What does HR4 really do?
For thirty years we pretended that divorce is as good as marriage. We now know that divorce and illegitimacy are the primary predictors of poverty for women and children, domestic violence, and the majority of our pressing social and criminal problems.
For thirty years we gave out more welfare, ordered more child support, and ended up with a civilizational record for father absence. Yet we are still pursue "welfare state" policy, only this time in the name of "personal responsibility."
Block granting does change the way we initially fund the welfare state, but it does not downsize it. The structural change of HR4 acts to privatize the welfare state by making sure that every women gets a child support order as quickly as possible, while creating a bigger, meaner enforcement system to make sure that some man pays for everything right now.
The net policy change in terms of social and economic impact on marital decisions is anti- family. HR 4 guarantees substantial permanent income for the possession of a baby, absent marriage, no different than any social policy created since 1963.
Divorce is the only civil suit that requires no cause of action to file or win. The welfare state is an open invitation to not marry. Under HR4, either situation places a bounty of approximately $200,000 on the head of every average male. The reward is collected by trading him in for a guaranteed income and many benefits, backed by every legal seizure tool government can invent.
Women file over 80% of divorces in this country, and receive sole custody of children in over 90% of cases. The poverty rate for unmarried women with children is six times higher than for intact families. The social cost of so many fathers denied family status represents approximately 75% to 80% of our problems with domestic violence and crime. The social cost to children is appalling, representing at least 75% of todays drug abuse, gang involvement, crime, and various educational problems. This is what the welfare state system does to women, to children, to men, and ultimately to all of us in the form of fear and high taxes.
So why do most Republicans consider reinforcements of "Great Society" social policy to be conservative? It is because the Republican economic conservative majority forgot to apply their valuable knowledge of free market economics to social policy. Secondly, they could not find common ground on which to understand the wisdom of the few knowledgeable social conservatives in the party.
Marriage is the free-market exchange of needs, or "gender strategies," between men and women. Despite thousands of years of civilizational change, women's needs are still predominantly economic, and men's needs are still predominantly social. Despite all our technological marvels, babies still do best when raised to adulthood within the intact two-parent family.
Margaret Mead reminded us that, "Motherhood is a biological fact, fatherhood a social creation." Charles Murray's baseline illumination glows, "Men like to sleep with women, and women think that babies are endearing." No matter how expressed, these basic gender strategies are either the seeds of marriage or fuel for disaster depending on our policy approach.
The highest form of this free-market trade is marriage - it is civilized, cooperatively self- negotiating and self-regulating. Love serves a higher, more lasting purpose in a society which requires high parental co-investment to successfully raise children. Lower forms of trade include prostitution and mistressing, as they are self-indulgent, black market exchanges of "raw materials."
The most troublesome form of "gender needs" trade is within the welfare state. We well know what happens when predatory males are pitted against an organized system of predatory poverty , with government stirring the pot at both ends.
These basic principles, including the penalties for excessive marriage market interference, hold true in every past or modern society one chooses to study.
Our $360 billion annual expenditure on welfare directly distorts the marriage market. We spend another $275 billion on the fear-laden child abuse industry, about 70% of which does nothing except to generate marital disruption within falsely accused families. Another $16.5 billion in child support disincentives further weaken the marriage market.
When we add in in child tax credits, and the incalculable billions in special entitlements and philanthropic awards to gender- revisionist enterprises which interfere in the marriage market, we arrive at an annual sum easily exceeding $635 billion dollars. This is greater than our annual expense on national defense, and has yeilded a marital business failure rate of nearly 60% nationally.
The reason why women file over 80% of divorces today is because they can. The reason why poor women are indifferent about having babies is because it doesn't matter. The reason why men don't like it is because they don't have a choice.
If we truly believe that continued divorce, illegitimacy and child support responses could somehow work then we would also have to believe that we can reduce cigarette smoking by paying a $2 bounty for every empty pack. Likewise, we could decrease fatal drunk driving accidents by giving out free triple martinis at every highway entrance. Worker productivity could be enhanced by requiring businesses to pay an average worker a $200,000 bonus, paid out over 18 years, to quit work now.
We keep tiptoeing around the real problem in peculiar ways. For example, child- tax credits are just a back-door way to enable unwed motherhood via IRS welfare transfers. The Clinton National Health Care plan was deeply anti-family and anti business. It nearly transmogrified the health care industry into a "trojan horse" spending about 65% of its resources to keep the family divided.
If Republicans do not achieve social reform, they will defeat the possibility of a politically-feasible balanced budget. We cannot achieve a balanced budget given the breathtaking venue of expensive social problems primarily predicted by the family divided.
Voters distrust Democrats, because their ideas brought the plague of the welfare state and high taxes upon us. But the Republican approach is also alienating voters, because their shortsighted response forces mothers into the workplace, automatically turns men into deadbeat dads, and sends kids to be raised in a state- run day care facility.
An honest perspective is necessary to regain voter trust and achieve the goals of Contract for America. We must deal directly with anti-family social policy. This mature perspective basically requires us to do things that help only children or temporarily relieve parents in a "marriage neutral" manner.
First, we should devote some welfare funds as a fully charitable helping hand. This reflects our social responsibility to temporarily assist those in need, those few whose husbands will invariably abandon the family, or those few who need to separate from a bad marital partner.
Second, we should redirect some welfare funds towards national unemployment insurance block grants to states. This would help families make job transitions so commonplace in the global marketplace and reduce marital stress caused by job change. It would be mythopoetical "safety net" that no amount of welfare reform could possibly achieve, and be fully "marriage neutral."
Third, we should convert much of the child-abuse industry into high-quality parent- friendly orphanages, to help children whose parents are unfit, and to serve as a place where parents in severe financial difficulties can leave their children if necessary. We have convincing evidence that well-managed orphanages work far better than children raising children under gunfire on the streets.
Fourth, we should limit child support to short periods of time and reduce the amounts significantly, except in cases of paternal abandonment or clear-cut paternal marital irresponsibility. This will be very hard to consider, for most of us are inured to the idea that child support is the answer. This is an unavoidable part and parcel of ending our addiction to welfarism.
Fifth, we must trust in our churches and synagogues to help those in need. Churches do a far better job at this than government, in ways supportive of the family. We must trust them to restore family values, for family values come from the spiritual world, not the dole.
These ideas will be met with howls from certain entitled organizations. Yet we have 30 years of miserable social data proving that their ideas have hurt more women, children, and men than WWII, the Korean War, and Vietnam combined. The comparatively small numbers of screeching lobbyists will not override the very strong will of the average American voter, who adamantly wants lower taxes, a truly balanced budget, government downsizing at both state and federal levels, government out of the family, and a palpable promise of a safer society.
Republicans would be wise to drop welfare reform until after the presidential elections. No reform is better than a bad one. Conservatives can trust the voters, reaching over the heads of entitled lobbyists, to lead the mass block of Americans and corporations who will swarm the candidate who speaks the issues from the heart of character, who has the details, who can promise them positive results, and who can prove to them exactly why it will work for the benefit of everyone.
It is time for a truly conservative "Contract For the Family." Heal the rift in the Republican party. Bring the social and economic conservatives together on a productive high ground.. This is what we need and it is what most of us want. All we have to do to get it is to take a small willing leap of faith, restoring our belief in a free marriage market and the personal responsibity of the American family.
Reprinted with permission from the Heartland Foundation.
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