Remembering Bill Archer

Bill Archer (R-TX), who as Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee guided some of the most consequential conservative policy wins of the 1990s, passed away on the Fourth of July. I was honored to serve on Chairman Archer’s committee staff from 1995 through 2000. On first taking his longtime committee’s gavel in January 1995, Archer expressed support for a powerful blend of reform and fiscal conservativism, saying “We must stop measuring compassion by the amount of money the government spends.” He more than delivered on that promise, helping craft landmark welfare reforms along with signature tax, health, and budget-reducing laws. Welfare reforms proved remarkably effective and enduring, though highly controversial at their start. The 1996 welfare reform law was the first to end a major New Deal program, replacing the former Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, an open-ended federal entitlement, with the new fixed Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant. TANF featured work requirements and time limits for able-bodied adults collecting welfare checks, designed to reduce dependence and promote, as the law’s title suggested, personal responsibility and work opportunity. Other major policies cut welfare for noncitizens, tightened disability benefits, amped up child support collections, and provided more funding for childcare to help replace welfare checks with work and earnings. It worked. Growing earnings by especially low-income single mothers unlocked generous federal tax credits, including the new child tax credit created in 1997. Poverty plunged, with the rate for black children reaching a record low by 2000 and remaining below pre-reform levels ever since. Millions left and, just as consequentially, never went onto the new welfare program, cutting the rolls in half over the law’s early years, and by a stunning 85 percent overall. None of those reforms were easy, or foreordained. Despite promising to “end welfare as we know it,” President Bill Clinton vetoed two early reform proposals. But House Republicans, led by Archer and his welfare subcommittee chairman Clay Shaw (R-FL), assembled a third bill, working with key governors and over the objections of their party’s soon-to-be presidential nominee, Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS). Challenging his party’s liberal base, Clinton signed it, paving the way to his reelection and marking a huge bipartisan achievement for the country. Liberal critics predicted a disaster of rising poverty, with the New York Times opining “This is not reform, it is punishment. . . .The effect on cities will be devastating.” They were wrong. Now almost 30 years on, reform-minded lawmakers continue to cite the 1996 act in arguing for further changes, like the expanded work requirements included in last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Under Archer’s firm guide, other major laws followed. While falling short of his oft-stated goal of tearing out the tax code “by its roots,” the 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act created Roth IRAs, plus education and child tax credits, among other middle-class tax relief. The 1997 Balanced Budget Act contributed to budget surpluses from 1998 through 2001. Archer (again working with Shaw) developed a plan to devote those surpluses to personal savings accounts designed to save Social Security for the long run. But their hope for bipartisan cooperation—and another landmark law—evaporated when the Lewinski scandal broke. Bill Archer’s serious intellect, determination, and deep principles helped him become a remarkably effective legislator. When the Contract with America called for cutting all committee staff by one-third, he didn’t argue his committee merited a pass due to its enormous workload—he made it work, expecting more from himself and his staff. Surplus committee funds were returned to the Treasury, not spent, at the end of each year. He famously insisted on doing his own taxes, the better to understand the morass fellow citizens had to navigate. And he weathered criticism and more with equanimity. One senior committee Democrat compared Republicans to Nazis. Another meeting descended into the “brawl in the hall.” Yet Archer always remained the adult in the room, focused on doing the people’s business and knowing the window for lawmaking was narrow. Today’s conservatives would do well to study Bill Archer’s enduring legacy, and the quiet yet indomitable spirit that helped him achieve so much. Rest in peace to a great and good man.