Racial Politics and Welfare Retrenchment during the Reagan Presidency

Abstract

How do conservative presidents use welfare state retrenchment to make political appeals, and in particular reach conservative whites on the basis of the sensitive subject of race? Using Reagan Presidential Library archival sources, I show that the Reagan administration’s welfare retrenchment efforts with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA) of 1981 were organized around a racially divisive political agenda that was intended to appeal to southern whites and northern white ethnics. Modifying Pierson’s (1994) approach to the politics of welfare retrenchment with focused attention on race, I explore the administration’s use of the strategies of “obfuscation, division and compensation.” I find that the Reagan administration pursued an overtly racially neutral approach to welfare retrenchment, while also pursuing a political agenda focused on conservative white voters. This is contrasted with an almost complete absence of concern over the disproportionate harm that African-Americans faced as a result of their agenda. Most telling, the administration responded to the criticisms of their budget cuts by African-American leaders through a combination of silences and symbols, offering very little in the way of direct material or procedural rewards for African-Americans.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Cannon, 2000, p. 226, quoting David Gergen, Reagan’s Director of Communications.

2 The Reagan administration’s economic recovery was outlined in their 1981 document entitled America’s New Beginnings: A Program for Economic Recovery, reviewed in Cannon 2000, 198 – 199.

3 While Carmines and Stimson’s description of racial partisan polarization remains relevant for this analysis, it should be noted that Schickler 2016 finds that the racial divide between the Democratic and Republican parties evolved over several decades, beginning in the 1940s.

4 But see Davies 2003 who seems to point to such an interpretation in his superb review of the Reagan administration’s social welfare policies.

5 On the deserving/undeserving poor differentiation, see Katz, 1989.

6 On Carleson’s role in the Reagan White House and his prior role as director of welfare under Governor Reagan in California, see the transcript of his exit interview in the RRPL, March 29, 1984.

7 The suitable-home-provision allowed local welfare administrators to deny welfare benefits to a mother if she were deemed “unsuitable”. The man-in-the-house provision barred aid to mothers who were having sexual relations with any man, and the presence of a man in the house was assumed to be a possible provider for the mother and her children, even when he had no legal responsibility, even if only visiting for brief periods of time.

8 While some have asserted this was where Reagan launched his 1980 presidential campaign, he in fact launched his campaign in November of 1979, in New York City. https://www.4president.org//speeches/reagan1980announcement.htm

9 Phillips, 1969. But also see Kotlowski, 1998 for a more nuanced view that sees race as only one factor in the new conservative populism.

10 The participants were: Edwin Meese III, James A. Baker III, Michael K. Deaver, William E. Brock, Joseph W. Canzeri, Richard G. Darman, Craig L. Fuller, David R. Gergen, James E. Jenkins, Edward Rollins, Stuart Spencer, Robert Teeter, Richard S. Williamson and Richard Wirthlin. (Darman and Fuller 1982).

11 For reviews of these policies, and of the character of the Reagan Presidency more generally, see the superb volume edited by Brownlee and the late Hugh Davis Graham, 2003.