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“The Sparrows and the Horses”: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Family Assistance Plan, and the Liberal Critique of Government Workers, 1955–1977
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 March 2016
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- Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2016
Footnotes
I would like to acknowledge Patrick Kerwin and the rest of the staff at the Library of Congress for their assistance in navigating the massive Moynihan collection. An early version of this essay was presented at the 2012 Policy History Conference in Richmond, Virginia. I thank the panelists and audience, as well as the three anonymous reviewers from the Journal of Policy History, for their insightful and corrective comments.
References
NOTES
1. For press coverage of the Good Friday meetings, see “Nixon Takes Plane to Home in Florida,” New York Times, 3 April 1969, 23; Don Oberdorfer, “Nixon Acts on Budget Priorities,” Washington Post, 4 April 1969, A1, A8; Russell Freeburg, “Nixon and Aids Eye Domestic Needs Today,” Chicago Tribune, 4 April 1969, B13; “Nixon, Advisers Discuss Fate of Domestic Plans,” Washington Post, 5 April 1969, A4; Walter Rugaberg, “Nixon Confers on Domestic Priorities,” New York Times, 5 April 1969, 19. For examples of the anxious press, see Don Oberdorfer, “Nixon Policies Still Not Firm as ‘Time of Analysis’ Runs Out,” Washington Post, 3 April 1969, A21; “End of the Beginning,” New York Times, 6 April 1969, E10.
2. Through much of the internal debate, the proposal was known as the Family Security System, a name dropped only on the eve of its public unveiling. To avoid confusion, however, I have referred to it as the Family Assistance Plan or FAP throughout the text.
3. The Moynihan-Price exchange is quoted from Burke, Vincent J. and Burke, Vee, Nixon’s Good Deed: Welfare Reform (New York, 1974), 67.Google Scholar
4. Aside from Moynihan’s own work, the most thorough history of FAP is Steensland, Brian, The Failed Welfare Revolution: America’s Struggle over Guanteed Income Policy (Princeton, 2008),Google Scholar which places the program in the context of a longer intellectual and policy struggle over guaranteed income. Other treatments include: Patterson, James T., America’s Struggle Against Poverty (Cambridge, 1986);Google Scholar Katz, Michael B., The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare (New York, 1989);Google Scholar Berkowitz, Edward D., America’s Welfare State: From Roosevelt to Reagan (Baltimore, 1991);Google Scholar Gareth Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (Lawrence, Kans., 1996); Unger, Irwin, The Best of Intentions: The Triumph and Failure of the Great Society under Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon (New York, 1996);Google Scholar O’Connor, Alice, “The False Dawn of Welfare Reform: Nixon, Carter, and the Quest for a Guaranteed Income,” Journal of Policy History 10, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 99–129;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Wadden, Alex, “A Liberal in Wolf’s Clothing: Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan in Light of 1990s Welfare Reform,” Journal of American Studies 32, no. 2 (August 1998): 203–18;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Kornbluh, Felicia, “Who Shot FAP? The Nixon Welfare Plan and the Transformation of American Politics,” The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politcs and Culture 1, no. 2 (December 2008): 125–50;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Katz, Michael B., The Undeserving Poor: America’s Enduring Confrontation with Poverty (New York, 2013);Google Scholar Crafton, William, “The Incrementeal Revolution: Ronald Reagan and Welfare Reform in the 1970s,” Journal of Policy History 26, no. 1 (2014): 27–47;CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. Self, Robert O., All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy since the 1960s (New York, 2012).Google Scholar
6. Quadagno, Jill, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty (New York, 1994), 121.Google Scholar
7. On Nixon as policy reformer, see Hoff, Joan, Nixon Reconsidered (New York, 1994).Google Scholar On welfare and Nixon’s working-class centered political strategy, see Allen J. Matusow, Nixon’s Economy: Booms, Bust, Dollars, and Votes (Lawrence, Kans., 1998); Schulman, Bruce J., The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York, 2001);Google Scholar Mason, Robert, Richard Nixon and the Quest for a New Political Majority (Chapel Hill, 2004);Google Scholar Cowie, Jefferson, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New York, 2010), 125–66;Google Scholar Michelmore, Molly C., “‘What Have You Done For Me Lately?’: The Welfare State, Tax Politics, and the Search for a New Majority, 1968–1980,” Journal of Policy History 24, no. 4 (2012): 709–40;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Michelmore, Tax and Spend: The Welfare State, Tax Politics, and the Limits of American Liberalism (Philadelphia, 2012).
8. Scott J. Spitzer, in particular, has noted that “scholars have focused less on the motivations behind the inititative than they have the reasons for its failure.” Spitzer, “Nixon’s New Deal: Welfare Reform for the Silent Majority,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 42, no. 3 (September 2012): 455–81.
