Making the World a Little Better

Just suppose there were a government program that actually seems to make poor children so much healthier that it more than pays for itself through reduced emergency room visits and the like. And what if this program had the side effect that children who went through it were much less likely to become teenage criminals. What would America's charming conservative media stars say about it? The program is home nursing for poor families:

Thirty years ago, a professor of pediatrics named David Olds (then at Cornell, now at the University of Colorado, Denver) came up with a straightforward idea: send nurses into the homes of poor and undereducated first-time teenage mothers to coach them through their children's difficult first two years. There are now 18,000 families receiving that service in 29 states, from a variety of local government agencies and nonprofit groups, supported by some $80 million per year of federal, state, and foundation funds, under the watchful eye of the Nurse-Family Partnership National Service Office, a spinoff of the University of Colorado.

The program was designed to improve health, not to control crime, and the health-care savings from lower rates of sickness, substance abuse and welfare dependency among the mothers and children more than cover its costs. But it turned out that by the time the kids were 15 years old, those served by the program had been arrested less than half as often, and convicted only one fifth as often, as similar children who weren't given the assistance.

And what do Republicans think of this idea?

When a provision for nurse home visit grants was added to the House version of the health-care bill, the House Republican Conference promptly issued a statement mocking the program as a "nanny-state boondoggle." They called it "billions for babysitters" and suggested buying copies of Dr. Spock's child-care book instead. Lindsey Burke of the conservative Heritage Foundation warned of a "stealth agenda" to "impose a federally directed, top-down approach to parenting" and an increase in the federal role in preschool education.

Fox News anchor Glenn Beck says the program reminds him of 1984, suggesting it will be forced on families with overweight children by the fat police. Chuck Norris, TV's Walker, Texas Ranger and an early supporter of Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign, calls the program "Obamacare's home intrusion and indoctrination family services."

Now I wouldn't stake too much on this particular program; these things sometimes turn out to depend on the efforts of a single dedicated director and the staff that he or she personally instills with commitment, and when made into bigger, more bureaucratic programs they often falter. But wouldn't it be worth a try? After all, it doesn't cost much. Right now America seems to be full of motivated young people who want to "make a difference." Couldn't we direct a few thousand of them into programs like this? Everybody knows that America suffers terribly from the existence of an underclass that is barely part of our society, but nobody seems to know how to bring them in. When an inexpensive program shows as much promise as this one, shouldn't it be tried? And when you oppose a new idea that really might help miserably poor people in your own country, besides reducing crime, without spending a lot of money, are you a conservative or just a jerk?