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4 Public Discourse in Congress: Haunted by Ghosts of “Welfare Queens” Past
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Public Discourse in Congress Haunted by Ghosts of “Welfare Queens” Past We don’t define compassion by how many people are on welfare, or AFDC, or living in public housing. We define compassion by how FEW people are on welfare, AFDC, and public housing because we have given them the means to climb the ladder of success. (Representative J. C. Watts [R-OK], speech delivered at Republican National Convention, 1996) The words of J. C. Watts, an African American congressman from Oklahoma, filled the halls of the Republican National Convention less than two weeks after passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 (PRWA). This chapter looks at how political elites defined and debated welfare reform in 1996. Analyses of national debates like that on welfare reform are critical because a long tradition of empirical research asserts the importance of elites to public discourse and ultimately to public policy decisions. Defining the terms of debate, as Watts attempted to do in the above statement, is a common practice in elite discourse (VanDijk 1993) and an important method of shaping political outcomes. In this chapter, I reprise the questions tested in chapter 3, using another independent, randomly obtained data set to determine whether the socially constructed elite definitions of “the people on welfare, AFDC, and [in] public housing” were associated with the policy options discussed. Chapters 2 and 3 present historical and empirical evidence to demonstrate that public identity is indeed a contributor to the national welfare reform debate, but in the final analysis, the media could not cast a single vote for or against HR 3734/S 1795. To best decipher the “welfare 4 88 queen’s” reach in public policy decision making, we must journey down the halls of Congress. In analyzing a second data set, I intend to comprehensively explore my theory (King et al. 1994) that the public identity of the “welfare queen” empirically embodies the role of a socially constructed target population in the discussion of welfare reform in 1996. As with the media data set, the data were obtained from publicly available archives of information in order to enhance explanatory power (Johnson and Joslyn 1991, 124) and to address further the issue of generalizability among qualitative and quantitative results (see Yin 1994, 122). Interested readers are reminded that Appendix C provides additional detail regarding research design and methodology. I analyze 82 randomly selected documents from the floor debate concerning HR 3734/S 1795, the PRWA of 1996.1 Despite the fact that a great deal of work and deal making occurs prior to the full-body deliberations , the floor debates are most often broadcast and cited for public consumption. Although many argue that roll call votes (e.g., Schroedel and Jordan 1998) or personal interviews (e.g., Dodson et al. 1995) may provide better insight into elites’ “true beliefs” about the target population at issue, public identity is first and foremost a social cognition, “the product of thinking about things, forming object-specific impressions and communicating about them with other people.” Political psychologists who study psychological characteristics “at a distance” argue that the best way to assess the social cognitions of the state and the elites populating it is through formal, prepared speeches (Schafer 2000, 515). I follow in their path, for a member’s remarks furnish not only his or her stance (pro or anti) on proposed legislation but the arguments and ideological justifications for their positions. It is in these justifications that the unacknowledged social meaning of public identity lurks. The context in which the floor debates occur further shapes the data analyzed herein. The number of documents is significantly smaller than that of the media data set, with many characteristics that potentially have an impact on the results, further highlighting the need for multiple data sources and triangulation methods. Generally, the Congressional Record data set differs with regard to communicative norms. First, members of Congress at the podium are not expected to be neutral, as the authors of the news reports in the media sample are. Hence, legislators bring their opinions to the podium, backed by whatever political, statistical, or constituent support they can muster. Public Discourse in Congress | 89 [3.90.205.166] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:22 GMT) Second, members of Congress were operating in the political context of an election year, which increases the salience of David Mayhew’s celebrated finding: members’ top goal throughout...