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Republicans Suddenly Can't Stop Talking About "Mobility"

Too bad GOP policies are undercutting it

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The GOP’s response to widening inequality has long been similar to Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt: “The sooner a man learns he isn't going to be coddled, and he needn't expect a lot of free grub and, uh, all these free classes and flipflop and doodads for his kids unless he earns 'em, why, the sooner he'll get on the job and produce—produce—produce!” But between the fallout over Mitt Romney's "47 percent" remark and a resurgence of progressive populism, Republicans realize they need a new, softer approach. It appears they've finally found one.

Paul Ryan recently appeared at the Brookings Institute’s “Social Mobility Summit” to announce, “We’re losing not only mobility, we understand that, but whole generations of Americans don’t know what this is.” Eric Cantor told Bloomberg, "All of us want to grow the economy … that means more jobs, upward mobility." Mike Lee warned last year of an “opportunity crisis.” Cathy McMorris Rodgers’s response to the State of the Union included the line, “The president talks a lot about income inequality. But the real gap we face today is one of opportunity inequality…” And in a speech on the anniversary of LBJ's "War on Poverty" address, Marco Rubio said that "it is this lack of mobility, not just income inequality, that we should be focused on."

"Mobility" is the party's new mantra—but it's based on a familiar delusion.



Why does the "land of opportunity" have such low mobility? Laissez-faire economic policies—massive tax breaks, untrammeled free markets, unregulated free trade, deep cuts to the safety net—have widened the income gap. While Republicans have tried to sever the link between mobility and inequality, research shows that the two issues are intimately connected: Societies and communities with high inequality have low levels of upward mobility. Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute estimates that had income growth risen proportionally between 1979 and 2007, the median income would be $19,000 higher.



Rubio's other idea (again supported by Ryan) is revenue-neutral block grants to the states, which means that states would have more leeway in how to spend the funds. "Revenue-neutral" is the key phrase here; if you’re not increasing spending, you're just shifting around authority at best and sneaking in cuts at worst.



The right has to wrestle with a very tricky counterfactual: There has never been a society with a strong and sustained middle class that did not also have a strong government maintaining that middle class. In the U.S., the middle class has been strengthened by what political scientist Christopher Howard calls the “hidden welfare state.” While programs that help the poor, like TANF, are explicit, aid for the middle class is hidden in arcane programs like the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction, the employer-provided healthcare tax exclusion, and the Family Medical Leave Act. Programs like Social Security and Medicare, which are no longer considered “welfare” but represent huge government interventions in the market (that primarily help the white middle class) are taken for granted.



Republicans want a strong, upwardly mobile middle class and a weak government, but the two cannot coexist. Instead, Republicans will have to choose between social mobility and low deficits. Given the party's obsession with cutting government spending, "mobility" will remain a hollow mantra, nothing more.