9. For treatments of FAP that emphasize the connection between Moynihan’s earlier work on the African American family, see Quadagno, The Color of Welfare; Kornbluh, Felicia, The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America (Philadelphia, 2007);Google Scholar Chappell, Marisa, The War on Welfare: Family, Poverty, and Politics in Modern America (Philadelphia, 2010);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Patterson, James T., Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America’s Struggle over Black Family Life (New York, 2010).Google Scholar Other historians have recognized the antibureaucratic element of Moynihan’s embrace of FAP, but have not located its roots in the 1950s and 1960s. For example, Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, 212–19; Chappell, The War on Welfare, 77–78; Vaisse, Justin, Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, 2010), 56–58Google Scholar.
10. On Moynihan’s presentation to the April 26 cabinet meeting, see Burke and Burke, Nixon’s Good Deed, 76.
11. Public-sector union density rose from 12 percent in the late 1950s to 37.4 percent in 2007. In 2010, more union members worked for federal, state, or local governments than private-sector employers. Annual Report on on Union Members, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 22 January 2010.
12. Wilson, James Q., “The Bureaucracy Problem,” The Public Interest 7 (Winter 1967): 3–9.Google Scholar
13. As was often the case, little of Moynihan’s critique was genuinely original. His skill, as a 1967 Life magazine profile put it, was as an “idea broker.” Fred Powledge, “Idea Broker in the Race Crisis: A Troubled Nation Turns to Pat Moynihan,” Life, 3 November 1967, 72.
14. Weiner, Greg, American Burke: The Uncommon Liberalism of Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Lawrence, Kans., 2015)Google Scholar
15. For Moynihan’s early life and academic career, see Hodgson, Godfrey, The Gentleman from New York: Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Boston, 2000), 1–53;Google Scholar Schoen, Douglas, Pat: A Biography of Daniel Patrick Moynihan (New York, 1979), 1–49.Google Scholar
16. At some point between 1953 and 1954, Moynihan came into contact with the CIO’s Government and Civic Employees Organizing Committee, a union of municipal employees in New York City. He later claimed to have briefly been a member. “Should Academicians and Students Become part of the Liberal-Labor-Minority Coalition,” Statement of Daniel P. Moynihan to a New America Symposium, 25 August 1971, part I, box 212, Daniel P. Moynihan Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as DPM). The author has been been unable to verify Moynihan’s union activity; it is not mentioned in the major biographies.
17. “New York Under Harriman,” manuscript, part I, box 21, DPM.
18. Glazer, Nathan and Moynihan, Daniel P., Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish in New York City (Cambridge, 1963), 226.Google Scholar For an earlier articulation of the links between Irish political success and bureaucracy and patronage, see Moynihan, Daniel P., “When the Irish Ran New York,” The Reporter, 8 June 1961, 32–34Google Scholar.
19. For Moynihan, in other words, the elaborate system of city government (and party politics) existed as an instrument of social stability and hierarchy, not, strictly speaking, governing. “They never thought of politics as an instrument of social change—their kind of politics involved the processes of a society that was not changing.” Glazer and Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot, 229.
20. Moynihan, Daniel P. and Wilson, James Q., “Patronage in New York State, 1955–1959,” American Political Science Review 58, no. 2 (June 1964): 286–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Moynihan noted that there were some exceptions to this general trend—a traditional-style machine survived in Albany, which consequently had both the highest ratio of municipal employees (16.3 per thousand residents) and the lowest average pay ($203 per worker) of any city in the state. Moynihan, “New York Under Harriman,” 152–54.
21. Letter from Paul Kryer to Jerry Finkelstein, 5 February 1957, part I, box 5, DPM. Among the many complaints of organized state workers was Harriman’s endorsement of the Security Risk Law of 1951, which subjected state and local employees to immediate termination with limited appeal if they were deemed of suspect loyalty. Leo Egan, “Albany Pressed on Loyalty Tests,” New York Times, 29 January 1957, 14.
22. On New York City’s municipal labor relations, see Bellush, Jewel and Bellush, Bernard, Union Power and New York: Victor Gotbaum and District Council 37 (New York, 1984);Google Scholar Maier, Mark H., City Unions: Managing Discontent in New York City (New Brunswick, 1987);Google Scholar Freeman, Joshua B., In Transit: The Transportation Workers Union in New York City, 1933–1966 (New York, 1989);Google Scholar Freeman, Joshua B., Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II (New York, 2000).Google Scholar
23. “The 1957 Civil Service Legislation—What It Means to Personnel,” Panel Discussion Sponsored by the Albany District Chapter of the Public Personnel Association, Tuesday, 30 April 1957, part I, box 19, DPM.
24. In his capacity as assistant secretary, Moynihan would have reviewed the report of the 1956 New York State–New York City Fiscal Relations Committee, which characterized the city’s government as administratively inefficient and unnecessarily costly to the local taxpayers. “Statement by L. Judsom Morhouse, Republican State Chairman, for Release to Afternoon Papers of Monday, December 3, 1956,” part I, box 12, DPM. On the impact of Moynihan’s term as assistant secretary on his broader career, see Schoen, Pat, 55–56.
