 37 states used about $1.3 billion of the fund to subsidize employment. This led to the creation of over 260,000 jobs.

According to the CBPP, the emergency fund was a “‘win-win-win,’ helping unemployed families find work, businesses expand capacity in a difficult economic environment, and local economies cope with the recession.” Illinois, at first intending to only place 15,000 people, placed more than 30,000 and had 60,000 apply. Since pay far surpassed welfare or unemployment benefits, families were able to pay their bills and participants gained valuable work experience. Some were even hired into unsubsidized positions. These jobs often replaced cash assistance—South Carolina’s previously rising welfare caseloads dropped after the state introduced its subsidized jobs program.

The jobs programs were also popular with businesses. Hiring subsidized employees helped many small businesses expand and avoid layoffs. The programs were efficient too—according to CLASP and CBPP, “administrators of EF-funded subsidized jobs programs regularly reported that businesses were eager to participate because it was easy to do so.”

All in all, it was an immensely popular program that enjoyed bipartisan support. Even Mississippi’s arch conservative Governor Haley Barbour, who rejected billions in federal stimulus dollars, praised the program, said that it would “provide much-needed aid during this recession by enabling businesses to hire new workers, thus enhancing the economic engines of our local communities.”

Unfortunately, the Emergency Fund expired last September after Senate Republicans blocked a last-minute push by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) for a three-month extension. Most states were forced to end or scale down successful jobs programs.

In voting to kill the program, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) charged that it rewarded states for increasing welfare spending. States either have to show a caseload increase or higher spending to qualify for the Emergency Fund. It seems odd to criticize the states for drawing down the Emergency Fund during an economic emergency—and the last several years certainly qualify as an emergency. To many Republicans, apparently, welfare reform simply means booting people off the rolls, not helping them find work.

With TANF set to expire next month, progressives in Congress should make replenishing the Emergency Fund a top priority for reauthorization. Better still, lawmakers should adopt a proposal by Gordon Berlin, president of MDRC, for “a permanent emergency fund that would only be triggered by high poverty and unemployment indicators.”

The word is that the President Obama is also eyeing a similar approach to job creation—a program called Georgia Work$. Popular with both parties in that state, the program matches unemployed people with local businesses for eight weeks of workplace training. Workers continue to get unemployment checks as well as a weekly stipend, and businesses essentially get free labor with the option to hire the worker when the program ends.

Georgia Work$ is not without its share of problems—its massive popularity nearly bankrupted the program—but it provides further evidence that, with a little help from the government, employers will step up and hire those struggling through the downturn.

It will cost money to put unemployed people into real-world jobs that help them earn income and acquire work skills. But subsidizing work sure beats expanding either the welfare or the unemployment rolls.

Photo credit: janinsanfran

Some liberal commentators marked the 15th anniversary of welfare reform this week with a curious lament: Welfare rolls aren’t growing fast enough.

“If you think the point of the program is to help the poor, then no, welfare reform is not working,” asserts Ezra Klein of the Washington Post. He cites an article by Jake Blumgart in The American Prospect, who frets that welfare rolls have “merely inched upward” during the late recession and jobless recovery.

“At the heart of the worst recession in 80 years, TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) funds only reached 4.5 million families, or 28 percent of those living in poverty,” Blumgart writes. “By contrast, in 1995, the old welfare system covered 13.5 million families, or 75 percent of those living in poverty.”

Before we wax too nostalgic for the good old days of big welfare rolls, it’s worth remembering that progressives led the charge for welfare reform.

“Ending welfare as we know it” was arguably President Bill Clinton’s most radical challenge to the political status quo, and the biggest policy change to happen on his watch. By the time he took office in 1992, the welfare system was held in nearly universal contempt by Americans across the socio-economic spectrum. Not only had it failed to make a dent in poverty, but taxpayers believed it undermined work, personal responsibility and family. The system also had failed the poor, providing them neither effective preparation for work or links to jobs, nor public subsidies sufficient to lift them out of poverty.

