Medicaid eligibility: Matthew Broaddus and others, “Expanding Family Coverage: States’ Medicaid Eligibility Policies for Working Families in the Year 2000,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Feb. 13, 2002.
child-care subsidies: Jennifer Mezey, Mark Greenberg, and Rachel Schumacher, “The Vast Majority of Federally Eligible Children Did Not Receive Child Care Assistance in FY 2000,” CLASP, Oct. 2, 2002.
327 tax credits: Nicholas Johnson, “A Hand Up: How State Earned Income Tax Credits Help Working Families Escape Poverty in 2001,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Dec. 2001.
328 At $5.15 an hour: The 1950 minimum wage of seventy-five cents is worth $5.85 in 2004 dollars, 70 cents more than today’s minimum.program of workers’ aid: Isabel Sawhill and Adam Thomas, “A Hand Up for the Bottom Third: Toward a New Agenda for Low-Income Working Families,” Brookings Institution, May 2001.
Oregon program: A study called the National Evaluation of Welfare to Work Strategies (NEWWS) examined 11 sites nationwide. Programs that stressed basic education achieved a five-year earnings gain of 7 percent. Job-search programs gained 12 percent. But with a “mixed-services” strategy of job search and training, Portland, Oregon, topped the list with a gain of nearly 25 percent. Nan Poppe, Julie Strawn, and Karin Martinson, “Whose Job Is It?” in Bob Giloth, ed., Workforce Intermediaries for the 21st Century (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), 39.
physically get away: For Gautreaux, see James E. Rosenbaum, “Changing the Geography of Opportunity by Expanding Residential Choice: Lessons from the Gautreaux Program,” Housing Policy Debate, vol. 6, 1995, 231-69. For Moving to Opportunity, see Jeffrey R. Kling and Jeffrey B. Liebman, “Experimental Analysis of Neighborhood Effects on Youth,” unpublished paper, May 2004.
329 “marriage initiative”: When I talked to Clinton, he said: “If they shuffle a bunch of money to their political supporters and don’t do anything but pontificate at people, well, I don’t think it will have much impact. On the other hand, I think the central insight that children will be better off with two parents than one is true. . . . I didn’t have any problem with him wanting to spend some money to help people build strong marriages and take care of kids.” He suggested that Democrats support the initiative on the condition that some of the money be used to expand welfare eligibility and training for two-parent families, to keep more fathers in the home.
330 Opal acknowledged crack use: CHIPS petition, March 13, 2000.
331 $200,000 a year: Meg Kissinger, MJS, July 15, 2003.half failed the performance goals: To succeed, agencies had to place 35 percent of their recipients in jobs. Maximus recorded a job-placement rate of 35.54 percent; YW Works had 35.25 percent; OIC had 28.55 percent; and UMOS had 24.38 percent. (Felicia Thomas-Lynn, MJS, July 31, 2003.)
332 people in W-2 fared no better: Irving Piliavin, Amy Dworksy, and Mark E. Courtney, “What Happens to Families Under W-2 in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin? Report from Wave 2 of the Milwaukee TANF Applicant Study,” Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago and Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Sept. 2003, 43-58.