25. “Harriman Urges ‘War on Poverty,’” New York Times, 15 November 1955, 35; “Harriman Wants State to Declare ‘War on Poverty,” New York Times, 28 November 1955, 1, 20; “State Poverty Study Urged by Governor,” New York Times, 1 February 1956, 1, 10.
26. Press Release, Governor’s Office, 30 December 1958, part I, box 471, DPM. At the time of his appointment, the commission had met just twice in its history, and Moynihan heard only one case before leaving for Washington, D.C., upholding the termination of James Worley for refusing to file a lesson plan with the principal, despite the appeals of the New York Teachers Guild. Letter from Daniel P. Moynihan to John T. DeGraff, 3 January 1960, part I, box 471, DPM.
27. Ahlberg, Clark D. and Moynihan, Daniel P., “Changing Governors—and Policies,” Public Administration Review 20, no. 4 (Fall 1960): 204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
28. On the development of the patchwork system of federal labor relations prior to 1961, see Spero, Sterling D., Government as Employer (New York, 1948);Google Scholar Ziskind, David, One Thousand Strikes of Government Employees (New York, 1940);Google Scholar Carpenter, William Seal, The Unfinished Business of Civil Service Reform (Princeton, 1952);Google Scholar Stahl, O. Glenn, Public Personnel Administration (New York, 1956);Google Scholar Hart, Wilson R., Collective Bargaining in the Federal Service: A Study of Labor-Management Relations in United States Government Employment (New York, 1961);Google Scholar Levitan, Sar A. and Noden, Alexandra B., Working for the Sovereign: Employee Relations in the Federal Government (Baltimore, 1983).Google Scholar On the origins and history of Kennedy’s federal labor policy, see Stieber, Jack, “Executive Order 10988,” in Collective Bargaining for Public Employees (New York, 1969), 134–38;Google Scholar Martin Halpern, Unions, Radicals, and Democratic Presidents: Seeking Social Change in the Twentieth Century (Westport, Conn., 2003), 78–108; McCartin, Joseph A., Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike That Changed America (New York, 2011), 31–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29. Moynihan acknowledged that union leaders wanted the associational rights conferred by the existing civil service system (the right to join organizations, to have representation at disciplinary hearings, to meet and confer on policy changes) expanded in order to allow employees a meaningful say on matters of concern at the workplace. The Task Force, he continued, had three choices: it could simply reaffirm the existing rights, it could broaden the area of consultation, or it could create a new system that encouraged the development of formal, bilateral relationships. Moynihan endorsed the third course, but not without expressing significant reservations about the applicability of collective bargaining to the public sector. While he bowed to demands from the AFL-CIO for a broad scope of negotiation, large bargaining units, and the creation of an oversight agency, Moynihan hedged on the underlying question of the appropriateness of bilaterial negotiation, citing basic incongruities between the goals of civil service and trade unionism. “The spirit of trade unionism is solidarity, the spirit of civil service is competition,” he wrote. “A system which urges the individual to improve his lot by winning preferment over his fellow workers on the basis of merit and fitness simply does not harmonize easily with one which asks that all advance at an equal pace.” In the end, however, Moynihan accepted that the two models were compatible, reasoning that “civil service can distinguish between the value of different persons while the trade union system can raise the base from which the civil service increments begin.” “An Impression of the Possible Course of Employee Management Relations in the Federal Service in the Light of Proposals Presented at Public Hearings and in the Employee Organization Questionnaires,” Memorandum from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Staff Director, President’s Task Force on Employee Management Relations in the Federal Service, n.d., part I, box 74, DPM.
30. Like many contemporary middle-class liberals, Moynihan was deeply affected by the revelations of the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, more commonly identified with its chairman, Sen. John McClellan (D-Ark.). Between 1957 and 1959, the McClellan Committee generated some twenty thousand pages of testimony and evidence on the extent of violence and corruption, focusing on a half-dozen labor unions, most notably, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Shocking even to union sympathizers, the committee’s findings laid the foundation for the passage of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, better known as the Landrum-Griffin Act, which imposed strict and unprecedented regulation of internal union affairs and activities. The McClellan Committee hearings proved jarring for Moynihan, who wrote in his history of the Harriman administration that “one of the most important political developments of the fifties—and one for which the liberal Democrats of the New Deal were psychologically least prepared for—was the relentless revelations of the extent to which the American labor movement had fallen into the hands of criminals.” Previously “given to endowing the working class with a messianic quality which it may or may not have possessed,” middle-class liberals were shocked to find “this great movement for social generation was in the hands of ruthless predators, as rapacious as anything known in the age of unprincipled capitalism, and had in fact become an instrument of the most vicious economic exploitation.” Moynihan, “New York Under Harriman: Chapter 10: Labor Racketeering,” 1, part I, box 22, DPM.
