The poverty of debate on deprivation in the 2012 US presidential election
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Version 0 of 1. Poverty is America's economic Hurricane Sandy. Close to 50 million Americans – a number equal to the populations of the states hardest hit by the devastating storm – are below the poverty line. But one wouldn't know it from the silence of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on the topic. In contrast to the physical storm, neither presidential candidate has promised the full resources of the government that they wish to lead in turning the tide on this searing issue. Their dual muteness is shocking given what's at stake. One in six Americans is poor. Due to the ravages of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, their ranks have grown to the highest level in almost a generation. Most of those in poverty are the working poor – those employed but who don't earn enough to live – and their children. Though the poor are overwhelmingly white, poor people are disproportionately black and brown. One in three African Americans is poor, as is one in four Latinos. Though poverty has grown, when it comes to actual discussion during this year's presidential race, you can hear a pin drop. Neither during the campaign nor his term in office has President Obama given one speech dedicated to poverty. In his second run for the presidency, besides the wayward "47%" comment that the poor "did not take responsibility for their lives", Mitt Romney hasn't either. Poverty was barely discussed during any of the presidential debates. The topic is nowhere to be found on either candidate's website. An absence of real talk on poverty is not a surprise. Ronald Reagan successfully fused the issue of poverty with racial animosity in his first bid for the White House. In 1976, the "Great Commnunicator" – playing off of southern white resentment of economic and social change in the 1960s and 1970s – falsely labeled America's poor as black "welfare queens". Ever since, this distortion of poverty has served as an effective way to get votes from the white working class. The issue became radioactive for Democrats and remains so. Republicans even managed to jujitsu President Bill Clinton into dismantling the program of federal assistance for the poor instituted by Franklin D Roosevelt. Reagan's poverty slight-of-hand worked so well that Mitt Romney, in a tight race, tried it himself. Trailing among white women, Romney unleashed a summer-long attack on welfare. Romney falsely accused Obama of secretly rolling back the program's work requirement and five-year cap instituted under Clinton. "Under Obama's plan … they just send you your check," the ad bogusly asserted. But the president never did such a thing, and the lie was eventually exposed. Romney's attempt to gain votes through racial division consequently ran out of gas. But that wouldn't stop the campaign from trying again. Last week, in a move also aimed at white women, Republican vice-presidential-nominee Paul Ryan gave a speech on the poor. Ryan pledged his ticket's support for "upward mobility" to end poverty. While laying out his vision, he faulted America's expansion of racial and economic justice programs under Democratic President Lyndon Johnson for the current iniquities. Oddly, he claimed that the best way to increase economic opportunity for the poor is to end the very education, health, and work-support programs that poor men and women use to exit impoverishment. Polls taken in the speech's wake show that Ryan's desire to pull up the economic ladder didn't fare well. Like the first attempt, the latest political push on the poor ran out of gas. Though neither presidential candidate may have addressed it straight on as a public policy issue, poverty <em>can</em> be rolled back and millions lifted it from it. In the last 50 years, poverty has come down during periods when strong economic growth meets aggressive government policies to catapult the poor into the working and middle classes. These programs – specifically in education, health, housing, transportation, work-skill development and racial discrimination – are what's truly needed to make America an economically fairer place. America has slowly started to recover from recession. It's time that the country get back to the business of focusing on the poor. But instead, what we've gotten is the continuation of policies which extend the 30 year-long reorientation of government from the needs of the many towards the needs of the super-rich. The numbers show it. Poverty is at a record high, but so is the top 1%'s share of national income. Poverty and income inequality are moving in tandem, in the wrong direction. Only renewed action to make the economy work for everybody will reverse it. Sadly, instead of redirecting the economic winds to everyone's benefit, both candidates are all too eager to continue to ride the waves of economic and political inertia. |