332 Bleeding red ink: The financial problems arose at YW Works, which had struck me as the most competent and creative of the five agencies. Its clients included Michelle Crawford, the woman whom Tommy Thompson had invited before the legislature, and the Y’s handling of her case was one of the most skillful I’ve seen. Her caseworkers arranged for months of psychological counseling to address her depression, then put her through an on-the-job training program at a plastics factory the Y bought for that purpose. “They were like a family to me,” Crawford said. But the factory failed in the recession, and the Y’s longtime director, Julia Taylor, moved on, trailing board criticisms of her financial stewardship; in another venture, she used much of the agency’s W-2 profits to create an unsuccessful software company in which, as a member of its two-person board of directors, she gave herself stock options. (See Bruce Murphy, MJS, May 30, 2004.) The penalty was assessed against the United Migrant Opportunity Society, after an audit found it had mishandled 86 of 110 cases. It was imposed in 2003 by a new Democratic governor, James Doyle. The original W-2 law allowed the state to penalize the agencies $5,000 for any instance of a “failure to serve” a client. But under Thompson and his Republican successor, Scott McCallum, no penalties were ever assessed.“no evidence of favoritism”: While a state appeals court rejected Comptroller Alan Hevesi’s charges of “corruption,” elements of the Maximus deal were cozy in a way that invited public distrust. Turner recruited a friend from Milwaukee, Tony Kearney, to work as a consultant on an ostensibly separate project, a “faith-based” initiative that tried to reach troubled recipients through the churches. But Kearney was also a consultant for Maximus, and his city work had him meeting with some of the same groups against whom Maximus would bid; some of them worried he was using his access to gather information about their proposals. Another element involved the role of Richard Schwartz, a former top aide to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. In leaving City Hall, he founded a for-profit company, Opportunity America, to provide welfare-to-work services. The Maximus proposal pledged to give Schwartz a $30 million subcontract, which critics called a further way of seeking favor with the Giuliani administration. Turner had previously done some consulting work for Schwartz. In addition, The Village Voice later reported that, while seeking Turner’s business, Leutermann also agreed to a request from Turner’s wife, Angie, to contribute up to $60,000 to an abstinence program she had designed for the Milwaukee public schools. (She sought support from all five W-2 agencies, Turner told me, and Maximus and OIC agreed.)
When I asked Turner about the contracting dispute, he dismissed the criticisms as unfair attacks by interests wedded to the city’s status quo. While he designed the bid process, he said, he didn’t choose the seventeen vendors and therefore couldn’t have favored Maximus or Schwartz even had he wanted to. He did say he hoped the process would bring in some for-profit companies, since he thought they would be more efficient. (At the time Maximus won the New York contract, its problems in Milwaukee were largely unknown.) Turner also stressed that multiple agencies—including the Manhattan district attorney and federal prosecutors—had investigated his conduct without finding any wrongdoing. The city conflict-of-interest board also found no breach of rules in the hiring of Turner’s father-in-law. But it fined him $6,500 for two unrelated ethics violations: renting an apartment from a subordinate and having his city assistant help him for a few hours with a private consulting job. Leaving the welfare business, Schwartz sold his company to Maximus for $780,000 and became the editorial page editor of the New York Daily News.
334 more than $20,000 a year: For those betting that incomes of former welfare families will improve with time, Jewell’s case is encouraging. She did much better in her second four years off the rolls than she did in her first three. She worked more regularly, at a rising wage, so her earnings in the second period rose 30 percent. She also straightened out her problems with the food stamp office (and, after having another child, spent six months getting W-2). Compared with her first years off the rolls, her total income grew nearly 40 percent, and she got out of poverty. The updated box score (in 2003 dollars) looks like this:
While the trend line is positive, on her own, Jewell is still in that near-poverty zone, in which material hardships abound. Or she would be if she were all alone. Counting Ken’s income brings them to something like 185 percent of the poverty line, the level at which families usually start to feel better off. It’s another bit of evidence pointing to the importance of men.
lower-middle-class life: The average married couple with kids has an annual income of about $65,000. With approximately $40,000 combined, Jewell and Ken would rank at about the 25th percentile. (Author communication with Ed Welniak, Census Bureau.)
