54 NATIONAL CIVIC REVIEW [January

Books in Review . . Jewel Bellush, Edifor

Social We1 f are SOCIAL INSECURITY: THE POLITICS OF

WELFARE. By Gilbert Y. Steiner. Rand McNally and Company, Box 7600, Chicago 60680, 1966. 270 pp.

The illusion that the welfare state helps eliminate poverty is exposed in this very good piece of research and writing. The excitement generated by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s poverty program is deflated by the fact that it reaches only the reachable-those able and prepared to take advantage of economic oppor- tunity. For those “beyond the welfare state”-the diseased, disabled, dependent populations-the program has no rele- vance. And what is more significant is that the program for welfare recipients formulated in the 1930s has continued until today without any basic changes. To a large extent, public aid is still a matter of sufferance, “granted with suspicion, with strings and with restraints.” Under- lying this attitude is the widely accepted notion that W ’ (welfare) will wither away.

The reader may be surprised to learn that Congress has generally increased allocations for various welfare programs but, perhaps ironically, with little con- cern as to their effectiveness. Why? The author, one of the finest sleuths of wel- fare politics, provides us with partial explanation in his excellent chapter on intergovernmental politics. Federal bu- reaucrats behave rather nicely to state governments in welfare matters and this. too, is explained with insight into a most complex problem.

Mr. Steiner discusses the “information gap” in welfare--complaining that we have relatively little hard data and good research about public assistance. He finds that arguments are expressed too intui- tively and emotionally and that Congress

has few staff specialists who are influ- ential and knowledgeable enough to guide innovating policy changes.

Without effective and competent presidential leadership, and in the ab- sence of strong interest group participa- tion, welfare policies are left to a kaleidoscopic type of decision-making. State governments, Steiner finds, have a far greater voice in welfare than is generally assumed. They are free to continue with lien laws, relative respon- sibility provisions, home requirements and residence regulations.

Transportation METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION POL-

ITICS AND THE NEW YORK REGION. By Jameson W. Doig. Columbia University Press, 2960 Broadway, New York 10027, 1966. 327pp. $7.50.

Recently, the governors of New York and Connecticut reached agreement on a plan to operate jointly the commuter facilities of the New Haven Railroad. This is the latest in a series of steps which have been taken over the past few years to maintain the operation of the network of essential rail commuter services in the New York region.

It is doubtful that Dr. Doig greeted this move with loud huzzas. He most certainly favors greater public support for rail transportation and less for high- way building, but his writing reveals ,n understandable impatience with piece- meal approaches to solving New York‘s transportation problems. H e strongly advocates overall regional solutions.

His book does not-regardless of its title-deal with transportation politics in the entire region, It is only peripherally concerned with developments in West- Chester and Long Island. Rather, it is a study of one attempt to create a regional