social insurance, then public assistance would eventually wither away,” Wilbur Mills explained to social welfare officials in Arkansas. “And this is turning out to be largely true for every cash public assistance program except the AFDC program.”99 Mills directed particular ire at the failure of the services strategy to produce program reductions and savings.100 Welfarist advocates countered that there had not been the time or opportunity for a true test.101 Politically, however, the services strategy had run out of time. Mills and other congressional leaders had had enough. When the Johnson administration provided an opening by proposing an expanded work support program as part of AFDC’s reauthorization in 1967, they seized the opportunity to press their own agenda for conservative reform.
The break with the administration on welfare policy had been brewing for some time, as tensions rose between Southern conservatives and Northern liberals over civil rights and the Great Society. The 1966 congressional midterm elections had strengthened the Southerners’ position, as the liberal wing lost its majority. Democrats retained control of Congress but gave up forty-seven seats in the House, and more than three-quarters of those losses were from outside the South. In the wake of race riots in Newark and Detroit in July 1967, Mills’s committee finally moved to “kill a major proposal to liberalize welfare,” reported the Wall Street Journal.102 Instead of approving Johnson’s plans for AFDC, the committee sent the House a package of reforms that would, for the first time, require states to enroll AFDC recipients in work programs, formally alter the program’s stated aims, and effectively end its entitlement status by freezing the number of recipients. The proposals, developed by Mills’s committee in executive session over months, caught the administration by surprise.103
Tougher work policies, Mills suggested, would solve the AFDC crisis. His proposals built on the earlier Kennedy and Johnson programs—but shifted their logic and intent. The Ways and Means Committee began by revising the preamble to Title IV of the Social Security Act (AFDC). States should now ensure “that each appropriate relative, child and individual will enter the labor force and accept employment.”104 The committee crafted a new section to be added to Title IV, creating a Work Incentive (WIN) program. States would be required to establish work-training programs for adults and children over sixteen receiving AFDC; they would also be required to set up day-care centers for AFDC parents with young children, making these parents eligible for work and training as well. All eligible recipients were to be referred to the programs by state and local welfare agencies, and the committee envisioned that the vast majority of adult recipients would be judged appropriate for work referrals. Refusal to work or receive training without “good cause,” the committee suggested, could lead to termination of AFDC assistance.105 Mills’s committee also included a measure to reward employment by creating positive incentives for welfare recipients, a strategy supported by liberals. Expanding on an administration proposal, Ways and Means proposed a work incentive permitting working parents to keep $30 plus one-third of their earnings before any deductions were made to their AFDC checks. This effectively reduced the “tax” on earnings from 100 percent to 67 percent and was more generous than the administration’s proposed earnings disregard.106
In a marked change from past practice, the committee otherwise rejected virtually every major provision of the Johnson administration’s 1967 proposal for public assistance reform. The final WIN provisions were crafted largely by lawmakers rather than federal administrators: WIN marked the entry of Congress as a central actor in charting welfare policy. The committee’s bill departed from existing federal policy in several ways. Perhaps the single most important shift was the explicit assertion that all AFDC parents, with limited exceptions, should be considered for work or training programs; participation for those referred would not be voluntary. Although requiring single mothers to earn wages remained controversial, the committee clearly stated its intention “that a proper evaluation be made of the situation of all mothers to ascertain the extent to which appropriate child care arrangements should be made available so the mothers can go to work.”107
In a second departure, the committee emphasized that the work provisions were to be mandatory, not optional, for the states. The workfare agenda for public assistance trumped the traditional Southern Democratic commitment to states’ rights for Mills: “For 5 years, this load has gone up and up and up, with no end in sight…. We want states to see to it that … unless there is a good cause for them not to be required to take it, that [recipients] take training and then work…. That is what we wanted to do in 1962. We left it to the option of the States, and they did not do it. Five years later, today, we are on the floor with a bill which requires that it be done.”108
A third significant departure was a direct challenge to the entitlement principle within AFDC. For the first time, Congress would set a limit on the number of AFDC families for which each state would receive matching funds.109 The “freeze” applied to cases in which the father was “absent” rather than deceased. In a reflection of conservative concerns about out-of-wedlock childbirth as well as work, the legislation also authorized the states to set up programs to reduce “illegitimate births.”110 The proposed limit on matching funds directly undercut the core New Deal welfarist commitment to provide public assistance to all who qualified, as a matter of right.
Mills’s proposed reforms were sent to the House floor in August 1967. Because the reforms were debated under a closed rule, and as part of a measure with a major increase in benefits for the popular Social Security program, House passage was assured despite liberal objections to key provisions. But the federal workfare proposals would not make their way to the president’s desk without a pitched battle among Democrats. The House bill drew immediate and strong opposition from several liberal quarters.111
Members of Congress were confronted by organized opposition to various aspects of the reform. Welfare rights groups labeled the proposed WIN amendments “the slave labor amendments.”112 Social workers accepted the principle of encouraging work through incentives and training, but rejected the compulsory and coercive elements embodied in the bill in favor of a voluntary, individualized approach. “Mothers must have the right of choice as to if and when it is appropriate and desirable for them to work outside the home, giving the care of their children to others,” insisted a representative of the Family Service Society of America.113 A broad array of civil rights, labor, and religious groups also organized against WIN, focusing on the provisions imposing mandatory employment and a freeze.
As the bill moved to the Senate, organizers worked with welfarist Senate leaders—notably Fred Harris (D-Okla.) and Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.)—to ensure that the Senate version was less punitive. But liberals in the Senate had to contend with Senator Russell Long. Long’s prominence on the Senate Finance Committee had risen in the wake of the 1963 death of Senator Robert Kerr (D-Okla.), a conservative who had nonetheless worked constructively with the White House on Social Security expansions. Long had assumed the position of committee chair in 1966. He was a Louisiana Democrat, a staunch opponent of civil and welfare rights and a leading proponent of workfare. During hearings on the bill, Long made his views known on the issue: “People who can work ought to work,” he announced. Poor mothers should not receive cash assistance for “filling up whole houses with children,” then refuse to work when jobs were available. He railed repeatedly against the twin evils of idleness and out-of-wedlock births, both of which were fueled, in his view, by the AFDC program.114 In September, Long confronted welfare rights activists during a Finance Committee session, and the exchange grew heated. When the women refused to leave until more senators arrived to hear their testimony, Long exploded, banging his gavel so hard that it broke. “If they can find time to march in the streets, picket and sit all day in committee hearing rooms, they can find time to do some useful work.”115
The Senate ultimately produced a bill that was less punitive than the House measure. After significant pressure from liberal Democrats, Long agreed to permit some work exemptions for recipients who were ill or had very young children. And in a series of close votes on the Senate floor that clearly demonstrated the divide between
