Analysis

The False Assumption: Everyone Wants to End Poverty

The debate about income inequality and poverty in America is generally carried out with the underlying assumption that everyone wants to end poverty, and there are well-meaning though different approaches to doing so.

But what if that’s not true? What if the assumption is false? Should we continue carrying on this corrupted debate?   Or should we look for other means to address the scourge of poverty in America?

Even before we examine the issue more deeply, it seems obvious on the surface that there should not be rampant poverty and homelessness in the wealthiest country in the history of the world that has the ingenuity to put a man on the moon, and computers in peoples’ laps.

Two recent reports – one by The New York Times and the other by the Economic Policy Institute – provide convincing evidence that, in fact, if income distribution trends would have remained as they were prior to 1979, the poverty rate in America would have fallen to 0 percent some 10 to 20 years ago.

So why didn’t that happen?

In a recent post on AlterNet, writer Paul Buchheit argues that the nearly 1 in 2 Americans living in or near poverty are now being treated like expendable and disposable commodities. These are the people whom former presidential candidate Mitch Romney and other financial elites refer to as “the takers” not “the makers.”

If you are a member of the ruling financial elite in this country – and have very little or no contact with people outside of your class and believe that if they are living so poorly it must be their fault – why would you not advocate for disposing of these dregs and drags on your free-market, Machiavellian capitalist aspirations?

Do we call people out for not only perpetuating the problem, but doing so in order to exploit and profit from it?

That’s not a rhetorical question; it actually seems to be happening.

New York Times columnist David Brooks provided the intellectual rational, such as it is, for the belief that poverty is caused by the poor and not by income inequality when he wrote that we should be focusing on the “interrelated social problems of the poor” rather than the well-documented, siphoning off of the nation’s wealth by the financial elite.

But Buchheit points out some of the ways that the wealthy not only scapegoat the poor in America, but carry out an intentional strategy to exploit them.

These strategies include depleting the wealth of the middle class and working poor. The economic data supports the notion that since the Great Recession in 2008 the amount of wealth owned by the top 1% of Americans has grown exponentially, while the rest of us have gotten less. According to a recent report by the Levy Economics Institute, it’s even worse than that: the richest 10% took 116 percent of the income gains between 2009-2012, with the top 1 percent taking 95 percent. Median wealth, on the other hand, dropped about 40 percent from 2007 to 2013.

Another tactic used to exploit people living on the brink is stripping away their income. According to the National Employment Law Project (NELP), nearly three-fifths of the jobs regained during the recovery (2009 to the present) have been low-wage jobs ($7.69 to $13.83 per hour) – the kind that made up just one-fifth of the jobs before the recession.

Real estate owners are also making housing of any kind unaffordable to most people. As the National Low Income Housing Coalition reports, “In no state can a full-time minimum wage worker afford a one-bedroom or a two-bedroom rental unit at Fair Market Rent.” They also point out that more than one-eighth of the nation’s supply of low-income housing has been permanently lost since 2001. A chilling result of this: more than 600,000 Americans were homeless on any given night in 2013.

What little disposable income a “taker” may have gets fleeced (ironically, taken away) by predatory pay day lenders, rental centers, and assorted fines and fees such as those that bolstered the local economy in Ferguson.

Next, of course, comes criminalization and imprisonment. While no one involved in creating and profiting from the financial crisis – that led to millions of lost jobs and foreclosed homes, and trillions of dollars in lost wealth – went to jail, more low-income Americans are being imprisoned than ever before. And with the privatization of prisons, inmates now often have to pay for their stays (even while awaiting trial).

Even when you ‘play by the rules’ and manage to get into affordable housing, as I did last year, they find ways to make it more difficult for you to maintain the secure foothold you need to work your way up.

A legislative provision in last year’s Farm Bill excludes people from receiving a portion of their SNAP assistance if they do not pay their own utilities separate from their rent. (I found this out when I demanded a fair hearing with Social Services regarding my SNAP benefits.) When you are in affordable housing—or receive Emergency Housing Assistance—you pay one-third of your income for rent, which helps cover the cost of utilities. But you are not billed directly for those utilities, so this new provision allows the government to cut off or significantly reduce your SNAP benefits.