31. Moynihan, “An Impression of the Possible Course of Employee Management Relations in the Federal Service.”
32. Letter from Daniel P. Moynihan to James R. Watson, Executive Director, National Civil Service League, 12 February 1962, part I, box 74, DPM. These were mainstream views within the Task Force. H. T. Herrick, another Department of Labor staffer, shared a similar view with the American Federation of Government Employees in late January 1962, noting that the Task Force had never seriously considered extending “full collective bargaining rights, with all that the phrase implies in private industry.” Herrick cited the prohibition on strikes as the most obvious of the new system’s limits, but he also emphasized impropriety of delegating decisions to a third party—“Agency heads must retain the right to make ultimate decisions, and they may not delegate this right, or duty, to third parties.” Address by H. T. Herrick, Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Labor, Before the American Federation of Government Employees, Philadelphia, 27 January 1962, part I, box 46, DPM.
33. McCartin, Collision Course, 36–43.
34. On the impact of Executive Order 10988, see Freeman, Richard B., “Unionism Comes to the Public Sector,” Journal of Economic Literature 24 (1986): 41–76;Google Scholar Kearney, Richard C., Labor Relations in the Public Sector (New York, 1992).Google Scholar
35. As early as December 1963, Moynihan denounced the “endless, dark and bloody wars” within the federal bureaucracy, lamenting the “absolutely incredible” attachment that many federal employees had to “the Bureau,” characterizing them as “a conservative, middle-class group that is . . . apprehensive about social change,” and claiming that the accomplishments of the New Frontier came over their objections. “Internal Wars Seen Hurting Bureaucracy,” Washington Post, 15 December 1963, A9.
36. Sue Cronk, “Way Out of Poverty for a Man Is a Job,” Washington Post, 26 February 1964, D1; Davies notes that Moynihan later denied making the comments, while also drawing attention to the positive response from conservatives like Thomas Curtis. Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, 42.
37. “National Planning for the Disadvantaged,” Address by Daniel P. Moynihan, Assistant Secretary of Labor, to the Graduate School of Social Work, New York University, 4 May 1964, part I, box 98, DPM. Moynihan believed that the educational role was entirely appropriate, noting that there was a large contingent in the country who wrongly believed that “being poor is actually a matter of preference,” who held that “the right way to eliminate poverty is to cut off welfare payments and then tell the poor to stop being lazy and find jobs,” who tell the poor that “they, too, can be well-off if only they will work—without any consideration of the fact that technology has made many of them obsolete and left them without work that pays a living wage.” Yet it seems equally clear that Moynihan was less confident about the capacity of social work to do anything more to address these problems.
38. Quoted in Patterson, Freedom Is Not Enough, 16.
39. Ibid., 21.
40. Ibid., 21.
41. The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (Washington, D.C., 1965).
42. Patterson, Freedom Is Not Enough, 25.
43. Ibid., 43.
44. As Patterson and others have noted, much of the substance of the report was lost in the controversy that followed. Patterson, Freedom Is Not Enough, 47–63.
45. “Three Problems,” Address by Daniel P. Moynihan, Assistant Secretary of Labor, to the Conference on Poverty in America, University of California at Berkeley, 26–28 February 1965, part I, box 101, DPM.
46. The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, 19.
47. Ibid., 47.
48. Patterson, Freedom Is Not Enough, 44.
49. Sheltered from the worst (though not the totality) of the backlash against The Negro Family, Moynihan used the posts to repair his public image, cultivate relationships with the press and academics, and return to writing about a broad range of social and policy issues. On Moynihan’s departure from the White House, see Schoen, Pat, 86–91; Patterson, Freedom Is Not Enough, 80–85, 101.
50. Nathan Glazer, “A New Look at Social Welfare,” The New Society (November 1963).
51. Moynihan, Daniel P., “The Professionalization of Reform,” The Public Interest 1 (Fall 1965): 6–16Google Scholar.
52. Bell, Daniel, “Editorial: What Is the Public Interest?” The Public Interest 1 (Fall 1965): 3–5Google Scholar.
53. For Moynihan’s reflection, see Letter from Daniel P. Moynihan to Governor Mario Cuomo, 9 November 1990, in Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary, ed. Steven R. Weisman (New York, 2010), 550–51. Justin Vaisse has suggested that, whatever its initial purpose, by the late 1960s the goal of the journal was “to douse the naive enthusiasms of (other) liberals with buckets of cold water.” Vaisse, Neoconservatism, 54.
54. As early as 1979, Peter Steinfels identified Moynihan as “the best known of the neoconservatives.” Steinfels, Peter, The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing America’s Politics (New York, 1979), 108.Google Scholar Many scholars, including Patterson, have characterized Moynihan’s position as “moderately neoconservative,” citing his frequent publications in The Public Interest and Commentary and his close association with Glazer, Wilson, and Kristol. Patterson, Freedom Is Not Enough, 101. As Patric Andelic has recently noted, though, Moynihan fiercely and consistently resisted the label, which imperfectly describes the fluctuating political landscape of the mid-1970s. Andelic, “Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the 1976 New York Senate Race, and the Struggle to Define American Liberalism,” 1114.
