Renaming the House Welfare Reform Subcommittee—Again

The venerable House Ways and Means Committee, founded in 1789 and arguably the most powerful in Congress, just renamed its subcommittee on welfare, various other social services, and unemployment benefits for the fifth time in the past 35 years. What’s in a name? More than you would think—especially judging from the committee’s heated debate today about renaming this subcommittee.

Here’s the short history of the names of the now “Work and Welfare” Subcommittee:

Three things are notable about these repeated name changes.

First, there has been only one bipartisan subcommittee name (“Human Resources”), which Democrats selected in 1989 and Republicans retained as they set about reforming welfare in 1995, and subsequently returned to in 2011.

Second, Republicans have now joined Democrats in developing their own thematic branding for the subcommittee.

Democrats first rejected their own benefit-oriented title (referencing “Public Assistance” and “Unemployment Compensation”) immediately after a prior welfare reform law was signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. Then-subcommittee chair Thomas Downey (D-NY)—the only Member to chair the subcommittee under multiple names—said then that “the vast majority of Americans don’t like the welfare system.” Apparently “public assistance” wasn’t a PR hit, either.

Democrats subsequently renamed the subcommittee twice more, each time replacing the “Human Resources” title Downey and his colleagues selected and Republicans retained.

In 2007, Democrats selected “Income Security and Family Support,” thinking Human Resources sounded too much like a corporate office. (As someone who served on the subcommittee staff for many years, I can confirm that Human Resources utterly confused the outside world, with staff frequently fielding calls from individuals seeking employment in House offices.) The inclusion of “security” harkened to the 1930s Social Security Act and also suggested the various forms of insecurity—variability in income, benefits, wages, and more—committee Democrats wished to overcome.

In 2019, Democrats again rejected Human Resources in favor of “Worker and Family Support,” dropping the prior “income security” focus. No one could know it at the time, but workers and families were about to receive unprecedented support from subcommittee programs, especially through greatly extended and expanded pandemic unemployment benefits.

Now Republicans have adopted their own thematic title, including the words “work” and “welfare” for the first time. The former fits with Republicans’ longstanding goal of promoting work over means-tested benefit receipt, and during today’s meeting several members stressed a desire to alleviate labor shortages. But the bulk of the committee’s focus was on using “welfare” in the title, which Ranking Member Richie Neal (D-MA) said was “pejorative” and should be removed. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) said the term was more than a “dog whistle” and had become “a foghorn at this point.” Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) said simply “I will refuse to call it the Work and Welfare Committee.” In the end, after over an hour of debate, the committee approved its new rules, including the name change, on a voice vote.

A third noteworthy fact is how unusual these thematic name changes are compared with other Ways and Means subcommittees. Six Ways and Means subcommittees were mandated by committee reforms made in 1974, covering Social Security, health and Medicare, trade, oversight, welfare, and unemployment compensation. The Subcommittee on Welfare was renamed Public Assistance in 1975 and then merged with the Subcommittee on Unemployment Compensation in 1977; the rest of its history is displayed above. Meanwhile, a new Subcommittee on Miscellaneous Revenue Measures was added in 1977, renamed Select Revenue Measures in 1979, called Tax Policy from 2015 through 2018, and now has been renamed simply the Subcommittee on Tax. The names of the committee’s remaining subcommittees—on Trade, Health, Social Security, and Oversight—have been stable since at least the early 1980s.

The repeated name changes of the now Subcommittee on Work and Welfare are in part a reflection of its broad jurisdiction, which covers multiple major means-tested benefit programs as well as the nation’s unemployment insurance system. But they also reflect the ongoing struggle between—and sometimes within—the parties to capture the essence of what those programs and policies should achieve for the American people. Today’s heated debate suggests that struggle, and the subcommittee’s name, will likely continue to evolve in the years ahead.