Well, I could go on and on painting this picture of what it’s really like to be stuck in poverty in America, but here’s the main point: Do we go on debating this problem with good faith that both sides are determined to end this gruesome reality, or do we call people out for not only perpetuating the problem, but doing so in order to exploit and profit from it?

In previous articles for Talk Poverty, I’ve called for a paradigm shift—an intellectually violent revolution in which one conceptual world view is replaced by another. I don’t think we can have that intellectually violent revolution until we realize that all sides of the debate are not equally determined or committed to solving the problem of poverty in America. We have to admit this before we can possibly fix the problem.

What exactly do you want, 1%ers? How many more pounds of flesh will it take before you allow the rest of us in America to exist with a modicum of ease and dignity?

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Analysis

Just Getting a Job is Not as Easy as It Sounds

There is one factor that simultaneously promises to reduce recidivism, save money, and reduce poverty for a significant portion of the United States: employment for formerly incarcerated citizens. Employment is both the lynchpin of successful reentry and one of the most difficult goals to realize. Even individuals with marketable skills and great tenacity can struggle for months or years to find a job.

This problem of low employment rates among reentering citizens is simply too large to ignore. As many as one hundred million adults in the United States have criminal records. People with criminal backgrounds face all the same frustrations as other job seekers: a sluggish job market; a low response rate to applications; and the stigma of long term unemployment. However, in my role recruiting businesses willing to consider reentering citizens for employment, I have seen that there are additional barriers for people with criminal records that make job-seeking especially frustrating and disheartening.

One common obstacle to employment is often the lack of appropriate identification.   Many individuals’ personal effects go missing during the process of arrest and incarceration or due to the instability of their housing. Getting the appropriate documentation to replace lost identification can be difficult and time-consuming, especially from out-of-state agencies. This seemingly simple process can delay the start of a job search for weeks or months. As a consequence of this delay, many former offenders end up settling for informal work, putting themselves at risk for both wage theft and further involvement with the justice system.

If we are to address the root causes of inter-generational poverty, we must dismantle the barriers formerly incarcerated citizens face

However, stereotypes and myths remain the biggest barriers to reentry employment. Many believe “once a criminal, always a criminal,” despite studies that show that past crimes are not necessarily predictors of future actions. And, since background checks have become relatively inexpensive and easy to access through the Internet, the ability of potential employers to act on these stereotypes and myths to discriminate against people based on a criminal record has increased. Additionally, many commercially available background checks contain errors that applicants struggle to refute. Most retail chains now do background checks and, as a result, entry-level jobs that used to be available to reentering citizens are now out of reach. Further, many national companies have now outsourced this hiring process so local managers have no control over whether to hire someone with a criminal background. They simply receive an application marked hirable or un-hirable. For this reason, individuals returning from incarceration are less able to depend on their existing network to help them find employment.

In contrast, food service and building trades are two fields with relatively low barriers to entry. However, both job types are also very physically demanding and too often fail to provide living wages. Workers in building trades are also often required to have both a valid driver’s license and a working vehicle, resources that are often out of reach for people coming out of jail or prison.

When the odds are stacked so heavily against people with criminal records, we can’t be surprised that recidivism is too often the result. But we also have to wonder how much of it could be avoided if people were able to find jobs and support themselves?

Here are some steps we can take right now to improve employment outcomes for reentering citizens:

  1. For businesses, if you have had positive experiences hiring reentering citizens, follow the example of Alsco, and Virgin Companies and talk about it. If you are interested in considering an ex-offender, contact a local reentry organization. This list can help you get started.
  1. Publicize the facts about people with criminal backgrounds and share stories about people who have successfully negotiated reentry; also, increase employers’ awareness of resources like the Federal Bonding Program and the Work Opportunity Tax Credit that support second chance hiring.
  1. Make basic computer literacy and modern job search techniques a part of reentry programming in prisons and jails. Also, ensure that job training programs are matched to employment growth areas and are in fields that do not have significant restrictions for ex-offenders. (For example, HVAC is a popular training program in many facilities, but companies that hire people to go into other’s homes are reluctant to hire anyone with a theft charge or offense involving violence or sexual assault.)
  1. Finally, we need to see a movement to support local and national businesses that positively engage in second chance hiring, a kind of reverse boycott. This would help assure business owners that they will not be negatively affected by second chance hiring and that it could even help them gain popular support.