55. “The extremes of the left and the right in this country live off the mistakes of the center,” Moynihan proclaimed in a May 1967 speech. “It is only when we fail that they succeed, but it seems to be that we have been failing an an alarming rate.” “When You are Caught Between the Left and the Right the Only Way to Go Is Down,” Remarks by Daniel P. Moynihan to the Women’s Democratic Club, Washington, D.C., 1 May 1967, part I, box 204, DPM.
56. “The Politics of Stability,” Remarks by Daniel P. Moynihan to the National Board Meeting, Americans for Democratic Action, Willard Hotel, Washington, D.C., 23 September 1967, part I, box 141, DPM.
57. Moynihan, Daniel P., “Where Liberals Went Wrong,” in Republican Papers, ed. Laird, Melvin (Garden City, 1968), 131–32; 138.Google Scholar
58. Mittelstadt, Jennifer, From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform, 1945–1965 (Chapel Hill, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
59. Moynihan, Daniel P., “The Crisis in Welfare,” The Public Interest 10 (Winter 1968): 7.Google Scholar Moynihan presented an early version of the piece in November 1967 to a conference organized by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. “The Crisis in Welfare: The View from New York,” Position Paper by Daniel P. Moynihan, New York State Board of Social Welfare, One Hundredth Anniversary Governor’s Conference, Arden House, 2–3 November 1967, part I, box 155, DPM.
60. Moynihan, “The Crisis in Welfare,” 17.
61. For instance, Moynihan’s essay was explicitly cited in “Short-Sighted Sensibilities,” Wall Street Journal, 20 February 1968, 16; “Crisis in Welfare,” Washington Post, 4 March 1968, A12; Chesly Manly, “Trend Toward Public Welfare Is on the Rise in All 50 States,” Chicago Tribune, 30 June 1968; F. O. Jacobs, “Welfare Crisis: Subsidy for Separation,” Wall Street Journal, 22 July 1968.
62. “Community Action,” Moynihan wrote in 1968, “was originally seen as a means of shaping unorganized and even disorganized city dwellers into a coherent and self-conscious group, if need be by techniques of protest and opposition to established authority. Somehow the higher civil service came to see it as a means for coordinating at the community level the array of conflicting and overlapping department programs that were proceeding forth from Washington in ever increasing number, legislative stalemates to the contrary notwithstanding.” Daniel P. Moynihan, “The Professors and the Poor,” Commentary (August 1968): 21–22. For an early iteration of Moynihan’s critical stance on community action, see Moynihan, Daniel P., “What Is Community Action?” The Public Interest 5 (Fall 1966): 3–8Google Scholar.
63. Moynihan, Daniel P., Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty (New York, 1969), 123–30.Google Scholar
64. “The Crisis of Confidence,” Statement presented by Daniel P. Moynihan, Director, Joint Center for Urban Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, to the Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization of the U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations, 13 December 1966, part I, box 203, DPM.
65. Berkowitz, America’s Welfare State, 120–21; Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, 3–6; Chappell, The War on Welfare, 58.
66. Report of the National Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, D.C., 1968).
67. Poverty amid Plenty: The American Paradox: The Report of the President’s Commission on Income Maintenance Programs (Washington, D.C., 1969).
68. Friedman, Milton, Capitalism and Freedom, Fortieth Anniversary Edition (Chicago, 2002), 191–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
69. King, Martin Luther Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (New York, 1967), 162.Google Scholar
70. Steensland, The Failed Welfare Revolution, 4.
71. Daniel P. Moynihan, “The Case for a Family Allowance,” New York Times, 5 February 1967, SM70.
72. Moynihan, “The Case for a Family Allowance,” SM68. The children’s allowance was part of Moynihan’s broader effort to formulate a family-centered social policy. Moynihan, Daniel P., “A Family Policy for the Nation,” America 113, no. 12 (September 1965): 180–83.Google Scholar
73. Powledge, “Idea Broker in the Race Crisis,” 78. This distinction separated the general rehabilitative social services from job training specifically geared toward private-sector employment. Moynihan believed that the latter, in addition to requiring a smaller bureaucratic footprint, was fully compatible with the income strategy. Memorandum for the President from Daniel P. Moynihan, 17 May 1969, part I, box 243, DPM.
74. Hodgson, The Gentleman from New York, 144–45. In an op-ed published two weeks before the presidential election, Moynihan warned any incoming president against overeager acceptance of academic advice. “Politically liberal almost to a man, we will think up reasons programs will work, out of a sheer, decent desire that they should.” He suggested that the administration appoint a social science “gatekeeper” to sort and translate academic advice—a role he subsequently filled for Nixon. Daniel P. Moynihan, “‘Trust the Politicians, They Know What They Know,’ but Beware the Social Scientist Beating Advice,” Baltimore Sun, 20 October 1968, K2. Patterson, Freedom Is Not Enough, 109–11.
