Listen to Sam and Melissa discuss the anti-poverty legacy of Rev. King on Mic Check Radio’s Progress to Go Podcast

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. shifted his focus in the dwindling years of his life to an audacious, but achievable goal: ending poverty in the United States.

In his book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, King argued that the United States must change its attitude and approach toward the treatment of its poor citizens. He reasoned that since poverty knew no racial boundaries, he couldn’t limit his call for congressional action to assist only black Americans.

“In the treatment of poverty nationally, one fact stands out,” King wrote in 1967. “There are twice as many white poor as [black] poor in the United States. Therefore I will not dwell on the experiences of poverty that derive from racial discrimination, but will discuss the poverty that affects white and [black] alike.”

This was a radical—and unpopular—change for the preacher who is best known for pushing voting, employment, housing, and other civil rights for black Americans. At this point in his career, during what would become the final months of his life, he was widening his field of vision to seek an end to poverty among all Americans.

It’s appropriate as we pause to celebrate this year’s national holiday in memory of King’s 81st birthday to recall the relevance of his final struggle to the contemporary fight against poverty.

The most recent poverty data for 2008 reveal an America where nearly 40 million people—13.2 percent of Americans—live in poverty, and nearly one in three, or 31.9 percent, struggle to make ends meet at twice the poverty level.

Significant racial disparities persist in the data. Just as it was in the time when King preached, more whites than blacks or Latinos live in poverty in absolute terms. But blacks and Latinos disproportionately suffer material deprivation. In 2008, 8.6 percent of whites lived in poverty, compared to 24.7 percent of blacks and 23.2 of Latinos. The data are expected to be significantly worse for 2009, a year when rising unemployment pushed many families closer to economic instability.

Black and Latino Americans also continue to trail white Americans in unemployment rates and wages. The unemployment rate for white men over 20 was 9.8 percent in December 2009, but for black men over 20 it was nearly double that at 16.9 percent, and for Latino men it was a high 12.8 percent. Bureau of Labor Statistic figures for 2008 report that the median usual weekly earning for full-time wage and salary workers was $742 for white Americans, but only $589 for African-Americans and even lower at $529 for Latinos, underscoring the need to tackle racial disparities even as we aim to end poverty and create jobs for all Americans.

These numbers represent an affront to our moral sensibilities, as well as our economic self-interest and national competitiveness. The Center for American Progress released a report in 2007 showing that child poverty alone costs the United States $500 billion a year in lost productivity, higher health costs, and expenditures in the criminal justice system. We need national leadership from our government to systemically tackle this growing problem.

Nearly 40 years ago, King understood that previous national efforts to end poverty were stymied by a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem’s scope:

While none of these remedies [housing assistance, improved educational facilities, income assistance] in itself is unsound, all have a fatal disadvantage. The programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis or at a similar rate of development. Housing measures have fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies. They have been piecemeal and pygmy. Educational reforms have been even more sluggish and entangled in bureaucratic stalling and economy-dominated decisions. Family assistance stagnated in neglect and then suddenly was discovered to be the central issue on the basis of hasty and superficial studies. At no time has a total, coordinated and fully adequate program been conceived. As a consequence, fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.

King’s observations hold true more than 40 years after his death, but 2010 is the year to change that.

Candidate Obama embraced during his campaign the goal of cutting poverty in half in 10 years. The Half in Ten campaign is advocating for the administration to translate that commitment into a government-wide target that can break down silos across government agencies, engage the private sector and the public, and animate cross-cutting solutions and enhanced coordination.

We can start by ensuring that job-creation proposals lift up the hardest-hit communities. The last economic recovery holds the distinct dishonor of being the first on record where poverty rates rose and median income fell despite rising profits and productivity. Congress must take three key steps to avoid a repeat performance and ensure that low-income, minority, and other traditionally vulnerable communities have the opportunity to participate in economic recovery.