For the reasons outlined above, communities decimated by mass incarceration face the long-term, lingering effects of severe underemployment. If we are to address the root causes of inter-generational poverty, we must dismantle the barriers formerly incarcerated citizens face as they strive for self-sufficiency and financial security by obtaining a job. Most reentering citizens are able and eager to work and it makes no sense to lock them out of the job market.

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Analysis

Continuing the March of the Civil Rights Warriors in Selma

I recently watched Selma, a stirring movie about the work of Dr. Martin Luther King and so many others who sacrificed to make our nation live up to its most cherished ideals of equality and liberty for all Americans. Like many others, I left feeling the film is as much a reflection of battles we are fighting today as it is about civil rights victories of the past. But I viewed these parallels from a unique point of view. As the President of Gideon’s Promise, an organization that trains and supports public defenders in some of our nation’s most broken criminal justice systems, I work with lawyers who are on the front lines of arguably this generation’s most important civil rights struggle—the effort to reform America’s criminal justice system. If we are to fix this national civil rights crisis, public defenders will have to be part of the solution.

Selma is set in 1965, and—just as we did 50 years ago—we continue to view some lives as less valuable than others. We still embrace an embarrassingly low standard of justice for our most marginalized populations. We persist in promulgating policies that ensure certain communities will never be able to fully participate in our society.

2.2 million people are incarcerated at any given time in America, far more than any other country in the world. Nearly 6 million have lost the right to vote because of a criminal conviction. Countless others are rendered ineligible for student loans, public housing, benefits necessary to care for their families, and employment opportunities. The victims of this injustice are almost exclusively poor. They are disproportionately people of color. Our race- and class-based system of mass incarceration is tearing apart families, destroying communities, and making it almost impossible for children of incarcerated parents to ever break the cycle. So, much like 50 years ago, we need a movement to address this civil rights imperative.

Like any other feature-length movie focusing on a complex event, Selma was reduced to a simplified narrative in which the heroes overcome adversity to achieve victory—the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But, as much as Dr. King sought to push for policy reform, his larger vision demanded much broader transformation.  He understood that while a law can temporarily force those with a warped sense of justice to change their behavior, true equality only occurs when we collectively embrace it as a fundamental and inviolate American value; when we reshape our culture into one which truly views each and every citizen as deserving of respect and dignity.  King fought not only for legislative victories, but also the transformation of the hearts and minds of Americans. Selma was part of a broader campaign designed to shine a light on the inhumane treatment of African Americans and awaken our national consciousness to the fact that this behavior violates our greatest ideals.

We still embrace an embarrassingly low standard of justice for our most marginalized populations.

Likewise, if we are to realize equal justice today, we must work to transform a criminal justice narrative that assumes people in our poorest communities are somehow inherently dangerous; that measures justice by the harshness of the punishment; that lumps the world into categories of “us” and “them” with law enforcement as “the good guys” and those they police as “the bad guys.” Strategies to reform unjust polices are necessary. Of course we must scale back the criminalization of an ever increasing index of behavior. Certainly we should end a system of bail that detains people pretrial simply because they are too poor to pay the bond that is set. We absolutely need to reform overly punitive sentencing laws.

But if we do not change the fact that we have come to equate justice with punishment and to associate the most negative qualities with race and class, equal justice will remain elusive. Those who administer our justice system will continue to disproportionately monitor, arrest, prosecute, and punish poor people and people of color. We must work to transform our assumptions about our most marginalized populations and how they deserve to be treated. So, while policy reform plays an important role, as was the case 50 years ago, we need a movement to transform the hearts and minds of a nation.

Public defenders can help to drive this campaign. With 80 percent of people accused of crimes too poor to afford an attorney, public defenders are the voice of our impoverished communities in the criminal justice system. By organizing public defenders, we can harness the collective voice necessary to speak up for the humanity of people in these communities and to infuse the system with values essential to justice.

A movement of public defenders has the power to reframe the criminal justice narrative in this country—an essential precursor to sustaining a movement for reform. Lawyers for the poor have the opportunity to humanize their clients every time they speak in court. Public defender leaders can spread the message more broadly as they speak on behalf of the populations they represent in meetings with judges, policymakers, and the community. There are thousands of public defenders across the nation speaking for millions of people whose voices are routinely ignored or dismissed. Their clients are frequently cast as demons, when in fact they are the people who bag our groceries, care for our children, and serve us in restaurants. Most Americans are a paycheck away from needing a public defender. Yet, we do not see people caught up in the criminal justice system as part of our shared community. Until we see these lives as just as valuable as the lives of people we care about, we will not have equal justice. We must mobilize this army of advocates to achieve that transformation of hearts and minds.

