584 Chapter 16Chapter 16 || Social PolicySocial PolicyThe data on changes in the poverty rate during different presidential
administrations by party ignored one important point: Democratic presidents were
more likely than Republican presidents to have a Congress controlled by their party.
From 1961 to 2017, Democrats and Republicans each controlled the presidency
for 28 years. But Democrats had unified control of government for 16 years and
Republicans had control for only 5 years. This means that Democratic presidents
had more opportunity to implement their agendas, whereas Republican presidents
had to do more negotiating with the other party. You might argue that this divided
control only prevented Republican presidents from making even deeper cuts in social
programs, which could have driven the poverty rate even higher, because Democrats
in Congress would not have been supporting those cuts. Although this is a possibility,
especially during the Reagan years, divided control may also have prevented
Republican presidents from implementing their alternative visions of the best way to
address poverty.
This discussion underlies the more basic point that Congress and the president
both play central roles in shaping social policy. In some instances, the president
may take the lead, as with FDR and the New Deal or Lyndon Johnson and the Great
Society. In other instances, Congress plays a central role, as with health care reform
in 2009–2010. In all cases, the president and Congress must find some common
ground. This may be especially difficult under divided government, but even when
the president and Congress are of the same party, Congress may be obstructionist: in
2005 a Republican-controlled Congress ignored President Bush’s effort to partially
privatize Social Security, in 2009–2010 a Democrat-controlled Congress did not follow
through on President Obama’s comprehensive immigration reform or take action on
the administration’s initiatives concerning global warming, and in 2017 a Republican-
controlled Congress failed to deliver on one of President Trump’s key campaign
promises to “repeal and replace” Obamacare.The bureaucracy
You might assume that the bureaucracy itself makes little difference in social policy
because it simply implements the policies determined by Congress and the president.
For some policies, that is fairly close to what happens. For example, in the case of
Social Security and other programs that have levels of benefits determined by law,
implementing policy largely involves determining that the proper amount of money
is going to the right people and making sure that these people receive the money.
However, as we discussed in Chapter 13, the “on-the-ground” public employees
responsible for executing many other social policies have a great deal of discretion.
Welfare offices in general tend not to be very welcoming places. People often have to
wait for hours, and welfare office workers are sometimes rude and ask their clients
personal questions that are not required by law. Some potential welfare recipients are
so alienated by the process that they give up. This is not true of all welfare offices, but
there are general differences in how recipients are treated in different types of social
welfare programs. One study found that welfare agencies that handed out AFDC
benefits had a more “hostile and punitive” attitude toward their clients than those who
administered the disability program under Social Security.^27 Sometimes problems of
bureaucratic implementation may be at the top, as when problems concerning Veterans
Affairs (VA) hospitals came to light in 2014. Thousands of veterans had long waits for
services that were covered up by VA hospital administrators. Veterans Affairs Secretary
Eric Shinseki was forced to resign for his failure to address the problem.^28Full_17_APT_64431_ch16_572-613.indd 584 16/11/18 11:28 AM