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THE TABLET


THE INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY Founded in 1840


ONE NATION, DIVISIBLE I


t has taken only two years for Barack Obama to move in popular estimation in the United States from golden boy to tarnished incumbent of the White House. The ranks of his Democratic Party allies in Congress were savagely


depleted in the mid-term elections, with the Republicans now crucially in control of the lower house and able to block any- thing from the White House that they do not like. This could render the President impotent over the next two years, after which he must seek re-election for a second term. The most optimistic reading of events from his point of view is that the Republicans benefited from the impact of the country’s poor economic performance, which has put one in 10 Americans out of work and caused untold misery in terms of reposses- sions and homelessness.


Administrations are liable to be unpopular mid-term, and not just in America. But there was more to it than that. Mr Obama lost touch with the middle ground at precisely the time the Republican Right found its voice in the radical Tea Party movement. This virulent anti-government, anti-Washington backlash has captured the high ground in the Republican Party and is sworn to frustrate the President at every turn until he is driven from office in 2012, if not before. As befits a movement that is purely oppositional, the Tea


Party has no coherent policies to offer but only a wish list – lower taxes, lower government spending on the one hand, eco- nomic regeneration on the other. Tea Party economics are the antithesis of Keynesianism. In sharp contrast to what the British and other Europeans have become used to, the demand for


deficit reduction is coming from the grass roots, not from the top. And this points to the biggest failure of the Obama admin- istration. Despite spending heavily, it has not turned the economy round. Nor has Mr Obama taken the people with him in his efforts to do so, seeming too abstract and aloof, too compla- cent about the obvious moral superiority of his ideas compared with his opponents’. If Mr Obama is to recover, as Democrat President Bill Clinton recovered after his own first-term mid-term setback, he will have to begin to work with a Republican Party in Congress that he has shunned so far. But the influence of the Tea Party has taken it further to the right. He may be able exploit Republican divisions to his advantage, working with the remain- ing moderates, but the zeitgeist has turned against him. Nevertheless, there is still no credible Republican challenger for the 2012 presidential election, and Sarah Palin could frighten the moderates back into Mr Obama’s hands single-handedly. This is a strange America in an unfamiliar mood. It is more divided than at any time since the Second World War, and anxiously wondering whatever happened to the American Dream. America’s historic thriving is often put down to the fact it has an energising and unifying vision of itself, one that it believes Providence stands behind as guarantor. That vision, which presupposes the ineluctable progress of American cap- italism, was shattered not by 9/11 but by the even greater shockwave of October 2008, when Wall Street turned toxic. America wanted Mr Obama to put things right again, and he has not. Nor, in all probability, could anyone else.


THE POOR DESERVE BETTER T


he coalition Government’s proposed cuts in housing benefit are said to be necessary in order to restore fair- ness to an unfair system. Many people have found the argument persuasive. Opposition has mostly been gen- erated by fears of what it might lead to, such as an exodus of poor people from town centres to the suburbs – described by the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, as “Kosovo-style social cleansing”. His colourful language has drawn attention to the great upheaval to many families that government policy threat- ens to cause. But even the basic premise, that the present system is unfair, needs challenging. And it could easily have one very unfair consequence – that the victims of the cuts will be blamed for their plight, in a reversion to the Victorian Poor Law con- cept of the “undeserving poor”. The “fairness” argument, as repeated recently by Prime


Minister David Cameron, is that “there are many people who earn less than £20,000 … who are paying taxes to house peo- ple who are getting rents of £25,000, £30,000, £40,000. They don’t see that as fair and neither do I.” The Government’s solu- tion is to put a ceiling on housing benefit, a figure varying with the type of accommodation but appreciably below the level that many people in the private rented sector are now being charged. Either they will have to find the balance from else- where, or they will have to move –and to qualify for help from the local authority as homeless, they will have to wait to be evicted. If adults in the household are out of work for more than a year, furthermore, housing benefit will be further reduced as an incentive to seek employment. Eviction means being


2 | THE TABLET | 6 November 2010


uprooted from family, church and school, and accepting emer- gency rehoming elsewhere in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, which is the most degrading form of housing there is. Mr Cameron’s argument is fallacious. The levels of rent in places like central London are determined by market forces. The supply side of the equation, the amount of affordable hous- ing available, is almost entirely the product of public policy. Nor are market forces sacrosanct; their outcomes are not acts of God. It is entirely possible, as Catholic Social Teaching insists, for market forces to have immoral consequences. It is the Government, furthermore, that decides whether or not to impose rent controls; the Government that decided to sell off the council- housing stock, and is now cutting the number of affordable homes to be built in the next four years; the Government that sets house-building targets for the regions; and it is even the Government that sets the level of the minimum wage. It is only the Government that can control immigration, and the private rented sector is often the first port of call of people newly arrived in Britain. These are the chief factors that drive inner-city rents up to


levels, in Mr Cameron’s figures, of around £450-£750 a week. Nor are such properties particularly salubrious. These rents reflect not luxury but scarcity. Housing benefit enables ordin - ary families on ordinary incomes to afford a roof over their heads, particularly when there is a dearth of reasonably priced public-sector housing. To make such families scapegoats for a situation over which they have no control, while imposing great distress and hardship on them, is extraordinarily unfair.


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