First, Congress must invest in direct job creation that addresses long-neglected needs in communities. There is an immense need for workers that can provide health care services and weatherize homes; there are neighborhoods where deteriorating infrastructure calls for upgrades and new construction. Congress can put people directly back to work while simultaneously addressing unmet needs among populations suffering the most in this recession by funding direct jobs in these and other areas, investing in national service programs, and resourcing summer jobs programs.

Second, any sound strategy to rebuild the economy will recognize that our moral inclinations happen to gel with our economic goals. Economists across the ideological spectrum point out that helping the most vulnerable workers and families through food stamps, extensions of unemployment and COBRA health benefits, and refundable tax credits drives the kind of economic demand that keeps small businesses humming and ripples throughout the economy.

Finally, aid to states and localities makes common sense as a strategy to prevent further job losses and service cuts. If Congress fails to act, 900,000 more workers will lose their livelihood and there will be further cuts to the services that sustain Main Street America, including communities of color.

King directed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in late 1967 to take the civil rights movement on yet another march on Washington, D.C. But unlike the one four years earlier that was the setting for his memorable “I Have A Dream” speech, King planned to deliver a speech that would speak to the “waves of the nation’s poor and disinherited” and to lead groups of poor people of all races in the spring of 1968 to demand “at least jobs or income for all.”

He never led that march, nor delivered a singular defining speech on poverty. His assassination in 1968 left that unfulfilled. Still, King left writings that reveal he understood the essential nature of poverty in the United States and the benefits that surely will follow in its demise.

What’s more, King plainly articulated the reality that continues to plague American society 40 years after his death. Just as it was in the late 1960s, prolonged and pronounced economic racial disparities and entrenched poverty across all races remains a source of friction and instability in 21st century America.

Candidate Obama spoke similarly of the need to tackle poverty during his historic presidential campaign. Now President Obama has an important opportunity to fulfill that promise by articulating and implementing a national goal to cut the U.S. poverty rate in half between 2010 and 2020, starting with a job creation strategy to lift up the hardest-hit communities.

Or as King said, “The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. . .The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct, and immediate abolition of poverty.”

Sam Fulwood is a Senior Fellow and Melissa Boteach is the Half in Ten Manager at American Progress.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was a critical step to help us avert another Great Depression, and is already projected to have saved or created approximately 1.6 million jobs. Yet even as the economy turns the corner, economists are predicting prolonged periods of high unemployment. President Obama’s speech included strategies to tackle the jobless rate by helping small businesses, investing in infrastructure, and growing clean energy jobs.

In addition to these kinds of investments, however, we can and we must enact policies to ensure that job creation efforts lift up all Americans, including those in low-income communities that were in crisis even before the Great Recession of 2007-2009 began. While the average unemployment rate is 10 percent, jobless rates are disproportionately high among women heads of households (11.4 percent), Hispanics (12.7 percent), and African-American men over 20 (16.9 percent).

To that end, the Half in Ten Campaign is urging Congress to act urgently to create jobs through:

• Aid to states and localities to save jobs and prevent cuts to needed services.
• Investments in work supports and safety net programs. Investing in programs such as unemployment insurance, SNAP/Food Stamps, refundable tax credits, and childcare/early Head Start programs not only helps the most vulnerable but also helps all Americans by spurring economic demand that will ripple throughout the economy to create jobs.
• A program to create public-service jobs that meet community needs, such as childcare and weatherization, while offering employment opportunities to marginalized communities.
• Strategic investments in our national service programs to offer job opportunities to young workers while strengthening the capacity of nonprofits to respond to growing poverty.
• On-the-job training and other programs that provide incentives to train and hire low-income workers.

The Half in Ten Campaign encourages the Obama administration and Congress to act now to create jobs for all Americans, including those who have traditionally been left behind during economic recoveries. Without a focused government effort on including traditionally excluded communities, poverty rates will remain unconscionably high as will disparities by race and gender.

A strategy to create decent-wage jobs and ensure that low-income workers have the opportunity to access them will be at the heart of both comprehensive poverty reduction efforts and rebuilding our economy to ensure shared prosperity for all. Half in Ten looks forward to working with Congress and the Obama administration to promote job creation that reflects these principles.

