Like Newt Gingrich, Penn Professor of Social Work Michael Reisch believes that the latest welfare reform legislation that passed into law this summer was extremely significant: "The most dramatic reversal of social policy in the last 60 years in any form," says Reisch.
But unlike Gingrich and the bill's supporters, Reisch believes the series of bills is a misguided disaster, leaving the poor Ð and especially the urban poor Ð in potentially dire straits.
"There has been talk of welfare reform for a long time, and often that just means reducing welfare costs," says Reisch. "But real welfare reform would require greater investment for jobs and other improvements for the poor. This latest legislation has to be put in context not just of the effect on low income children and families, but the broader effort of some of the people proposing it to end the concept of entitlements altogether."
Reisch has proposed that the University, being part of an urban center that will suffer disproportionately from the loss of entitlements to the poor, make a concerted effort to study the effects of the legislation.
"I would like to develop a multidisciplinary, multifaceted research project, using the recent legislation as a point of departure," says Reisch. "But I wouldn't merely want to gather data. I would want to use the data to develop local or state planning, policies and action efforts, which might even be able to be used nationwide."
Reisch came to Penn two years ago after nine years at San Francisco State University. Penn, he says, gave him more opportunities to do research, particularly in his specialties of contemporary social policy, history and philosophy of social welfare and the relationship between politics and community change. He is a self-described "activist about issues around welfare" and intends to continue to work with community groups as an advocate. To that end, he has recently become a steady contributor to the opinion pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer, being asked to give perspective to work and welfare issues.
Dr. Michael Reisch
Reisch, who is also director of the doctoral program in Social Work, worries that the recent welfare legislation will further divide suburb and city, as well as more sharply separate the races. Urban life, in particular, will suffer."While there may not be an increase in crime, there will be one in poverty and that won't only affect the people directly hit by the legislation," he said. "We who love cities will experience a degradation of the quality of life. Without a broad-based coalition of poor people, the working class and the middle class people who have compassion for this type of problem, we are never going to see much political change that will help the urban areas and the poor in them."
Reisch said that circumstances were different when the "safety net" was first proposed in the 1930s and when it was enhanced in the 1960s.
"In the middle of the Depression, there was a more widely shared belief that the problems were structural in nature and not attributed to individual deficiencies, as they are now," he says. "The solutions were generated that were considered universal. Certainly, during the Depression, these were not race-based sets of programs, as some people think now.
"In the 1960s, there had been a generation of relative prosperity. The civil rights movement generated discussions about poverty and the thought was that this could be addressed without sacrificing our overall affluence," says Reisch. "But pretty much since the 1970s, family income has remained stagnant. There are a lot of new millionaires, but that doesn't reflect the daily reality of the family in the United States. Many families that are doing better are doing so with considerable sacrifice: two-income households, second jobs and so forth. In order to maintain the level of material well-being, the quality of life has diminished. People are less likely to think they have enough left over to help the poor."
Reisch says he hopes American society will eventually re-assess the values of cities and start to break down political and racial boundaries between suburbs and cities.
"I know this sounds like pie in the sky, but those political boundaries are anachronistic," he says. "They serve to divide people and hinder integration of populations, of approaches to community problem solving. We have to rethink the fundamental value of the individual and the community and stop promoting social goals with the individual as paramount; not to get rid of individual freedoms, but to have better balance between individual and community needs."
Reisch finds Philadelphia an interesting laboratory in this regard. The native New Yorker has lived in Baltimore, Washington and San Francisco as well, which he finds as more adaptable urban areas.
"I think there is a lot of talent in the city, but in many ways, the negativity and provincialism of Philadelphia prevent them from coming together in a collaborative way," he says. "The racial and class divisions of the city are very sharp, both within the city and between the city and suburbs. I think that makes it difficult for action to be taken to correct the city's problems. I also think the city has less clout on the state level than any of the other cities in which I've lived. Legislators define the state's problems as urban problems, which are then defined as Philadelphia's problems.
"Still, while talking of the impediments to helping the urban poor survive in the welfare-reform era, Reisch is optimistic about Penn's potential role in searching for solutions.
"The faculty and students at Penn can play a leading role, not only with what is happening to the population on welfare, but in all sorts of areas: what is happening to low-income children on a larger scale, the homeless, the effects of child abuse and neglect, immigration issues, health in the cities, job creation," says Reisch.
"There is a whole constellation of social issues that could be the subject of research, analysis and action, and Penn could be out in front, leading the discussion."
Return to Compass Features for November 5, 1996