Mistermix’s post on Philosopher-King Gingrich’s latest GOP talking point about “food stamps” reminded me that some of you probably don’t remember back in 1994, when Newt was actually holding political office and talking up orphanages:
… Orphanages were not the subject of Gingrich’s speech, but they were not a throwaway either. The notion reappeared in the Republican welfare-reform bill (with the inflammatory word orphanages changed to “children’s homes”), which is a basis for Gingrich’s famous “Contract with America.”
__
It was not a smart move. The news media were quick to note the orphanage proposal’s obvious incompatibility with “family values.” Hillary Clinton told a New York audience last week that the “idea of putting children into orphanages because their mothers couldn’t find jobs” was “unbelievable and absurd.” Eager to be seen as the way of the future, the Newtonians found themselves tarred with images of the distant, Dickensian past…
__
Nearly everyone agrees that illegitimacy and teen pregnancy are key elements in poverty’s vicious cycle and that the government should try to reduce them. Gingrich’s orphanage proposal, however, seems punitive — not to mention odd, coming from a man who was born to a 16-year-old mother eight months after she left his abusive father. It would violate federal law, which mandates family- based care over institutions, and ignore the public policy consensus — first expressed by the Teddy Roosevelt White House — that “no child should be deprived of his family by reason of poverty alone.”
__
It would also be a budget buster. According to an analysis done for TIME by the Child Welfare League of America, the annual welfare cost of one child living with his or her mother is $2,644. The same child living with a foster family costs the public $4,800 a year. The average cost for the child’s care in “residential group care,” today’s closest approximation of an orphanage, is $36,500. If even a quarter of an estimated 1 million children who would be cut loose under Gingrich’s plan ended up in orphanages, the additional cost to & the public would be more than $8 billion.
Of course, the “budget buster” problem only applies if we intend to treat those “orphans” as if they had potential social value. While googling these old stories, I was appalled to find a link to a much more recent WSJ story from January 2010:
Critics are right on one point: Orphanages are far too expensive. Unfortunately, too many orphanage proponents and directors are convinced that all such care has to be “high quality” (or better than family care), which means high cost and limited access. But make no mistake about it: Orphanages are returning slowly across this country and around the world because communities see the need is so great.
__
The world needs a Sam Walton of child welfare who can show how to provide lots of kids with pretty good care at very good prices — comparable to the full cost, including administrative overhead and foster-parent payments, of foster care — as did orphanages of the past…
Roll back prices with high-volume, low-quality care! And remember, all you good Christianists… it’s a child, not a choice.