‘Political Will Needed to End Poverty’

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/04/27/political-will-needed-to-end-poverty/

‘Political Will Needed to End Poverty’

by James Parks, Apr 27, 2007


This is the second in a series of posts on the findings of a new report by the Center for American Progress on the nation’s poor, From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half.

With the economy growing at its slowest pace in four years, the number of Americans living in poverty is growing. It will take renewed political will to combat this growing poverty.

The Commerce Department reported today that economic growth slowed to a near crawl of 1.3 percent in the first three months of 2007, the worst performance in four years. Meanwhile, consumer prices jumped by a 3.4 percent annual rate in the first quarter, after falling in the last quarter of 2006.

The upshot is that prices went up and there was less economic growth to offset the increased inflation. These trends hurt all working people, but the poor get hit hardest. About 37 million people—one in eight Americans—officially are considered poor, while one-third of Americans are defined as low income. And the numbers are growing. Over the past six years, the number of poor people has grown by more than 5 million.

A major study, From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half, by the Poverty Task Force of the Center for American Progress (CAP) takes a look at the extent of poverty and outlines a pragmatic plan to reduce it by half over the next 10 years.

We can certainly afford to achieve this modest goal: CAP estimates the combined cost of the main recommendations in the report would cost about $90 billion a year, about 0.8 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. That’s just a fraction of the almost $400 billion a year spent on the Bush administration’s tax cuts for the wealthy.

FULL story at link.

[jody]

1. "Political Will" is not enough, not one viable proposal has been made. All I see are proposals to

redistribute wealth from those who work to those who do not.

I support charity for every one who is unable to work for health reasons.

I also support viable programs that will help move unemployed and underemployed people into jobs that will let them earn a decent living.

Unfortunately very few successes have occurred since Lyndon Johnson introduced his War on Poverty in 1964.

I'm sad because I have many friends in the unemployed and underemployed ranks who dream of a better life but not one politician or expert has come to their rescue.

In the meantime, high paying jobs are being outsourced with bipartisan support and workers moved into low paying jobs.