336 “the money’s just not right”: Here’s Angie’s updated box score (in 2003 dollars):
Angie’s summary—�
�just treading water”—is apt. Her earnings declined 7 percent, but her public subsidies grew, especially the kinship care payments for taking in Brierra. (In the old days, these were part of AFDC, so technically the household would have been back on the welfare rolls.) The payment raised her total income, but with Brierra her family size grew, so in relationship to the poverty line, Angie’s circumstance hardly changed. She went from 103 percent of poverty (on welfare) to 115 percent (newly off) to 116 percent (in the next four years). On most days, it wasn’t enough for her to notice the change.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In doing this work, I’ve accumulated more debts than I can fully acknowledge, but it’s gratifying to begin. This book wouldn’t exist without The New York Times, which for more than a decade has let me go where I want and write what I wish about welfare and poverty. In an age of tight newsroom budgets, the Times’s commitment to a poverty beat is, in the literal sense, extraordinary. Joe Lelyveld, the executive editor through most of my tenure, made me feel empowered from the start, while Jack Rosenthal of the Times Magazine and Dean Baquet of the national desk—great editors and friends—offered extravagant support. Joe and Bill Keller let me spend a year in Milwaukee writing about welfare and also agreed to the leave with which I started the book. Howell Raines generously extended it, and Bill Keller, now the executive editor, patiently extended it again. Jon Landman has been a source of friendship and counsel since the day I walked in the door, and Gerry Marzorati helped make a magazine writer out of me. Other current or former employees of the Times to whom I’m indebted include Soma Golden Behr, Nicole Bengiveno, Doug Frantz, George Judson, Adam Moss, Matt Purdy, Andy Rosenthal, Bill Schmidt, and Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
Just as crucially, this book wouldn’t exist without Angela Jobe, Jewell Reed, and Opal Caples, who along with their families have taught me a great deal about welfare and poverty and also about resilience. Kesha, Redd, and Von Jobe were always welcoming, and I’m grateful for the goodwill of Marcus Robertson, Kenny Gross, and especially Kenyatta Thigpen, a frank and articulate narrator of his past. In pointing me toward the Eastland plantation, Hattie Mae Crenshaw, Jewell’s mother, gave this work a vital context. Listening to her tell her life story has been one of the great pleasures of my reporting career. Jewell’s sister and niece, Mary Reed-Flowers and Monica Reed, greeted me warmly in Chicago and in subsequent interviews. Virginia Caples arranged two visits to the Eastland plantation and introduced me to her uncle, Mack Caples, Pie Eddie’s son and a living link to the family’s past. In the summer of 2000, Angie, the kids, and I made the drive from Milwaukee to Egypt, Mississippi, for her family’s annual reunion, where Charity and Rodger Scott, Angie’s mother and stepfather, greeted me as though I were real family. They’ve shown nothing but patience with my project ever since, even when it resurrected painful events in their past. Another person to whom I owe special thanks is Michael Steinborn, whose empathy and perseverance brightened an otherwise disheartening picture of the welfare bureaucracy. The relationship between a reporter and his subjects involves an odd mix of closeness and distance—closeness while gathering the material, distance while processing it. Virtually everyone listed above went through this cycle multiple times as I realized how much I still needed to understand and returned with more questions. They bore up with grace, for no reward other than my interest and gratitude. My interpretation of their lives is mine alone, offered in the reporter’s vague faith that an important story, properly told, can help bring about “Better Days.”
Writers need time. In getting it, I had the financial support of three generous institutions, which requested nothing in return and waited for years for the results. My gratitude goes to Mark Steinmeyer of the Smith Richardson Foundation and Drew Altman of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, which awarded me grants, and to Alex Jones of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where I enjoyed a four-month fellowship in the fall of 2000. Gregg Easterbrook, Lyn Hogan, and Isabel Sawhill encouraged me to apply for the Smith Richardson grant. Judy Feder, dean of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, put herself out to oversee the grants, as did her administrator, Sandy Fournier. As the hardcover edition was published in 2004, I benefited from another bit of unexpected good fortune—a travel grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which allowed me to expand the book’s reach through a series of talks across the country. For Casey’s generous support, I am grateful to Doug Nelson, Ralph Smith, Patrick McCarthy, Mike Laracy, and Jane Dinse.
Writers also need readers, especially blunt ones. Nicholas Lemann was a crucial early supporter of this project, as he has been for much of my work; he was also at times a frank critic, who forced me to clarify my thoughts. Jack Rosenthal offered a similar mix of encouragement and critique as I mustered a first draft. Toby Herr and Mark Greenberg win Purple Hearts for reading multiple versions; Toby sometimes saw the story more clearly from a distance than I could up close, and Mark’s inexhaustible patience was matched only by his command of the policy details. My father, James DeParle, in reading several drafts, was with me in the trenches, as he has been through every stretch of my life. (My mother, Joan DeParle, contributed to my writing in another way, working long hours to help pay for my education.) Others who helpfully read portions or full drafts include Nancy-Ann DeParle, Elizabeth Fenn, Lory Hough, Gerry Marzorati, Chris Myers, Mary Pattillo, Charles Peters, Nicholas Thompson, and Sam Verhovek. Finally, I’d like to thank Ann Hulbert, who signed on about two thirds of the way through as the book’s de facto daily editor and has been improving it ever since. Her enthusiasm brought the effort new inspiration and her exquisite judgment, in matters big and small, gave it a safety net. Every author should be so lucky.