Clinton had a better idea: Rather than subsidizing dependence on the state and isolation from the economic mainstream, public assistance ought to require and reward work. To “make work pay,” Clinton got Congress in 1993 to approve a massive expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is essentially a “work bonus” for low-wage earners. The credit has become a social policy rarity—an anti-poverty program that actually works.

On Aug. 21, 1996, after having vetoed two draconian bills sent to him by the Republican Congress, Clinton signed a law which put a time limit on benefits, and replaced the old, open-ended welfare entitlement with a block grant to the states. In combination with the work bonus and other reforms (e.g., cracking down on deadbeat dads and expanding child care support) and a robustly growing economy, the results were galvanic.

More than 7 million people left the rolls between 1996 and 2001. From its peak of 14.4 million in March 1994, the number of people on welfare dropped by 63 percent to 5.3 million in 2001. Millions of welfare recipients left the dole for jobs. Teen pregnancy and out-of-wedlock birth rates dropped dramatically. And the number of Americans living in poverty declined dramatically, by nearly 8 million people.

While some liberals predicted that ending the entitlement would produce scenes of Calcutta-style misery in America—and a few quit the Clinton administration in protest—the public heartily approved. By realigning U.S. social assistance with a strong work ethic and personal responsibility, Clinton’s reforms helped mitigate public hostility toward public assistance and unlock Americans inherent generosity—overall federal and state spending (including EITC costs) to support low-income families actually rose after 1996. They also deprived culture warriors of a favorite, racially tinged theme: When was the last time you heard a Republican candidate mock “welfare queens?”

In the late 1990s, of course, jobs were plentiful. Now the economy isn’t creating enough jobs to bring unemployment back down to earth. Obviously this undercuts policies aimed at speeding transitions from welfare to work, and liberals are right to draw attention to the hardships the jobless recovery imposes on our most vulnerable families.

But they are wrong to assume that welfare’s cash payments are somehow still central to America’s efforts to fight poverty, relieve social distress or shorten recessions. Clinton’s emphasis on “work first” made the unemployment system, rather than welfare, the safety net of first resort for low-income families in downturns. And indeed that is what has happened.

According to a recent Urban Institute fact sheet:

“Unemployment benefits substitute for welfare: three in ten low-income (below 200 percent of the federal poverty level) single parents received unemployment benefits in 2009, double the share receiving in 2005. This suggests that as more single mothers went to work during the late 1990s and early 2000s, more could qualify for unemployment benefits in the event of job loss. Also, many states have recently expanded eligibility for unemployment benefits.”

The other big, countercyclical response to the recession and sluggish job growth has come from the food stamp program (now called SNAP). Last month, the Urban Institute reported that nearly 45 million people receive help from SNAP, an increase of about 69 percent since the recession began in 2007. Many states have seen dramatic growth in their food assistance caseloads as well.

In other words, poor families increasingly rely on other social supports to tide them over hard times. Liberals have a point, however, in arguing against enforcing strict time limits on welfare benefits during a prolonged job drought. Although the Clinton reforms held up well during the 2000-2001 recession, this one is far worse. The “work-first” architecture isn’t perfect, and progressives should be open to sensible modifications based on new and unforeseen economic challenges.

Rather than resurrect the old dependency-fostering entitlement, however, progressives should try more creative approaches. We should be prepared to spend more money to help more families from sinking into poverty through no fault of their own. But, in keeping with the spirit of Clinton’s reforms, new funding should go to support work. This could take the form of a new public works initiative or—perhaps more likely, given GOP control of the House—direct subsidies to employers to hire low-income workers.

The states already have the ability to waive work requirements for a portion of their caseloads; Washington could broaden such authority temporarily, until job growth starts to pick up. Here again, the challenge will be getting GOP austerity freaks to get in touch with their inner “compassionate conservative.”

In any event, it’s hard to see how relitigating the 1996 reform will help the poor. The entitlement ethos isn’t exactly making a comeback in America. And there’s no evidence it would work any better now than before.