Right-thinking conservative think tanks

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 22, 1995 by Thomas E. Blackburn

The 104th Congress is about to make absolute its right to ignore the destitute at the expense of the First Amendment right to petition government.

Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson's vendetta with the American Association of Retired Persons is now famous. The AARP got $73 million from Washington for its educational programs last year while using membership dues and other income to lobby Congress for more -- or no less -- money. Simpson, a Republican, wonders whether the lobbying isn't designed to generate the extra income, rather than the other way around.

That's a question of worthy debate. The House cut the debate and attached a rider to the health and human services appropriations bill. The rider bars federal grants to groups that spend more than 5 percent of their own funds lobbying. It doesn't matter whether the funds come from contributions or selling cheese. (It's already against the law to use federal money for lobbying.)

The House takes an expansive view of lobbying. The 5 percent limit applies to participation in lawsuits involving government agencies and to efforts to influence public opinion. If, say, Catholic Charities wants to tell donors bow a congressional action may affect its work, wham! That counts in the 5 percent. For taking government money, your right to free speech stops at 5 percent of your other income.

Keep in mind that money raised by nonprofit charities typically covers salaries and overhead and that most of what they pass on to clients -- food and housing vouchers -- comes from the government. A quarter of Florida's state welfare budget goes to nonprofit groups that contract with the state to provide prenatal care, drug treatment and other services. Talk about "privatizing" government services. Welfare always has been that way.

"Federally funded advocacy creates a network of special interest -- a welfare-industrial complex -- with a direct stake in the growth of the welfare state," complains a Heritage Foundation newsletter devoted to "changing the way Washington works."

A person might wonder how, if welfare agencies can't lobby, Congress will find out what's working and what isn't, what's needed and what's not. The answer is the Heritage Foundation and its like.

With a $25.5 million budget, Heritage is the most conspicuous of the think tanks that answered Irving Kristol's call for capitalists to put their money into mouthpieces. The tanks are home to nonteaching professors and shadow cabinet ministers hired to spread a patina of academese and expertise over the views of their sponsors.

Heritage won the contract to provide orientation to new members of Congress -- and honored guest Rush Limbaugh -- but most of its money is private. Rather than endow chairs at universities where teaching is done and peer review is practiced, corporations and big givers find it more cost-effective to endow "fellows" and "resident scholars" at places like Heritage. They churn out forests of position papers, reports and newsletters, cross-citing one another, and mail them to legislators, opinion molders and, for a small charge, amateur political junkies and the more literate members of the militia movement.

In terms of public awareness of their existence, Heritage and the other propaganda/policy mills, including the liberal ones, might be like G.K Chesterton's solipsist who was so convinced of his philosophy that he gave speeches all over England to get people to join him. But the effect on Congress can be considerable.

The Heritage Foundation isn't the only source of thought about poverty that the House majority has been consulting. It has met with Republican governors, too. Governors as a rule spend about as much time in soup kitchens as do Heritage scholars.

The trouble with Congress' relying on Heritage fellows for data and insight into the needs of the jobless, working poor, disabled homeless, ill and orphaned is that, frankly, none of the fellows knows squat about any of that. If you want to know what's happening on the bottom rungs of the social ladder, you have to consult the people who live there. Since such people don't usually have what it takes to check into the Watergate hotel the night before a congressional hearing, Congress has been settling for second best.

Second-best are the social workers and nonprofit agency volunteers who work with and for the people the shrinking welfare budgets are supposed to serve better. If the only improvement is going to be shrinkage, maybe no expertise is necessary. But if fewer dollars are to be used more effectively, as some members of the GOP Restoration suggest on their better days, somebody who knows something about what's going on should be available to make suggestions.

Telling nonprofit welfare organizations, "Shut up or we'll cut off your money" is not a good way to get that information. It leaves the bottom of the social ladder out of sight by drawing a veil of ignorance over the lower rungs.

Which might, of course, be the idea.