President Bill Clinton took time away from finishing his book to talk with me about mine; for making room on his crowded calendar, I’m grateful to him, Jim Kennedy, and Maggie Williams. Mickey Kaus first suggested I go to Milwaukee and has shared his time and insights over a number of years. Taylor Branch offered unexpected help at an important time. Debbie Bigler of the Milwaukee County Department of Human Services assembled the trio’s welfare records and fielded years of follow-up questions with a conscientious good cheer that went well beyond the call of duty. Alex Nguyen, Marc Santora, and Seth Stern offered research assistance. I relied especially heavily on the research of Lory Hough, a tireless sleuth whose contributions touch every chapter. Her skill and enthusiasm allowed me to indulge my curiosity without sacrificing my time and therefore made this a much better book than it otherwise could have been. Charles Peters, my longtime mentor and friend, has contributed to my journalism in ways too numerous to list. His concern for social justice is as deep and informed as any I know, and in urging me to scrub my biases he offered a reporting principle that was particularly useful in tracking a story with so many surprises.
My forays into Mississippi’s past were greatly aided by Chris Myers, a PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who is writing a dissertation about James Eastland; he not only shared early drafts of his thesis but conducted a series of tutorials on southern history. Elizabeth Fenn and Peter Wood of Duke University were two other generous history coaches. In my efforts as an amateur genealogist, I got invaluable assistance from a professional one, Jan Hillegas, who helped uncover pieces of the past in places that wouldn’t have occurred to me. Historians Chris Waldrep and Todd Moye shared copies of the contemporaneous news coverage of the Luther Holbert affair. In my research on Chicago, I got help from Chuck Nelson and Marie Pees of the Census Bureau, who supplied the tract-level information on Jeffrey Manor. Conversations with Mary Pattillo helped me make sense of it.
Among those who helped me understand Wisconsin welfare politics, current and past, were John Gurda, Tom Kaplan, John Nichols, Peter Tropman, and Gerald Whitburn. David Riemer offered his time, shared his files, and wrote me a long memo about the events that led the Wisconsin legislature to abolish A
FDC. Jason Turner welcomed me as a chronicler of his work, offered many useful introductions in Milwaukee, and spent a great deal of time responding to my questions. Coming to grips with Opal’s story required me to learn about the effects of cocaine. I got helpful lessons from Ric Curtis, Francine Feinberg, Jerome Jaffe, Michael Massing, Thomas McLellan, Anne Paczesny, and Pat Tucker. Likewise, to understand the work lives of Angie and Jewell, I needed to know more about nursing homes, and got help from Judy Feder, Robert Friedland, Paul Kleyman, Robyn Stone, and Josh Wiener. I couldn’t have told the full Maximus story without the interviews and documents provided by several company employees on the condition of anonymity.
A number of Washington figures involved in the welfare bill agreed to long sets of after-the-fact interviews, which, while quoted sparingly, greatly enhanced my ability to tell the story. My thanks to David Ellwood, Mark Greenberg, Stan Greenberg, Ron Haskins, Paul Offner, Wendell Primus, Robert Rector, Bruce Reed, Donna Shalala, and Melissa Skolfield. Among the social scientists on whose patience I regularly imposed were Greg Acs, Maria Cancian, Sheldon Danziger, Greg Duncan, Donna Pavetti, and especially Christopher Jencks, who guided me on several fronts. My talks with Jared Bernstein were particularly helpful as I thought through the economics of postwelfare life. Yulia Fungard helped me crunch the income numbers for Angie and Jewell. Several friends offered their encouragement and also their understanding when the work caused me to disappear; I drew on the support of Henry Brinton, Patti Cohen, E. J. Flynn, Tim Golden, Jon Rosenblum, and the Katy Varney-Dave Goetz clan. Liza Gorman and especially Allison Curran also did much to keep things on track.
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