GOVERNMENT WELFARE POLICIES HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

Suzanne Metter, The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2011) (“[T]he submerged state: existing policies that lay beneath the surface of U.S. market institutions and within the federal tax system.” Id. at 4. “[A] dense thicket of long-established public policies, but ones that are largely invisible to most Americans—and that are extremely resistant to change. Efforts to transform these policies, which have become entrenched fixtures of modern governance, generate a deeply conflicted politics that routinely alienates the public, hindering chances of success or sustainability of the reforms.” Id. at 4. “The ‘submerged state’ includes a conglomeration of federal policies that function by providing incentives, subsidies, or payments to private organizations or households to encourage or reimburse them for conducting activities deemed to serve a public purpose.” Id. at 4. “Since 1980 these policies have proliferated in number, and the average size of their benefits has expanded dramatically.” Id. at 4. “Most of these ascendant policies function in a way that directly contradicts Americans’ expectations of social welfare policies: they shower their largest benefits on the most affluent Americans. Id. at 4. For example, Home Mortgage Interest Deduction (HMID), “which is currently the nation’s most expensive social tax break aside from the tax-free status of employer-provided health coverage.” Id. at 4. “This pattern of upward redistribution is repeated in numerous other policies of the submerged state: federal largesse is allocated disproportionately to the nation’s most well-off households. Such policies consume a sizable portion or revenues and leave scarce resources available for programs that genuinely aid low- and middle-income Americans.” Id. at 5. “Yet despite their growing size, scope, and tendency to channel government benefits toward the wealthy, the policies of the submerged state remain largely invisible to ordinary Americans: indeed, their hallmark is the way they obscure government’s role from the view of the general public, including those who number among their beneficiaries. Even when people state directly at these policies, many perceive only a freely functioning market system at work. They understand neither what is at stake in reform efforts nor the significance of their success.“ Id. at 5. “The problem is not simply the typical policy complexity that alienates the public; rather, policies of the submerged state obscure the role of the government and exaggerate that of the market, leaving citizens unaware of how power operates, unable to form meaningful opinions, and incapable, therefore, of voicing their views accordingly.” Id. at 6.