That is how we will continue the march that so many heroic civil rights warriors began in Selma.

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Analysis

On Black History Month, King, and an End to ‘Whatever’

Editor’s Note: We are pleased to announce a new monthly column on the intersection of faith and activism, by Reverend Michael Livingston, Executive Minister at The Riverside Church in New York City. Inspired by the work of the church in the Civil Rights Movement, Rev. Livingston sees faith and political activism as essential partners for social transformation. In 1975, he was ordained by the Presbyterian Church (USA) and began his ministry in Los Angeles and New York before becoming campus pastor at the Princeton Theological Seminary. After leading interfaith and ecumenical efforts at the International Council of Community Churches and the National Council of Churches (NCC)—where he was president and director of the NCC’s poverty initiative—Rev. Livingston joined Interfaith Worker Justice as national policy director in 2012. His work keeping the voices and needs of marginalized communities at the forefront of public discourse have enriched faith-based advocacy. While Rev. Livingston is now returning to the roots of his career and congregational ministry, his leadership continues to play a vital role in building a more effective progressive movement and a more just nation. 

Look for his column here during the first week of every month.

I am often deeply disturbed by our remorseless witness. We are all implicated; we share responsibility for our witness of well-defined evil.

We don’t protect our most vulnerable children; we value people according to arbitrary standards blind to the image of God on every face; we are too quick to kill and to slow to forgive; we tolerate the desecration of the only earth we will ever know. We give a platform to political leaders who want to “take back our country”—by setting policies that favor the wealthiest over everyone else, selling public schools to the highest bidder, and tearing apart the safety net that sustains the elderly and assists our most vulnerable—as if their words and ideas are worth listening to, or are grounded in principles worthy of our attention or even support.

Our response? Too often it is tantamount to this: “Whatever.”

We allow injustices to persist as if solutions are someone else’s responsibility. We watched our Congress over the last six years—as we slid deeper into recession, as our immigration crisis worsened, as tragic deaths from gun violence killed children school by school, people in movie theaters, women and children in the sanctity of their homes—do less and less, making history for inactivity. Even now, behind all of the soaring rhetoric is a shocking lack of action. It’s almost as if Congress said, “Whatever.”  How will we respond?

February is African American History Month, so rest assured there will be plenty of posturing by our elected leaders. I hope we will revisit a figure often celebrated at this time of year—but I hope we will have a new appreciation of his example, and what his example should mean in our daily lives.

The time for “whatever” has long since passed—it’s time for a collective and unbridled demand for justice.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a young man, going about his daily business, following his predictable path when God called. He was a preacher’s kid from a solid middle class upbringing, attending Morehouse College in Atlanta, Boston University School of Theology, earning a Master of Divinity and a Ph.D. He was on a Yellow Brick Road headed for Oz. But God had need of him and he joined the ranks of prophets like Samuel, Amos, and Jeremiah; like Martin Luther, and Dietrich Bonheoffer; like Gandhi, Ella Baker, Sojourner Truth, Fannie Lou Hamer, and so many others that could be named.

In part, what distinguishes King and these moral giants is the fullness with which they heard the cry of injustice and responded. And we can all hear it if we listen, and we can all respond. As Callie Plunket-Brewton remarked, “The overwhelming witness of the prophets is that God has no tolerance for those who prey on the weak, who abuse their power, or who eat their fill while others are hungry.”

God has no tolerance for “whatever.”

And King had no tolerance for it either. In 1959 he said, “Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in.” Six years later, in 1965, he described his vision for where that career in humanity should lead us: “We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”

Today, are we not a society that has lost its conscience? One only has to listen to the foolishness that passes for debate in any political season—and there is one on the horizon—or to the witless chatter on our televisions to feel the weight of “Whatever” pulling us down into the gravity of our condition.