75. Hess, Stephen, The Professor and the President: Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the Nixon White House (Washington, D.C., 2015), 10–14.Google Scholar
76. As early as 8 November, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak speculated that Nixon would appoint Moynihan to his Cabinet as part of a postelection move to the political center. Evans and Novak, “Swing to the Left Seems to Be Nixon’s Best Hope of Success,” Los Angeles Times, 8 November 1968, B7. The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Volume I (New York, 1978), 423. Journalist Nicholas Lemann notes that the two were also linked by “a deep dislike of the left-liberal political culture” that had villified Nixon for two decades and Moynihan since 1965. Lemann, The Promised Land, 204.
77. Don Irwin, “Moynihan Selected as Head of New Council for Urban Affairs,” Los Angeles Times, 11 December 1968, 1, 7.
78. “Nixon Appoints Moynihan as Urban Affairs Adviser,” Wall Street Journal, 11 December 1968, 4; Carroll Kilpatrick, “Moynihan Named Urban Affairs Chief,” Washington Post, 11 December 1968, A1; R. W. Apple Jr., “Moynihan, a Liberal Scholar, May Spur Rapid Action on Cities,” New York Times, 11 December 1968, 25; Bernard D. Nossiter, “Moynihan—Esteemed Urban Generalist,” Washington Post, 11 December 1968, A8; “Nixon’s Democrat Shuns Doctrinaire Solutions,” Baltimore Sun, 11 December 1968, A12; Vincent Butler, “Expert on Cities Will Have Own Planning Staff,” Chicago Tribune, 11 December 1968, 1, 2; Robert L. Asher, “Choice of Moynihan Hailed by Mayors,” Washington Post, 12 December 1968, A2;
79. “Richard Nixon’s House Maverick,” Chicago Tribune, 12 December 1968, 28.
80. Steensland, The Failed Welfare Revolution, 79–80. The 1968 Republican Party platform endorsed the elimination of “burdensome administrative procedures in welfare programs.” “1968 Republican National Platform,” Memorandum from Richard Blumenthal to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 4 January 1969, part I, box 306, DPM.
81. “The Urban Crisis,” Memorandum from Daniel P. Moynihan to President-Elect Richard M. Nixon, 8 January 1968, part I, box 242, DPM; Memorandum from Richard Nixon, 15 January 1969, part I, box 242, DPM; Memorandum for the President from Daniel P. Moynihan, 22 January 1969, part I, box 242, DPM; “Talking Points for the President for the First Meeting of the Council for Urban Affairs,” Memorandum from Daniel P. Moynihan, 23 January 1969, part I, box 264, DPM; Statement by the President on Signing the Executive Order Creating the Council on Urban Affairs, Office of the White House Press Secretary, 23 January 1969, part I, box 264, DPM. Chaired by Richard Nathan, the Task Force identified disparities in benefits between states as the most pressing problem affecting the welfare system. It recommended the adoption of a system of national standards, federal subsidies to raise minimum benefit levels and encourage states to offer higher payments, and the extension of the AFDC-UP program, which offered benefits to families with unemployed fathers. “Task Force on Public Welfare: Programs to Assist the Poor,” Report to President-Elect Richard M. Nixon, 28 December 1968, part I, box 264, DPM. On the Task Force, see Steensland, The Failed Welfare Revolution, 81–85.
82. Transcript, News Conference No. 9, 23 January 1969, part I, box 264, DPM.
83. Lemann, The Promised Land, 206.
84. The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 525.
85. “Report of Action for the First Meeting of the Council for Urban Affairs,” Memorandum from John Price, Counsel to the Assistant to the President for Urban Affairs, 23 January 1969, part I, box 264, DPM.
86. Memorandum from Daniel P. Moynihan to the President, 31 January 1969, part I, box 242, DPM.
87. Ibid. At this early stage, Moynihan urged Nixon only to embrace national minimum standards and establish a commission to investigate the welfare system.
88. Memorandum from Daniel P. Moynihan to the President, 1 February 1969, part I, box 247, DPM.
89. Memorandum from Daniel P. Moynihan to the President, 1 March 1969, part I, box 247, DPM; Memorandum from Daniel P. Moynihan to the President, 6 March 1969, part I, box 247, DPM. Between 1951 and 1960, the rate was 55 percent; by 1966, it was 64 percent; by 1968, it was 73 percent. Moynihan established that the growing acceptance rate explained 40 percent of the growth of new cases, though he acknolwedged that the rising acceptance rates partially reflected growing need. Moynihan also identified a sharp increase in the number of unmarried mothers receiving AFDC, minor changes in federal aid (which allowed children aged 18–20 to retain benefits while in school), and migration to cities with higher benefits as factors, and acknowledged that the nebulous “welfare subculture” likely played a roll in encouraging those who were eligible to enroll.
