Racial Politics and Welfare Retrenchment during the Reagan Presidency

How do conservative presidents use welfare state retrenchment to make political appeals, and in particular reach conservative whites on the basis of the sensitive subject of race? Using Reagan Presidential Library archival sources, I show that the Reagan administration's welfare retrenchment efforts with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA) of 1981 were organized around a racially divisive political agenda that was intended to appeal to southern whites and northern white ethnics. Modifying Pierson's (1994) approach to the politics of welfare retrenchment with focused attention on race, I explore the administration's use of the strategies of "obfuscation, division and compensation." I find that the Reagan administration pursued an overtly racially neutral approach to welfare retrenchment, while also pursuing a political agenda focused on conservative white voters. This is contrasted with an almost complete absence of concern over the disproportionate harm that African-Americans faced as a result of their agenda. Most telling, the administration responded to the criticisms of their budget cuts by African-American leaders through a combination of silences and symbols, offering very little in the way of direct material or procedural rewards for African-Americans.