I've been thinking about that question for a while, even more so since Obama's speech, a speech I thought was terrific. But no where in that speech or in the rhetoric of either party since the nominees were determined have I heard about what will be done for the poor. Yes, we hear rhetoric about those who work hard and play by the rules, and we even occasionally hear that John McCain voted 19 times against raising the minimum wage. But we do not hear specifics about the needs of those who are truly poor.
We laugh at John McCain for his quip that being rich starts at the ridiculously high threshold of $5 million / year. But we are oblivious to how being poor is defined: a single person making $10,500 or a family earning $21,500 is no longer considered poor and thus is ineligible for many aid programs. So I learned in reading my Washington Post this morning.
It was a piece in "Outlook" wherein I could read all kinds of columns about the presidential campaign. Instead, what caught my eye was a piece by Phyllis Caldwell, president of the Washington Area Women's Foundation. It is entitled A Clear-Eyed Look At Regional Poverty. That is the source for the federal levels quoted above the fold, about which Caldwell writes
These unrealistically low figures, determined by the federal poverty formula in place since the 1960s that sets the standard for many assistance programs, do not reflect what it really costs to raise a family today. The formula that determines the poverty level is based largely on the cost of food and doesn't include the costs of housing, health care, transportation and energy, which have been rising faster than food.
Think about that for a moment. Imagine that your salary was determined largely by the costs of food, and then adjusted only periodically. You would not be being paid for recent increases in food costs caused by the skyrocketing costs of transportation and compounded by the switching of grain production from food to energy. At least most of us receive some adjustment based on increases in the overall cost of living.
Caldwell provides a link to a calculator provided by Wider Opportunities for Women which allows you to find the real costs for those in the DC metro area (it is the button on the right), for which if you walk the links it might help locals plan their budgets. And if you want to determine what the level of economic self-sufficiency for where you live you can walk another chaing of links until you get to this site. The first links can also help you find access to programs that can help you.
I live in Arlington Virginia. The average price of a single family home is well over 600,000. We spend over 19,000/year to educate each of our public school children. We are NOT considered an especially wealthy jurisdiction, but we are an expensive place to live. We have superb public transportation (Metro and buses), great public services (usually all of our streets are plowed within 24 hours of the end of a snowfall). I noted the figures Caldwell cited in the following paragraph:
For example, what is the real measure of economic self-sufficiency for a single mother with an infant and a preschooler? In Prince George's County, she needs to earn at least $55,298 a year. In the District, the same mother needs to earn at least $58,621. The figure goes up to $69,881 in Arlington County and $70,975 in Montgomery. Visit http://www.wowonline.org/ to see the poverty cutoff for your family configuration in your county. These are realistic measures that take into account the true costs for families in the Washington area, and this new standard is helping us and many other nonprofits do a better job.
We have raised the minimum wage, finally, but the national standard does not take into account the extraordinary costs some people face. The rural poor often have much higher transportation costs because there is no public transit available. Here in an expensive metropolitan area food and housing costs tend to be much more expensive. And all of us are facing skyrocketing medical costs.
We have a welter of programs, federal, state, local and private, designed to help those less well off. Yet despite this far too many of our people are so far behind economically that they realistically have little hope of advancement. This is compounded by the cuts that have been made various programs, whether for Section 8 Housing, or money for college funds, or in the funding of Medicaid payments for health care for the poor.
Obama rightly talks about the middle class. And one could argue that his rhetoric about children who have the grades and the desire to go to college but not the money includes the children of the poor. Yet in my more than a decade as a teacher, in Prince George's County MD - the wealthiest majority black political jurisdiction in the US - I have seen far too often when those I am able to determine are poor cannot maintain the good grades:
... they often miss school because of illness
... they get insufficient nutrition
... far too often they have to work to assist the family
. . and I am sure you can cite other illustrations of how the children of the poor are still being left behind in far too many ways.
I have quoted several times the famous words of Hubert Humphrey. Given that he was a mayor (of Minneapolis) of the region in which this week's political convention will take place at the time he came to national attention, perhaps it is not out of place for me to quote those words again, words spoken in 1977 at the dedication of a federal office bilding named for him:
The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
We have certainly come a great distance from the time before the programs of the New Deal and of equal importance those of the Great Society (and a belated happy 100th birthday LBJ, who was born August 27, 1908, and who should have been commemorated on Wednesday at the Convention). But too often we overlook how many people are still caught in poverty. We talk about the millions without health insurance, and fail to recognize that in our efforts to move people from welfare to work we remove from many the only real access they have had to health care.
I am not an economist. I will never run for public office. My public service consists of my teaching, for which I receive a reasonable salary (unlike the majority of the teachers in this nation), and my writing, through which I use whatever power of words I may have to advocate on behalf of others.
I acknowledge that the middle class, broadly defined, has seen its relative position declining, a process that began in the previous 12 year period of Republican presidencies, and which has accelerated during the past 8 years. What is more serious is the number of people slipping back into effective poverty, and the increasing number of people not only losing hope, but suffering the permanent scars of poverty from a relatively early age - from malnutrition, from disease, by falling further behind in school readiness at the same time we are increasing the standards by which we measure their performance.
Perhaps it is not politically "wise" to discuss poverty openly, because the poor vote at a very low rate: participation in elections correlates strongly with income, which of course correlates strongly with education. But if we aspire to a society that includes all, our rhetoric is a necessary first step towards the actions necessary for that inclusion.
So let me end this bloviation as I began it, in the title, with a question that I do not see being seriously and directly addressed at this point in our election cyckle:
What about the poor?
Peace.