90. Minutes, Meeting of the Council for Urban Affairs, 6 March 1969, part I, box 264, DPM.
91. “Attitudes Toward Welfare,” Memorandum from Daniel P. Moynihan to the President, 13 March 1969, part I, box 243, DPM. An earlier draft of the memorandum, dated 11 March, also cited the high incidence of unemployment in urban centers and the low wages available to most unskilled workers. “Attitudes Toward Welfare,” Memorandum from Daniel P. Moynihan to the President, 11 March 1969, part I, box 243, DPM.
92. Hess, The Professor and the President, 44–45.
93. Ibid., 15–18.
94. Steensland, The Failed Welfare Revolution, 89–91.
95. Ibid., 79–91.
96. Memorandum from Daniel P. Moynihan to the President, 26 March 1969, part I, box 247, DPM.
97. Lemann, The Promised Land, 212, 391.
98. Memorandum from Daniel P. Moynihan to the President, 1 April 1969, part I, box 243, DPM.
99. Burke and Burke, Nixon’s Good Deed, 67.
100. Ferrell, Robert H., ed., Inside the Nixon Administration: The Secret Diary of Arthur Burns, 1969–1974 (Lawrence, Kans., 2010), 18–19Google Scholar.
101. Stuart H. Loory, “Nixon Advisers Differ on Welfare Approach,” Los Angeles Times, 31 March 1969, B1; John Pierson, “White House Power: Arthur Burns Provides a Conservative Influence on Domestic Programs,” Wall Street Journal, 20 May 1969, 1, 16; Russell Freeberg, “Two Welfare Plans Studied by Nixon Aids,” Chicago Tribune, 23 May 1969, 23; “Two Plans Pushed for Welfare,” Baltimore Sun, 3 June 1969, A1, A7; Robert B. Semple Jr., “Nixon Staff Denies Its Views Are Polarized,” New York Times, 12 July 1969, 11; “Nixon Weighs Reform Plan: Schultz Welfare Proposals Strike a Middle Ground,” Baltimore Sun, 16 July 1969, A9; John Herbers, “The Administration Readies a Compromise Plan,” New York Times, 20 July 1969, E2; Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, “Victory in Sight for Liberal Wing in Administration’s Welfare Plan,” Washington Post, 25 July 1969, A27.
102. Pete Hamill, “The Revolt of the White Lower Middle Class,” New York Magazine, 14 April 1969, 28–29. For Moynihan’s response to the Hamill piece, see Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, 212–20; Steensland, The Failed Welfare Revolution, 104–7.
103. Memorandum from Daniel P. Moynihan to the President, 17 May 1969.
104. Ibid.
105. Ibid.
106. Ibid.
107. Ibid.
108. Ibid.
109. “Welfare Message,” Memorandum from Arthur F. Burns to the President, 12 July 1969, part I, box 274, DPM; “Welfare Message,” Memorandum from the Vice President to the President, 4 August 1969, part I, box 275, DPM. Moynihan preferred the FSS style, arguing that it had a strong and useful parallel to Social Security. Memorandum from Daniel P. Moynihan to H. R. Haldeman, 21 January 1970, part I, box 249, DPM.
110. The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Volume I, 437.
111. Bernard Absell, “Pat Moynihan: ‘Too Much!’ and ‘Too Little,’” New York Times, 2 November 1969, SM44.
112. Absell, “Pat Moynihan,” SM57.
113. Robert Young, “Nixon Reorganized White House Staff,” Chicago Tribune, 5 November 1969, B13. The reorganization ultimately undermined Moynihan’s influence by separating him from the Urban Affairs Council (headed by his former deputy John Price) and increasing the influence of Ehrlichman, but this is clearer in hindsight than it was at the time. Robert B. Semple Jr., “U.S. Urban Post May Go to Price,” New York Times, 5 December 1969, 34.
114. Memorandum from Daniel P. Moynihan to the President, 8 October 1969, part I, box 244, DPM.
115. “Analysis of Initial Editorial, Columnist, Magazine, and Public Opinion Reaction to the President’s Welfare Message,” Report, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 21 October 1969, part I, box 279, DPM.
116. “President’s Family Assistant Proposal, August 8,” Memorandum from Noble M. Melencamp to John Brown, 11 September 1969, part I, box 276, DPM. According to the White House survey, 81 percent were unqualified positive, 10 percent were positively disposed toward the principles embodied in FAP but critical of particular components, and 9 percent were outright opposed.
117. Transcript, Firing Line, Program #170, 7 October 1969, Hoover Institution Archives, Firing Line Program Collection.
118. Transcript, The Today Show, National Broadcasting Company, 24 July 1970, part I, box 244, DPM.
119. On the political and legislative history of FAP, see Berkowitz, America’s Welfare State, 129–33; Chappell, The War on Welfare, 78–105; Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, 222–33; Kornbluh, The Battle for Welfare Rights, 145–59; Nadasen, Premilla, Welfare Warriors: The Weflare Rights Movement in the United States (New York, 2005), 157–91.Google Scholar H. R. Haldeman confided that Nixon became convinced that FAP was unaffordable, and sought to ensure it was ultimately killed by Democratic opposition. Cowie, Stayin’ Alive, 140.
