Talking Points are also available in Adobe PDF format.

Introduction

In his Sept. 2 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in New York, President George W. Bush resurrected a key theme from his 2000 presidential campaign -- compassionate conservatism. "I'm running with a compassionate conservative philosophy: that government should help people improve their lives, not try to run their lives," he declared. He has since been repeating that claim on the campaign hustings. But given the paucity of his administration's actual accomplishments over the last four years, it is fair to conclude that compassionate conservatism is intended to solve his party's political problems rather than the nation's social problems.

When Bush took office, the concept was hailed by Republicans as nothing less than a conservative alternative to the welfare state. More than just a campaign catchphrase, they insisted, compassionate conservatism embodied a substantive ideology of social remedy. Among other things, it promised a new approach to fighting poverty and other social ills, one that would empower private charities and community groups, including faith-based institutions, and bring them into partnership with government. In his 2001 inaugural speech, Bush spoke movingly of a new social order that he envisioned building on compassion's foundation. "Where there is suffering, there is duty," the president proclaimed. He implored Americans to act as "citizens, not spectators."

In the years since, compassionate conservatism has continued to be the rhetorical touchstone of the Bush administration's social policy. On the White House website, for example, the words "compassion" and "compassionate" merit more than 1,000 references. Yet, despite all of the promising rhetoric, the administration's actual compassion agenda has proven to be exceedingly modest. Its accomplishments are more modest still. With apologies to Gertrude Stein, when it comes to the Bush record on compassionate conservatism, there is no there there.

Rather than a paradigmatic shift in domestic social policy, what has emerged is a grab bag of small-scale, underfunded efforts that do little more than tinker at the margins of existing social policy. And of the larger priorities first outlined by the president as major components of his compassion agenda, few have come to fruition. For example:

• The faith-based initiative. To rally the "armies of compassion," President Bush in 2001 called for legislation to forge a closer partnership between government and religious organizations in tackling America's social ills. Though touted by the president as the centerpiece of his compassion agenda, the initiative has languished in the GOP-controlled Congress. Rather than intervene personally to break the deadlock, the president seems to have given up on legislation and is acting unilaterally, via executive orders, to expand "charitable choice" rules that prohibit government agencies from discriminating against religious groups in contracting for social services.
• Charitable tax cuts. During the 2000 campaign, the president promised more than $80 billion in new tax cuts over the next decade to stimulate more gifts to charity. Specifically, he proposed that taxpayers of modest means be allowed to deduct charitable donations even if they do not itemize their tax forms. But this proposal took a backseat to his personal income tax cuts and it, too, has stalled in Congress. The only piece of this proposal that has been enacted so far is an expanded tax credit to promote adoptions, which was part of the 2001 tax cut. The administration has since scaled back its charitable tax proposal to one-fourth of its original size, and Congress will likely only approve an even smaller set of incentives.
• Compassion Capital Fund. Bush also pledged to create a $200 million "Compassion Capital Fund" to act as an investor in and a clearinghouse for charitable best practices. Yet the initiative has been chronically under-funded, receiving only $30 million for fiscal 2002, $35 million for 2003, and $48 million for 2004. The president's budget only proposes $100 million for fiscal 2005, an amount that Congress is unlikely to provide.
• Drug abuse. Fighting substance abuse was a highlight of the president's 2003 State of the Union address and has been one of the administration's stated top social policy priorities. But actual funding for the government's largest substance abuse programs has increased by just over $300 million since fiscal 2001. The president's signature treatment initiative, a $600 million voucher program dubbed "Access to Recovery," has netted barely $100 million since its initial unveiling.
• National service. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the president made several much-publicized pledges to dramatically expand the opportunities for Americans to serve their country. In his 2002 State of the Union address, he exhorted all Americans to serve 4,000 hours during their lifetimes and pledged to create the USA Freedom Corps to help Americans reach this goal. At the heart of this new initiative was a promise to expand the full-time national service program AmeriCorps by 50 percent to 75,000 members, and create a new large-scale homeland security service initiative called Citizen Corps. But after much lip service, these initiatives were ultimately starved of funding. For example, far from expanding AmeriCorps by 50 percent, the president signed an appropriations bill in fiscal 2003 that capped its membership at 50,000 and cut its budget by 30 percent, resulting in a sharp decline in the number of members. It was not until January 2004 that these drastic reductions were finally reversed by Congress. Another high-profile service initiative, to recruit mentors for the children of prisoners, has so far resulted in a total investment of $40 for each of the 1.5 million American children with a parent in prison.
• Welfare reform. Although the president promised to build a "compassionate welfare system, " the White House has seemed more interested in scoring ideological points than changing policy. For example, the administration has called for tougher work requirements for welfare recipients, but has refused to spend more on childcare so that poor mothers can actually go to work. Bush has, however, proposed more money to support marriage promotion programs beloved by conservatives. In the absence of presidential leadership, Congress has repeatedly failed to reauthorize the landmark 1996 welfare reform bill, even as poverty rates are rising. Also going nowhere are administration proposals for converting Medicaid, the Section 8 housing program, and the federal child welfare entitlement into block grants, an ostensible "reform" that merely caps their funding without making them work better. In effect, President Bush has reversed the successful Clinton administration formula of tying increases in social spending directly to better outcomes, such as moving people off welfare into jobs. Beneath its inspiring rhetoric of compassion, the Bush approach combines stingy funding with no effective demands for greater accountability.

Blueprint Keywords: Extra Compassion

Anne Kim is a fellow with the Progressive Policy Institute and the former director of PPI's Work, Family, and Community Project. Will Marshall is president of the Progressive Policy Institute.