WASHINGTON (ABP) — “Poverty has been forgotten, and it has been ignored for too long,” declared Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) Sept. 9.
DeLauro and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) were featured speakers in a teleconference with reporters to kick off a nationwide interfaith week of activities to draw attention to poverty and hunger in the United States this election cycle.
More than 21 Jewish, Christian and Muslim advocacy groups, including the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and Catholic Charities USA, organized the effort. It was designed to encourage people of faith to mobilize their communities to ask local, state and national candidates what they will do during their first 100 days in office to address poverty.
Churches and religious groups have responded to the plight of the millions of Americans living in poverty, DeLauro said. Government has a “moral responsibility,” she added, to do the same.
From discussions she has with constituents, DeLauro said, she’s noticed an increase in financial stress. A growing number of people, she noted, “are working two jobs just to eke out a living. Larger numbers are going to food kitchens and rising every day…. People are losing that confidence … of being able to take care of their families,” she said.
DeLauro called on government to be the “safety net” for struggling families. “Families today don’t really believe their children’s lives will be better,” she said.
The congresswoman called for an increase in the federal minimum wage, for expansion of the federal child-tax credit for the working poor and a federal stimulus package for energy assistance and food stamps.
Churches and religious groups have the moral authority in their communities to press political leaders for these causes, she said.
Lewis — a Baptist and a veteran of the civil-rights struggles of the 1950s and ‘60s — emphasized that, as government faces fiscal woes — particularly at the local level — people in poverty get overlooked.
“In the Civil Rights Movement, we used to say that we must pray, but we must also move our feet…. Who will offer aid to the poor, the hungry and the sick in this crisis? We must not be silent. We must pray, but we must also move our feet,” he said.
People of faith have the responsibility to put the faith they proclaim into action on poverty issues, Lewis said. “We have to step in and place the problems of the poor at the feet of government, private industry and charitable organizations. The poor have no lobbyists. They have no PACs [political-action committees] or high-priced lawyers to do their work. It is up to us. We must demand solutions to these problems,” he said.
“A great nation is judged by how it treats the least of its citizens. And people of faith are measured by their ability to show compassion.”
The Bush administration has failed to paint an accurate picture of the plight of the lower and middle classes, alleged Jared Bernstein, director of the living-standards program at the Economic Policy Institute. He has also been the author of the annual “The State of Working America” report since 1992.
Although federal leaders continue to assert that the country’s “economic fundamentals are sound,” Bernstein claimed, they have failed to say that the middle and lower classes already face recession.
He pointed out that the country has lost more than 600,000 jobs this year and that the unemployment rate stood at 6.1 percent in August.
The under-employment rate stands at 10.7 percent, which represents 6 million part-time workers who would rather have full-time jobs, he added. “People need ample hours at living wages,” Bernstein said.
Wealth and opportunities have become concentrated in the hands of the upper classes, he noted. While government leaders like to believe that periods of economic expansion benefit all individuals, that hasn’t been the case in every period of economic growth since the late 1970s.
In the late 1990s, poverty rates diminished largely because the job market began offering more positions for low-wage workers and at higher wages, Bernstein explained. But in 2000, “inequality soared,” he said.
The federal poverty rate stood at 11.3 percent in 2000, and rose to 12.5 percent by 2007, during a period of economic expansion. “If the economy is expanding and poverty is rising, where is the economy going?” he asked.
The top 1 percent of wage earners holds a 23 percent share of income, Bernstein noted. That percentage hasn’t been that high since 1928 — the year before the stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression.
Safeguards are in place to prevent another Great Depression, Bernstein added. “But the extent of economic inequality…is as great now as then.”
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