November 12, 2003

opinion

A page from W.'s playbook

It is compassionate to recognize that discipline and love go hand in hand.

George W. Bush, 1999

We can't accept the status quo. [Care Not Cash] was compassionate as opposed to the current program of excuses.

Gavin Newsom, 2003

WHEN HE FIRST ran for president, George W. Bush coined the term "compassionate conservative" to capture the spirit of his social welfare policy, the provision of government assistance coupled with increased requirements for those receiving support. It is a theme to which Bush has repeatedly returned, both in his term in the White House and in his reelection campaign. In fact, there is a section of the president's reelection Web site specifically devoted to this vision titled, simply, "Compassion."

Yet on issue after issue, from his landmark Leave No Child Behind Act – funded $6 billion below what the legislation called for – to his Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief to AmeriCorps, Bush has betrayed his rhetoric with a lack of dollars sufficient to fund these initiatives. And funding is the true measure of support in politics. To many, this sleight of hand reveals the truth behind Bush's so-called compassionate conservative policy.

While San Francisco supervisor Gavin Newsom, competing in the mayoral runoff against Board of Supervisors president Matt Gonzalez, has yet to give a name to his policy toward the poor, Newsom has clearly taken a page from Bush's compassionate conservative playbook, both in terms of campaign rhetoric and, more important, in terms of policy.

"More than 1,000 homeless San Franciscans died on our streets during the past decade," Newsom wrote in the ballot handbook in support of his 2002 Care Not Cash measure. "The Care Not Cash Initiative will save lives. [It] will make sure we can provide real care, such as drug and alcohol treatment, decent housing, medical care, mental health care, job training."

Yet Care Not Cash, which would have cut monetary assistance to the homeless to fund homeless services, never guaranteed, nor did it provide, funds for most of the services Newsom described. It only guaranteed housing (a homeless shelter would suffice), utilities, and food – and a report released this year by the city's independent budget analyst questioned whether there would be sufficient funds even for these programs, let alone for the full array of services Newsom promised.

Newsom's arguments in favor of his aggressive-panhandling ban, passed Nov. 4 by the voters, are almost identical to his words in favor of Care Not Cash. "In the last year alone, 169 people died on the streets of San Francisco, most from drug and alcohol abuse," he stated in the ballot handbook.

Proposition M will "divert people who aggressively panhandle because of addiction or [mental] illness away from the jail system and into the public health system."

In reality, however, the aggressive-panhandling ban doesn't provide any funding for mental health or substance abuse treatment programs – although it will expand the types of offenses that could land a beggar in jail. It is no wonder, then, as recently reported by Human Rights Watch, that there are three times as many men and women with mental illness in U.S. prisons as in mental health hospitals. Compassionate conservative politicians toughen laws but underfund programs.

"Money," Jesse Unruh, former speaker of the California State Assembly, once said famously, "is the mother's milk of politics." It is also, as all politicians know, the mother's milk of policy initiatives. Sincere initiatives – those designed for success – are well funded, while insincere ones are not.

When the stark funding realities of Bush's and Newsom's policies are no longer veiled by the campaign rhetoric of compassion, the public may be left to wonder where that compassion really is – or if it ever truly existed at all.

Greg Asay is a former legislative aide to San Francisco supervisor Sophie Maxwell and former analyst of homeless policy for United Way of Richmond, Va.