I read Charles Peters’s “A Neoliberal’s Manifesto” today and came away thinking the founder of the Washington Monthly really ought to meet Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. The manifesto was published in May 1983. Here is Peters on means-testing:
As a practical matter, the country can’t afford to spend money on people who don’t need it — my aunt who uses her Social Security check to go to Europe or your brother-in-law who uses his unemployment compensation to finance a trip to Florida. And as liberal idealists, we don’t think the well-off should be getting money from these programs anyway–every cent we can afford should go to helping those really in need.
This isn’t much different from the spirit of Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future. There is the myth, widely propagated by the media, that Ryan’s plan takes a shredder to the welfare state. Exhibit A is David Leonhardt, who wrote this week that the Roadmap would “end Medicare for anyone under 55 years old.” Not true. Whatever its faults, the Roadmap preserves the current system for those over 55, and restructures the program so that the under-55s who need Medicare will be able to enjoy benefits that otherwise won’t be there. What the Roadmap tries to do, simply put, is make the welfare state work for the poor. Neoliberalism attempted something similar.
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