ABSTRACT
Politicians and pundits frequently attack big government, calling it bloated, coddling, and inefficient. Former President Bill Clinton declared that “the era of big government is dead” and campaigned on “reinventing government,” President George W. Bush suggested that “too much government crowds out initiative,” and presidential candidate John Kerry endorsed “smaller and smarter government.” We argue that big government is still alive, “reinvented” in the form of expensive and interventionist immigration and crime control. Focusing on U.S. social policy from Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society to George W. Bush’s Homeland Security, we trace the growth of immigration and crime control in the context of welfare state retrenchment, paying particular attention to how gender, race, and nationality shape policy changes.