But I have hope. I have hope that people of faith in every tradition will heed the words and examples of King and other prophets, and will wake up and rise up, will speak up and stand up; will turn for a moment from entertaining ourselves, buying things, cheering sports teams and entertainers, and insist on a world where children have clean water to drink and safe places to sleep; where the elderly can rest secure, the fruit of their labor beyond the reach of politicians; where a good public education awaits every eager child and a job with a living wage is there for every adult willing and able to work; where health care is a right, not a privilege, and humanity has matured beyond the illusion that our security is gained by weapons and wars.

This month we will celebrate many great African Americans whose contributions to better our nation and world seem incalculable. But rather than set them apart, let us learn from their example and respond as they would have responded. I long for the day when people of all faith traditions call upon those who exercise power in our nation with words lifted from the heart of our faith—so that our living may be transformed. The time for “whatever” has long since passed—it’s time for a collective and unbridled demand for justice.

 

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Analysis

President’s Budget: Increasing Mobility and Opportunity for All

In his State of the Union address, President Obama put a laser-like focus on “middle-class economics”, calling for policies that ensure every American has a fair shot at economic security. While the President may not have said the word “poverty” in his address, his FY2016 budget, released today, makes clear that “middle-class economics” must also expand the population of people to whom that term applies. Infused throughout the president’s budget are policies and proposals that would provide a smoother pathway for people struggling on the financial brink to not just find a bit of security, but to have a shot at climbing the economic ladder through policies to create good jobs, support strong and healthy families, update our social contract for the 21st century, and remove barriers that keep people trapped in poverty. We’ll review a few of the highlights below.

Good Jobs
Strong Families
21st Century Social Insurance
Removing Barriers to Opportunity

Good Jobs

The President calls for a new investments in infrastructure projects such as ports, bridges, and roads, which would create millions of new jobs that pay a living wage.

The budget also includes significant investments to prepare American workers for medium- and high-skills jobs, including $60 billion for the president’s historic proposal to make community college free for students who keep up their grades, as well as funding to ensure that Pell grants don’t erode with inflation. Other funding would allow a doubling of apprenticeships over 5 years, and a significant expansion of re-employment services, and other workforce development programs that serve low- and middle-income workers.

Importantly, the president’s proposal includes significant new funding to help some of the most disadvantaged workers in the labor market. The budget includes $3 billion for a “Connecting for Opportunity Initiative,” which would make summer and year-round job opportunities more widely available and offer competitive grants to create educational and workforce opportunities for at-risk youth. Recognizing that subsidized jobs are an important tool for helping disadvantaged workers, the president’s budget also redirects over half a billion dollars to a “Pathways to Jobs” initiative to help states partner with employers to create these positions. The budget provides additional funding for subsidized jobs under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.

Finally, the “First in the World” program would fund evidence-based and promising practices to improve the likelihood that low-income students could complete degrees and have a better shot at medium- to high-skill jobs in today’s economy.

Strong Families

CAP’s recent report on family policy underscores that policies that strengthen the economic foundation of families are an important part of ensuring that all families are stable, healthy, and strong. To that end, the president’s budget includes several key initiatives to ensure that families don’t need to make choices between a needed paycheck and bonding with a new baby, or going to work without affordable and quality child care.

Specifically, the President’s budget includes a proposal that provides incentives for up to five states to adopt earned paid leave legislation so that the birth of a child or illness of a family member doesn’t send a family into an economic tailspin.

The President reiterates his commitment to providing preschool for all by providing matching funds to states that set up preschool programs, but also offers up a historic expansion of childcare assistance, tripling the maximum child and dependent care tax credit to $3,000 and enabling more families to claim it.

The proposal also includes substantial investments of $82 billion over 10 years in the Child Care and Development Fund to help states offer subsidized child care to low-wage working parents. This could boost the number of slots available by more than 1 million. The budget also increases investments in quality infant and toddler care by expanding access to the Early Head Start program and ensures that children in Head Start can access full-day, full-year programs, which helps parents to work and improves outcomes for kids. The president’s budget continues his commitment to evidence-based home visiting programs that provide professionals like social workers and nurses to pregnant women and new moms in order to help parents support their child’s healthy development. The funded programs have shown a range of positive outcomes including lower rates of depressive symptoms and stress for parents and higher grade point averages and graduation rates for the children in the long-term.

21st Century Social Insurance

Given that four out of five Americans will face at least a year of significant economic insecurity at some point during their working years—and half will experience three years or more—we must ensure that our social contract provides sufficient protection amid the ups and downs of life.

