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Transcript of ProceedingsCompassionate Welfare Reform: Empowering Charities and Private Citizensa conference sponsored by
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MS. HUFFINGTON: The first panelist is Andrew Bush who is a research fellow at the Hudson Institute specializing in welfare policy. And who actually has been very involved with the Wisconsin Reinventing Welfare Program and he's going to talk about this and about how it all fits in with the charitable tax credit and you have a choice. You can speak either from the table or from here.
MR. BUSH: I will stand up, it'll make it easier.
MS. HUFFINGTON: Okay.
MR. BUSH: Thank you and thank you for having me here today. I am very pleased to talk to you about this.
I work for the Hudson Institute which is a think-tank based in Indianapolis and we had worked with, as Arianna mentioned, with the State of Wisconsin helping them in the process of their designing the Wisconsin Works Program. We have also started this year, I direct a project called the Welfare Policy Center at the Hudson Institute in which we are working throughout the country with different states. And in that process, I have had the great opportunity to work with and talk to a lot of private organizations around the country, in cities and communities, along with individuals who have been helped by them.
And what I have been asked to talk to you today is a little bit about what works and what is involved with the challenge involved that we've been talking today here about transferring sort of the responsibility from government to the private charitable sector in ways that can help the poor.
What's rather interesting about what's been going on here today, --and, over the past couple of months--with the changes in the federal legislation last year and along with the bill that Senator Coats and Representative Kasich are going to be talking to you about today, is really at the heart of it is a social reformation. A reformation in the way we, as a society, go about thinking how do we help our poorest individuals, the most disadvantaged and the most discouraged?
Two points that I want to leave you with today about that challenge in moving in this direction because I think there are two very important elements in that change, both the legislation that occurred last year--really moving the center of welfare policy to the states and really trying to open up that system to include non-traditional types of providers in the role of public assistance, including faith-based organizations--but also in the type of proposal that you're going to hear about today.
The two points and the major one of all of these is to recognize what we're trying to do here and what is being attempted here is not really to move simply the responsibilities, move welfare from the public sector to the private sector. What we're really talking about trying to do here is change what we're doing with public assistance. Quite frankly, change the entire nature of public assistance from one in which through a government we have attempted for many years now to really step into the lives of poor families and support those families, take over, assume those support responsibilities for families over time.
Really what the promise of really trying to transfer welfare and transfer how we, as a nation, help the poor is by really trying to take advantage of the really special qualities that we have out there in our communities through charitable organizations, nonprofit organizations, even private, sometimes for-profit organizations, who have found in their own special ways, ways they can reach individuals.
With the government system that we have had in the past and which we are trying to move away from, the orientation has been around the idea of support. It has also been, because of its nature, because it comes through government it has to be very uniform. We've attempted to keep it very uniform, treating everyone the same.
At the same time, it has had to be necessarily very specific. We have looked very closely at the issues of income and the issues of financial resources, very much to the exclusion of anything else that might be involved in how you go about and how a family goes about generating those types of resources for themselves.
The advantage of looking toward charitable organizations and local organizations that work day in and day out with individuals such as the stories you've heard here today, are the ability of the small organizations to really specialize, in the sense, at the individual level. In other words, to treat and individual on an individual basis, treating people differently by the types of problems they come to you with but, at the same time, treating them and dealing with their whole nature of problems, the whole nature of issues that they address. These organizations have the ability to nurture, really the ability to challenge individuals, to help them to challenge themselves and really to personalize and customize the way they help over time. There is a tremendous opportunity, through these types of organizations, to really help in much better ways.
The second and last point that I would leave you with is that as we go about this process, another thing to think about is that you will not see and you should not see a transformation of the sort of public authority to the local charitable level as one in which these very, so many times, very, very small organizations transform themselves into huge bureaucratic organizations. Indeed, the hope is that they do not do that. Because there is no use, there is no really need for us to have private organizations that carry out the sort of the same functions and the same bureaucracies that we have created in the past.
But, really, care is going to need to be taken to help preserve the distinct character each of these little organizations may have even as they may have to move to assume more responsibilities over time. Much of what you may be doing through this is sponsoring the growth really of new types of organizations. Of additional ones throughout the community who can be part of a broad universe of assistance for families and individuals.
Thank you very much.
[Applause.]
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