I got something on my mind. I got a problem with reform. Because to me, “let’s reform XYZ” is just a euphemism for “let’s destroy XYZ.” Pretty much any time you hear the word, you know that whatever is being reformed is going to be changed in ways that make that thing’s current stakeholders mad. Welfare reform screwed over the poor. Financial regulation and credit card reforms screwed over the banks (which, to be clear, is fine with me.) Education reform screws over the entire education system. And alimony reform screws over women.
So can we all, as progressives, agree to stop allowing the word to be used, unchallenged, as a weapon against the poor and marginalized? Better yet, can we agree to fight the use of it at all? It is a lie 100% of the time. Even when it is applied to measures with which we agree, it’s dishonest. And when it’s applied to measures that attack the social safety net or other progressive priorities, it gives politicians on the right the cover they need while allowing Democrats to avoid making the right decision.
I've written before on alimony reform. Suffice it to say that alimony compensates for inequalities which are, at this point, still inherent in most modern marriages. Until those entrenched inequalities are eliminated, alimony should not be eliminated either. That kind of thinking is often branded “reverse discrimination” by people who aren’t good at thinking, but when you live in a society where bigotry is institutional as well as–if not more so than–individual, you’re playing on an unlevel field. The field of play must be made level. Affirmative action, alimony, reparations, these are all ideas for how we can do that. “Equality before the law” does not mean that context should be ignored. It means that in any situation in which a man and a woman are, in fact, equal, they should be treated as such, and in any situation in which a man and a woman are not, in fact, equal, the approach must take that inequality into account in an endeavor to create equal opportunities and rights.
Education reform is just as bad. It’s been a right-wing tool for attacking the public education system for decades now. Sometimes it means charter schools, sometimes it means magnet schools, sometimes it means private schools, sometimes it means Common Core, sometimes it means standardized testing, sometimes (most of the time) it means blaming and weakening the teachers’ unions for problems they’re not responsible for. But it always means doing something that will debilitate the public education system. Unsurprisingly, our public education system is quite debilitated.
Immigration reform, on the other hand, represents the way that reform ends up being mediocre even when it could have been good. Reform, in this instance, is used because the bill under discussion is basically just a bunch of little half-measures and gifts to constituencies but doesn’t actually do anything major. Republicans and Democrats alike should be, at best, unenthusiastic about this bill. It doesn’t do any of the things Republicans want. It doesn’t really o any of the things Democrats want. Reform, in cases like this, is just code for “not doing that much.” Reform, then, literally means “not reform.”
Welfare reform is one of the granddaddies of reform as a weapon. Bill Clinton famously agreed to “end welfare as we know it,” claiming credit for having revolutionized the social safety net. But everything in the bill that he signed was a Republican idea. Families were thrown off the rolls. Many recipients faced harsh penalties for not being able to find work, as new regulations attached benefits to a requirement to be actively seeking a job. That requirement could often be interpreted as a mandate that a recipient actually find a job, whether one was available or not. And benefits to families were made temporary. In fact, it’s right there in the name: Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.
Finally, on a regular basis, one hears the term “regulatory reform.” In rare cases, such as with the financial sector, it means increasing the strength of regulations, at least in theory. Most of the time, however, it’s just a nicer-sounding term for deregulation or self-regulation. Self-regulation, of course, is one of the dumbest ideas that’s ever been proposed, and everybody knows that now. Deregulation, too, has been exposed as just another way to avoid saying “no rules for businesses.” So now they call it regulatory reform.
Even “health care reform” should have been a sign that we were never going to get a robust overhaul of the system. If they’d called it universal health care, maybe believing in it would have been a good idea. But when they started calling it “reform,” just as with immigration, we should have known it would just be more of the same old same old. Yeah, it was okay. But it wasn’t good. And that’s the best reform can be. At its worst, it’s awful. At its best, it’s okay but not good. The word needs to be exposed for what it is, because Americans are getting hoodwinked.