To that end, the President’s budget includes important investments to strengthen several key elements of our social insurance system. He proposes bold reforms to Unemployment Insurance to make it respond more effectively as a stabilizer during recessions; ensure that long-term unemployed workers get the assistance they need without Congress needing to extend benefits; and help individuals secure comparable jobs as quickly as possible through investments in vital re-employment services.

Additionally, while the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is one of our nation’s most effective antipoverty programs, it largely misses childless workers and noncustodial parents, who remain the only group the federal government taxes into poverty. The President’s budget would expand the EITC for these workers, while also making permanent the 2009 improvements to the EITC and the Child Tax Credit, currently set to expire in 2017.

Finally, the President’s budget includes a commitment to keeping our Social Security system strong for current and future generations. To that end, the President would rebalance the old-age and survivors’ fund and the disability insurance fund to put both on sound footing for the next 20 years and to prevent a shortfall in the disability fund. (Rebalancing is a routine step that has been taken 11 times in the past when either fund has faced a shortfall—and it is the only option available to avoid needless, across-the-board benefit cuts for millions of disability insurance beneficiaries—which is what would happen if Congress fails to act before the disability fund’s reserves are depleted in 2016). With his budget, the President is sending a clear message to Congress that it would be irresponsible to threaten the benefits of nearly 9 million disabled workers and 2 million spouses and children for the sake of Congressional politicking. The budget also proposes much-needed increases in administrative funding for the Social Security Administration to reduce the backlog in disability hearings, and mandatory funding to ensure that the agency can do critical program integrity work.

Removing barriers to opportunity 

As a recent CAP report highlights, one group that faces significant barriers to opportunity is the approximately 1 in 3 Americans who have some type of criminal record. To ensure meaningful access to second chances, the President proposes increased investment in programs that support successful reentry. For instance, the budget includes a doubling of the Second Chance Act Grant program, which provides funds to state and local agencies and nonprofit organizations that provide services to support reentry and reduce recidivism; significant increases in resources for Bureau of Prisons programs that support mental health treatment and residential reentry centers, and the establishment of a new program to maintain and strengthen familial bonds for incarcerated individuals with minor children.

Moreover, recognizing that an individual’s zip code should not determine his or her life chances, the President proposes important investments to tackle place-based and concentrated poverty, including an expansion of the Promise Zones initiative, which aims to revitalize high-poverty communities through comprehensive, evidence-based strategies while helping local leaders access federal funding. The President designated five Promise Zones in 2014, and will name another 15 by the end of 2016.

Additionally, the President’s budget includes several policies to ensure that workers with disabilities have a fair shot at employment and economic security. For instance, it provides demonstration authority and funding for key federal agencies to explore early intervention strategies to support workers with disabilities in remaining in the workforce, as well as incentives for states to better coordinate services.

**

Budgets are about choices. One important choice that cuts across all of the above themes is the president’s choice to reject the spending caps imposed by sequestration in his budget. These caps are due to re-emerge in the next fiscal year absent congressional action, which would have disastrous consequences for our economy and for families. Sequestration costs jobs and erodes funding for skills training; sequestration undermines family economic security by kicking children out of Head Start and child care slots; it hurts the most vulnerable by slashing programs such as affordable housing and nutrition aid for babies and toddlers; and it means fewer resources for investments in community development in distressed neighborhoods, second chances for ex-offenders, and other opportunity-boosting programs.

But the president’s budget isn’t just about damage control. It makes real investments in cutting poverty and boosting economic mobility. In fact, the study that launched the Half in Ten campaign several years ago showed that raising the minimum wage, expanding the EITC and Child Tax Credit, and making childcare more broadly available to low-income families could cut poverty by 26% over 10 years. Those types of investments are all in this budget.

While a Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to adopt the president’s budget, there are opportunities for bipartisan movement—including on the EITC, subsidized jobs, and common-sense reforms to our criminal justice system. But even if Congress were to ignore the vast majority of the president’s budget blueprint, it is important for advocates to pay attention. Budgets are about choices, and the President’s budget underscores that we can achieve deficit reduction while making investments in key aspects of economic opportunity: good jobs, strong families, a 21st century social contract, and removing barriers to opportunity. The question is this: can we build the political will to make these choices happen?

 

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