College Political Clubs Discuss Welfare Reform

Members of Harvard's College Democrats and Republican Club discussed welfare reform last night at a debate in Sever Hall.

"Since the welfare issue is heating up in D.C. and it's a complicated issue, we decided to debate it among ourselves," said Derek T. Ho '96, president of the College Democrats.

Members of the two political clubs took predictably opposite positions on the problems with the current welfare system and the best way to reform it. Students from each club took turns presenting arguments for two minutes.

With the Republicans arguing that welfare as it currently exists should be cut or eliminated entirely and Democrats asserting that "social darwinism" is cruel, both sides sought to change each other's minds on the issue.

At times during the hour-long debate, participants resorted to emotionally rebutting each other's arguments and throwing out statistics to back up their conclusions.

Both sides accused each other of taking a paternalistic attitude toward welfare recipients.

"It's ludicrous that we have to teach the poor discipline or a work ethic," said Stephanie P. Wexler '97, rebutting a Republican argument that eliminating welfare checks would help poor recipients by forcing them to work.

"We've seen a system at work for over 30 years that has shown no improvement in bringing together families," said Republican David S. DeSimon '98.

"What's at issue is four million people whose lives have been destroyed by a corrupt, bad system," said Dan J. Lickel '96, treasurer of the Republican Club, who advocated moving authority over the welfare program to the states through block grants.

Attendance at the informal debate was dominated by Democrats, with only one-third of the 20 attendees aligning themselves with the Republicans.

The debate was designed to increase membership in both groups, as well as to continue a tradition of interaction between the two organizations, club leaders said.

"This is to encourage people to join the club," said Republican Club president Jay Dickerson '98.

"We've been trying to increase the contact between the clubs, both in terms of social events and substantive debates," Ho said.

The presidents of the two clubs have participated in debates sponsored by the Institute of Politics (IOP) in the past. The first joint event between the clubs was a debate on the Reserve Training Officer Corps (ROTC) and gays in the military last year, Ho said.

"Our vision is for this to grow into something like Yale's Political Union, where students have biweekly debates on politics," Lickel said.

Ho said that last night's debate "would probably serve as the basis for a broader, more public debate on welfare," to be held next month at the IOP.