Originally Posted at: americanprogressaction.org

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When: Tuesday, December 8, 2:00 – 3:00p.m., Eastern time

In just one year, the number of people in households that sometimes lacked the money for enough nutritious food rose from 36 million to 49 million – the highest number on record. Among them were 17 million children – 4 million more in 2008 than in 2007.

This is called food insecurity. The recession is making it worse.
It is hurting children.

Learn More:

• What the USDA food security survey means
• How to use the data compellingly, simply, and accurately
• Research showing how food insecurity hurts children
• What policy choices can halt this very disturbing trend

Presenters:

• James D. Weill, President, Food Research and Action Center (FRAC)
• Dr. Deborah Frank, Founder and Principal Investigator, Children’s HealthWatch; Professor of Pediatrics at Boston U. School of Medicine and Director of the Grow Clinic at Boston Medical Center
• Deborah Weinstein, Executive Director, Coalition on Human Needs
• Moderator: George A. Braley, Senior Vice President of Government Relations and Public Policy, Feeding America

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Another week passes and still no up or down Senate vote to extend unemployment insurance. This is no time to play politics. This is no time for “dithering.”

According to the National Employment Law Project, every day 7,000 additional workers are running out of unemployment benefits. That means that since the House passed its bill to extend unemployment insurance on September 22, approximately 266,000 workers have been left high and dry while the Senate continues to delay a vote on this crucial legislation—and 7,000 workers yesterday, 7,000 workers today, and 7,000 workers every day that the Senate puts off this vote are being pushed closer and closer to this brink.

The Senate bill, called the Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009, H.R. 3548, would extend jobless benefits to all states for 14 weeks, with an additional six weeks for states with more than 8.5 percent unemployment, and all without adding one penny to the deficit.

Unemployment insurance is the first line of defense for jobless families in troubled times, bringing economic stability to entire communities. The current job market’s woes, however, have tested the program as never before. In fact, according to Department of Labor Statistics there is only one job for every six unemployed workers.

It’s not getting easier for these people to find jobs, either. Employers shed 263,000 jobs in September, putting the unemployment rate at 9.8 percent. Long-term unemployment has reached record highs and continues to rise at about three times the rate of growth in overall unemployment. And while the jobless rates for all major worker groups are much higher than at the start of the recession in 2007, black and Hispanic workers have faced double-digit rates of unemployment and are even more likely to be among the long-term unemployed.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed by Congress and signed into law in February, took important steps to extend benefits for the long-term unemployed and boosted weekly benefits. It also provided billions of dollars in incentives for states to modernize their unemployment insurance systems, producing an unprecedented wave of state UI reforms that include the expansion of benefits for low-wage and part-time workers as well as for those who may leave work due to family responsibility conflicts.

But the additional weeks are already running out—according to estimates from NELP, up to 600,000 Americans will have exhausted benefits provided by the Recovery Act by October’s end. And about 1.3 million workers will exhaust their unemployment benefits by the end of this year.

These benefits are not retroactive. While workers who ran out of benefits will be eligible if Congress passes an extension, they will never be able to recoup the benefits they lost in the interim, pushing them closer to poverty. Every day of delay in getting the bill to the president’s desk translates into benefits the unemployed will never be able to access.

Helping the unemployed helps us all. As the unemployed run out of benefits, they are less likely to spend money to stimulate the economy and more vulnerable to home foreclosures—both trends that could stall economic recovery. Moreover, unemployment benefits are not just social insurance. The income support they provide allows workers to take advantage of training opportunities, retooling their skills for a leg up in a new economy, and ultimately translating into a stronger economy in the long run.

It is critical that Congress put the needs of struggling families first by quickly and decisively extending UI benefits.

Alexandra Cawthorne is a Research Associate at the Center for American Progress. Melissa Boteach is the Half in Ten Manager at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The Census Bureau released data throughout September that revealed growing poverty in 2008, spelling hard times for families who were struggling even before the recession. Half in Ten: The Campaign to Cut Poverty in Half in Ten Years and the Center for American Progress Action Fund have organized this data by congressional district, with additional breakdowns on child poverty, women in poverty, and poverty among racial minorities.