120. Kornbluh, “Who Shot FAP?” 135–36.
121. Moynihan first laid out his own history of the background, development, and failure of FAP in a remarkable trio of essays in the New Yorker. Moynihan, “Income by Right-I,” New Yorker, 13 January 1973, 34–57; Moynihan, “Income by Right-II,” New Yorker, 20 January 1973, 60–79; Moynihan, “Income by Right-III,” New Yorker, 27 January 1973, 57–81.
122. Moynihan, The Politics of a Guaranteed Income, 306–7. Responding to the book, AFSCME President Jerry Wurf later boasted that the union had played a role in defeating FAP. “We opposed FAP—as Nixon’s plan was called—because its level of funding was so low that most welfare recipients would have taken cuts in their benefits—and the bulk of welfare people in this country are disabled people, old people, sick people, and dependent children. We opposed it because it contained income restrictions that would have discouraged welfare recipients from seeking work. And we opposed it because it made absolutely no provision to protect the thousands of state and local welfare department employees who would have been thrown out of work as welfare services became federalized.” “Public Institutions and Change,” Excerpts from a Speech by Jerry Wurf, Prepared for Delivery before the Wisconsin City and County Employees Union, AFSCME Council 40, State Convention, Madison, 1 April 1973, box 70, folder 3, Jerry Wurf Collection, AFSCME Office of the President, Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit.
123. Moynihan, The Politics of a Guaranteed Income, 307.
124. Ibid.
125. Ibid., 311.
126. Ibid., 325.
127. Moynihan resigned from the Nixon White House in late November 1970, “deeply depressed” about the prospects for reform. Personal Memorandum from Daniel P. Moynihan to the President, 24 November 1970, part I, box 245, DPM.
128. Daniel P. Moynihan, “Revenue Sharing: A Major Event,” New York Times, 27 September 1972, 47.
129. Moynihan continued to lobby for FAP from Harvard. In early 1972, he wrote to Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn.), a key supporter of welfare reform in early 1972, to urge him to support H.R. 1. “The whole point of the income strategy,” Moynihan reminded Kennedy’s former secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, was “to get us out of this essentially corrupting situation” in which government “creates a vested interest in the maintenance of programs that commonly achieve nothing.” Letter from Daniel P. Moynihan to Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff, 4 February 1972, part I, box 128, DPM.
130. In Serrano v. Priest 5 Cal.3d 584 (1971), the California Supreme Court ruled that the state’s education financing system unconstitutionally discriminated against students in low-income districts, citing major disaparities in per-pupil expenditure. Moynihan had long followed Coleman’s work, particularly his 1966 study “Equality of Educational Opportunity,” and was heavily influenced by his finding that educational expenditure bore little connection to educational outcomes. For Moynihan’s discussion of the Coleman Report, see Moynihan, “To Solve a Problem, First Define It,” New York Times, 12 January 1970, 49, 62. Moynihan had previously written on the problem of inequity in educational expenditure in connection with the family allowance. Moynihan, “The Case for a Family Allowance.”
131. Remarks by Daniel P. Moynihan at the Symposium on Serrano v. Priest, College of Law, University of Illinois, 23 February 1972, part I, box 213, DPM. Moynihan previewed the interpretation in Moynihan, “Can Courts and Money Do It?” New York Times, 10 January 1972, E1, E24.
132. Moynihan, Daniel P., “On Equality: Equalizing Education—in Whose Benefit?” The Public Interest 29 (Fall 1972): 69–70.Google Scholar
133. Ibid., 76.
134. Ibid.
135. Ibid., 79.
136. Ibid., 83–86.
137. Ibid. 89.
138. Rusher, The Making of the New Majority Party (New York, 1975), as quoted in Cowie, Stayin’ Alive, 228.
139. Quoted in Daniel P. Moynihan, Came the Revolution: Argument in the Reagan Era (New York, 1988), 73–74.
140. Moynihan, Daniel P., “Two Tax Revolts,” in Counting Our Blessings: Reflections on the Future of America (Boston, 1980), 268.Google Scholar
141. Moynihan, “Two Tax Revolts,” 271–72.
142. On Moynihan’s 1976 Senate campaigns, see Andelic, “Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the 1976 New York Senate Race, and the Struggle to Define American Liberalism,” 1122–25.
143. Daniel P. Moynihan, “The Liberal’s Dilemma: A Professor’s Stump Speech that Worked,” New Republic, 22 January 1977, 58.
144. Ibid., 59.
145. Ibid.
146. Ibid.
147. Ibid.
148. Ibid., 60.