Putting Poverty on the Agenda

"There is definitely a story going untold," says Melissa Boteach,
manager of Half in Ten, a national campaign to reduce poverty by 50
percent over the next ten years. "When you have 1 in 7 Americans living in poverty. 1 in 5 children
living in poverty-including 1 in 3 African-American children and Latino
children-and it's not on America's radar, something's very wrong."

Indeed it is the shame of our nation that a record 47 million people
now live below the poverty line-$22,400 for a family of four-and a
stunning 1 in 3 Americans are living at less than twice that threshold.
And yet we hear so little about this crisis in the mainstream media and
Congress, where it seems off the radar not only for the GOP, but even
for some of our progressive allies.

But the grim truth is that many of the same structural problems that
are making life a struggle for the middle-class-and resulted in the
first "economic recovery" in 2003-2007 where productivity rose, but
median income declined and poverty worsened-are also leading to record
numbers of poor people. From 1980 to 2005,
more than 80 percent of the total increase in American incomes went to
the richest 1 percent. Our economy is super-sizing the wealthy, while
producing large quantities of low-wage jobs, unemployment and
underemployment, and services are eroding. So the work of those who are
waging today's war on poverty comes with a very different frame.

"We need to make the connection between what's happening to
lower-income Americans and the middle-class," says Boteach. "We need to
make sure that this economic recovery is different-that we're not
seeing a larger concentration of wealth, but a growing middle-class,
increasing wages, and reduced poverty. That's an economic recovery that
can cut poverty in half."

To meet that kind of ambitious and much-needed goal, antipoverty
advocates must overcome a host of stereotypes and myths, including one
which refuses to fade, facts be damned: we waged a War on Poverty, and
poverty won.

"That's just historically inaccurate," says Boteach. "If you
actually look at history you can see that policy interventions really do
make a difference. Between 1964 and 1973, the poverty rate fell by
more than 40 percent. More recently, the Recovery Act kept millions of
people out of poverty."

Indeed the Recovery Act included the largest (temporary) expansion of antipoverty programs in forty years. And according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, it kept more than 4.5 million people
out of poverty in 2009 through unemployment benefits, food stamps, the
Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) and the new
Making Work Pay tax credit. Those provisions will be difficult to
extend under the new Republican House "cut-as-you-go"
rule, which would require that they are offset by equivalent reductions
in other mandatory spending-not, for example, by closing tax loopholes
for corporations that shelter profits overseas. (In contrast, any new
tax breaks for the wealthy would not have to be offset at all. If this
doesn't speak volumes about the GOP's priorities and hypocrisy on the
deficit, I don't know what does.)

There is a mistaken notion that those who benefit from the kinds of
antipoverty measures included in the Recovery Act are part of a
"permanent underclass." But poverty isn't static-people are moving in
and out of it constantly, and 1 in 3 Americans will experience poverty
during their lifetime. So fighting poverty isn't about helping "the
other," it's about all of us. Yet seeing that common ground can be
difficult in tough times like this Great Recession. Often, people
understandably turn inward, doing their best simply to look after their
own families. On the flip side, times like these can lead to greater
empathy, an understanding that economic struggle isn't about being lazy,
or not wanting to work.

"The fact is we all have the potential to lose a job and experience
economic insecurity, and we want that safety net there for us as well,"
says Boteach. "People who never thought they would rely on food stamps
are now needing them-we hear that all the time. People who used to be
the ones volunteering at soup kitchens or working at service-providing
non-profits are now often forced to turn to those same services
themselves."

It was Michael Harrington's powerful examination of poverty published in 1962, The Other America,
that moved President Kennedy to begin taking the steps that culminated
in President Johnson's War on Poverty. Perhaps there is another
Harrington out there, but for Half in Ten and the hundreds of civil rights and antipoverty groups in the coalition, they are focusing on the stories of people who are experiencing poverty themselves.

"I think the most effective people I've heard talk about poverty are
low-income people," says Boteach. "We need to lift up those voices and
have them tell their stories." State coalition partners are working
hard to elevate voices and provide opportunities for storytelling-a lost
art that will serve both this movement and those who cover it well.

In Minnesota,
for example, the "Enough For All" event featured artists across the
state interpreting the concept of "enough"-as in having enough
resources, or having enough/being fed up-through performing arts, visual
arts and spoken word poetry. (This strikes me as akin to the WPA and
federal theatre project and the role it played in bringing attention to
the plight of the poor and unemployed.) The Colorado
coalition is organizing low-wage working women to raise awareness of
poverty in the state and advocate for policy solutions that will benefit
low- and moderate-income people. In DC, the Making the Tax Code Work for Working Families event gave people a chance to tell how the EITC and CTC impact their families.

"These tax credits make a big difference for working families, " says
Boteach. "Contrast that with the recent estate tax giveaway that
conservatives demanded. [It] benefited only the wealthiest one quarter
of one percentage point of families, adds to the deficit, and does
virtually nothing to create jobs and grow our economy. We need to start
drawing those contrasts now because we're going to have this debate on
tax policy again in two years."

More immediately, with a Republican House determined to slash 22
percent ($101 billion) from discretionary spending for fiscal year 2011,
Half in Ten will focus on the looming budget battle.

"Domestic discretionary sounds very cold and stale. What that
actually is-it's childcare, Head Start, federal housing, transportation,
job creation programs, job training. These are programs that not only
low-income families rely on, but are really building blocks in our
economy and communities," says Boteach. "It's one thing to say, 'We're
slashing spending.' Then you say what does this actually mean for
communities and families? What does it mean for job-creation? And then
it becomes real, it becomes human. A budget is a moral document, it's a statement of priorities."

Antipoverty advocates are making the case that policies supporting
lower- and middle-income people make fiscal and economic sense too.
Economist Harry Holzer has shown that the cost of sustained childhood
poverty is more than $500 billion per year, or 4 percent of GDP, roughly evenly divided between lowered productivity, increased health care costs and increased crime-related costs.

"By making smart investments up front now in children we can actually
save money in our budget later on," says Boteach. "But that doesn't
necessarily show up in a 5 to 10 year budget window."

As coalition members and activists write op-eds and letters to the
editor, call, write and lobby their federal and state representatives
and tell their stories, they will also be focused on holding elected
officials responsible for creating jobs, preserving critical services
and expanding the middle-class.

"There needs to be an emphasis, always, on accountability," says Boteach. "That's why we did an interactive poverty map
by Congressional district. You can see the poverty rates by race,
gender, and child poverty for your district and then figure out how your
member is voting on these issues."

But growing the antipoverty movement will require the media and
elected officials to start paying more attention to those who are
struggling, fighting and organizing. When the US Census published
record poverty numbers for 2009 our warp-speed news cycle ran the
headlines and then just as quickly moved on. The 2010 data which will
be released in September will likely be even worse due to the sustained
unemployment over 9 percent. Half in Ten and other advocates will be
ready to speak to this moral, economic, and political crisis. But it
remains to be seen who will listen, and for how long.

"There are always a lot of headlines about poverty the day that the
data comes out," says Boteach. "But then those headlines fade, and the
problem hasn't gone away. What we need is a sustained focus by the
media and our elected officials, and we need advocacy groups and
grassroots activists to keep making that push."

Call it a war on poverty, call it expanding the middle-class, call it
promoting economic security. Call it whatever you want, but start
making the connections between the plight of the middle-class and
lower-income Americans, and get involved.