“This data offers lawmakers a more detailed look into the growing poverty rates among their own constituents,” said Melissa Boteach, manager of the Half in Ten Campaign. “We look forward to working with Congress and the administration to advance the necessary policies to help those most in need during this time of economic turmoil while laying the groundwork for a shared economic recovery” emphasized Boteach.

On September 29, the government released the latest batch of data, which showed how states and localities were affected during the recession’s first year. However, the data does not incorporate the sharp increase in the unemployment rate, which averaged 5.8 percent last year and is expected to average 9.3 percent in 2009 according to the Economic Policy Institute.

The 2008 picture is particularly bleak for women, children, and minorities. The breakdown by congressional district reveals that the child poverty rate is above 30 percent in 36 districts across 16 states. “Such persistently high child poverty rates represent a moral and economic challenge for our nation, one that it is imperative that we address if we are to fulfill the promise of equal opportunity,” emphasized Winnie Stachelberg, Senior Vice President for External Affairs at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a Half in Ten partner organization.

Meanwhile, disparities by race and gender continue unabated. Women’s poverty rates are above the national average in over half of the congressional districts. In 188 congressional districts, more than one in four African Americans live below the poverty level and in 145 congressional districts Latino poverty rates are over 25 percent. “Our elected leaders need to remember that behind each of these troubling statistics are willing workers and families forced to make difficult choices with few good options,” said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a Half in Ten partner. “We need both short- and long-term plans to help families through the worst of the recession while keeping our eye on the bigger picture to ensure that education, training, and economic opportunity are available to those who need it most.”

On September 10, the Census Bureau released its national estimates showing that the number of people living in poverty in 2008 rose from 37.3 million (12.5 percent) to 39.8 million (13.2 percent). Next year’s numbers, which will reflect 2009’s dismal job losses, are expected to be significantly worse.

In light of these data and the increase in the jobless rate, the Half in Ten Campaign and its partners are calling for an extension of unemployment insurance in all states to help prevent those still searching for a job from slipping into poverty.

“The huge increase in poverty clearly points out the need for continuing aid to help the unemployed and states struggling to maintain vital services in the face of growing need,” said Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs, a Half in Ten partner. “Without this aid we risk stamping out a fledgling economic recovery before its full impact has been felt by millions of Americans.” The House passed a 13-week extension of unemployment insuranceSeptember 22 for states with disproportionately high unemployment. The Half in Ten Campaign is urging the Senate to build on these efforts by extending jobless benefits to all those in need.

And while extension of unemployment benefits is critical in the short term, the Half in Ten Campaign is also advocating for a longer-term commitment to systemically tackling poverty in America:

“These data underscore the importance of setting national poverty-reduction goals such as cutting poverty in half in 10 years. While the economy was growing between 2001 and 2007, we saw the unprecedented trend of more Americans falling into poverty. Without a focused government effort and absent additional assistance, poverty rates will continue to rise as will disparities by race and gender,” stated Half in Ten’s Boteach. “As we rebuild our economy, we need to be intentional about doing so in a way that promotes shared prosperity and sets benchmarks to achieve significant poverty-reduction progress.”

Find 2008 poverty data for your congressional district.

The updated standards for this Modern Poverty Measure would derive from a study independently conducted by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).  Whereas the current measure sets the poverty threshold according to the cost of food required for a minimal diet, the new measure would more accurately reflect the rising cost of other “basic physical necessities” such as clothing, housing, health care, and child care.  Improving the current measure, this legislation would also take into account income assistance (EITC, housing assistance, food stamps, etc.) and unavoidable expenses (due to taxes, work, medical bills), as well as adjust measurement based on regional differences in the cost of living.

In addition to an updated measurement standard, the MAP Act would commission the NAS to further develop a decent living standard and a medical care risk measure – to calculate people’s ability to pay for additional expenses and for necessary medical care, respectively.  Rep. McDermott clarified, “”The current economic crisis has reminded every American just how vulnerable we all are and I think it has renewed our sense of pulling together as one nation and one people.“ Parallel legislation in the Senate will be sponsored by Senator Chris Dodd in the coming weeks.

