Congress Invokes Public Opinion on Welfare Reform

If democratically elected public officials respond to the policy preferences of ordinary citizens, one might expect them to make frequent, favorable references to public opinion as revealed by polls and surveys. An analysis of the 1995 congressional debates leading up to the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (welfare reform), however, generally corroborates the findings of Cook, Barabas, and Page concerning policy elites' discussions of Social Security. Congresspersons' references to public opinion were quite infrequent and vague. In some cases, they were significantly misleading. The implications of these findings are briefly discussed.