Like a lot of other Americans, I couldn't believe it when George Bush blamed the Los Angeles riots on the failed liberal social programs of the 1960s. Which of these programs does he hold responsible? He can't be talking about the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which assured the right of people of all races, and particularly African-Americans, to register and vote. That is now a part of our political heritage. And he surely doesn't mean Aid to Families with Dependent Children or Model Cities because AFDC was started under Franklin Roosevelt and Model Cities, which never really got off the ground, has been dead for a number of years.
Several very important education programs were started during that period: Head, Start, Chapter 1 and the program of loans and grants that helps finance college education for a large number of students. But there's no sign that President Bush considers any of them failures -- or even if he does, that he thinks they encourage arson, looting and violence. President Bush has agreed to continue funding all of them, and he has talked about increasing funding for Head Start. Indeed, if there is anything wrong with Head Start, it's that it never has been sufficiently funded. Research shows us that, while a quality Head Start program does not necessarily make students into super achievers, kids who attend one do stay in school longer, have fewer arrests and are less likely to become teenage mothers. Who knows what difference twenty years of full funding for excellent Head Start programs in Los Angeles might have made last week? (And who knows what future difference the Family and Medical Leave Act, which would allow a father or mother to stay home with a child who needed attention, might have made? That is, if George Bush, who also blamed the riots on lack of family values, had not vetoed it.)
Is President Bush perhaps hinting that the Peace Corps or the Job Corps has destroyed the independence and the moral fiber of poor people? I doubt it. And Bush doesn't mean the Legal Services program, which Ronald Reagan tried to get rid of and he saved. Medicare and Medicaid? The President has talked about how he wants to cut costs, but he hasn't said that he wants to end these programs or claimed that they could lead to rioting.
When someone talks in general about liberal social programs of the 1960s, people may have an uneasy feeling that these programs were ineffective or wasteful. But when you look at a list -- which would include, for example, the Voting Rights Act, Chapter 1, college loans and grants, Medicare and Medicaid -- most of the programs on it are ones of which Americans are proud.
George Bush will have to look long and hard to find specific programs he can blame for what happened in LA He is simply politicizing a national tragedy. But while he looks around to identify a few programs to name and blame, he might consider whether it is the programs that have failed or the federal government that has failed by not supporting them.
Over the past 10 years, the federal government has shifted responsibility for doing all kinds of things to state and local governments while withdrawing the money needed to do them. Direct aid to the cities has dropped more than 60 percent since 1981. This means that federal aid, which made up 18 percent of city budgets in 1980, now makes up only 6.4 percent. And the states, which have lost federal revenue themselves, have not compensated the cities for these losses.
As a result, education is squeezed; social services of all kinds are squeezed; even criminal justice is squeezed. There are now fewer cops on the beat than there were at the beginning of the 1980s. Cities can't afford them, despite the fact that crime has increased and become more violent. So law-abiding citizens, who are in the overwhelming majority even in the poorest neighborhoods, have to make do with less protection. The Republicans talk a lot about law and order; if they really mean it, they should provide federal dollars for policemen.
There's no excuse for the arson, looting and rioting. The people who did these things were not thinking about Rodney King. They represented a very small percentage of Los Angeles' poor citizens. All the people in LA who had their TVs turned on could see with their own eyes that stores were wide open, policemen were nowhere to be seen and loot was there for the taking. The surprise is that such a small handful took advantage of this opportunity. And though Los Angeles' African-American citizens, like nearly all Americans, were appalled by the Rodney King verdict, very few of them participated - a fact that has been little noted. Indeed, the majority of the rioters were not black.
Does anybody really think that what we saw in Los Angeles can be pinned on the programs of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson or Martin Luther King, Jr.? And that the Republicans who have occupied the White House for all but one term since Lyndon Johnson stepped down have had nothing to do with the condition of our cities? What we saw was not a sign that we have spent too much money on people in cities. Given the fact that relatively few people participated in the riot, it might be a sign that the programs of the 1960s worked. It is certainly a warning about how expensive it will be to neglect urban America in the future.
In Philosophy I, I learned that it is very difficult to establish causal relations. But one of the hints the professor gave us was that the cause is likely to be close to the effect.
Mr. President, if you are looking for the cause of what went on in Los Angeles last week, the 80s are a lot closer that the 60s.