Congress listened to advocates, and included unemployment reform in ARRA, allocating $7 billion for the project. And these reforms have begun to reach unemployed workers across the country.  Earlier this week, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) released a report (PDF) detailing the “unprecedented wave” of unemployment insurance reforms that has swept across the country since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) became law on February 17th, 2009.  

In just four months, 25 states have enacted reforms to modernize and expand their unemployment insurance programs, either by considering a worker’s most recent work history and earnings to determine their qualification for UI benefits or specifically offering unemployment benefits to historically-disadvantaged employees, such as women, part-time workers, and the long term unemployed. The states that made these reforms were Alaska, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, and West Virginia. These states joined the 8 states and the District of Columbia that had already made these reforms.

In addition to permanent UI reform, 21 states with high unemployment rates have also extended unemployment benefits to cover an extra 13-20 weeks.  Of the $7 billion in federal incentive funds, the NELP report estimates that $3.65 billion will be provided to the states in order to help over one million jobless workers collect the benefits they need.

Catherine Rampell, the economics editor of nytimes.com, emphasizes that most of these state unemployment insurance reforms are new changes that indeed expand program eligibility, as opposed to “technical ‘fixes’ to existing laws.” The NELP report further highlights the broad bi-partisan support of these reforms, indicating that legislation has been signed and enacted by nine Republican governors. About a dozen states are still in debate over reforms.

When Congress passed its Budget Resolution on April 27, it generally endorsed the President’s priorities.  The Budget Resolution only answers some of the year’s policy-making questions:  what, and, at least as far as the annual appropriations bottom line is concerned, how much.  Advocates were pleased with the “what” answers:  Congress committed to grapple with comprehensive health care reform and climate change, two of the President’s top priorities.  The Budget Resolution also commits Congress to many other legislative tasks, including reauthorizing child nutrition programs, making student loans cheaper by reducing the role of private lenders, and creating a home visiting programfor new parents, as the President proposed. 

For the most part, the Budget Resolution is silent on “how.”  It sets up a “reserve fund” for health reform, for example, but that is only a place-holder for all the work to come.  Nothing is prescribed about how health coverage will be expanded, how much it will cost, or how it will be paid for.  The reserve fund will allow Congress to work out those answers in the coming months.  For health care and student loans, Congress showed its serious commitment to take action by requiring legislation to be taken up in the Senate by October 15.  Debate would be limited (no filibusters) so that the legislation can pass with a simple majority.  (For more on the road ahead for health care, see the article in this issue.)  The Budget Resolution creates a welter of reserve funds.  (See the description of reserve funds and more detail on all these place-holders)

As for “how much,” the Budget Resolution provides a total of $1.086 trillion for annual appropriations, agreeing with the President’s total recommendation for military spending and cutting his non-defense recommendation by about $10 billion, to $529.8 billion.  The Budget Resolution allows the possibility of more spending in certain areas if Congress later chooses to adopt the greater spending levels.  These “cap adjustments” include a possible additional $1.9 billion for home energy assistance (LIHEAP), $485 million more for Social Security Administration disability reviews and Supplemental Security Income redeterminations, $311 million more for HHS health care fraud and abuse control, and $50 million for Department of Labor Unemployment Insurance payment reviews. 

Now, as the Appropriations Committees prepare to divide up this amount among a dozen subcommittees, the President has released the detailed version of his budget, showing proposed funding levels for each annually appropriated program.  Congress will now have the job of trying to squeeze the President’s recommendations into the smaller total they approved.

Read More

A detailed chart of human needs funding in the Obama budget

On Friday, May 15, Half in Ten joined the Center for American Progress and the Center for Working Families to release a report that provides a policy roadmap for New York State to achieve mass-scale, energy-efficiency retrofits of 1 million housing units over the next five years.

Download the report (pdf)

Download the executive summary (pdf)

Watch the event