Finally, after over a year of constant campaigning, suspect primaries, undemocratic caucuses, questionable party rules, and in-party division, the Democrats have chosen their presumptive nominee for the presidency. Congratulations, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. — now it is time for the actual campaign, this time against your presumptive Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, D-Ariz. It is time to cue the story lines that will be repeated over and over through November: young versus old, left versus right and “Change we can believe in” versus “A leader we can believe in.”
But more importantly, now that we have two major party presumptive nominees chosen, where do they stand on the most important issues? One of the most important issues in this race, besides the obvious topics of war and the economy, is poverty and especially poverty as it affects children. According to 2000 Census data, 16.6 percent of children under 18 live below the federal poverty guideline, which itself is such an unrealistic measure of poverty that most researchers use 200 percent of the poverty line as a basis of measurement. Using this line, a full 37.8 percent of children under the age of 18 live in poverty, a truly unacceptable statistic.
What will America look like under an Obama presidency? Under a McCain presidency? Much of this depends on the answer to another question: What will each do to address poverty in our country? The campaigns thus far have given us some indications of how they will tackle poverty and how important the issue is to them.
In April, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, told a small group of religious leaders in a church in Tennessee that, if elected, she would create a cabinet position on poverty, earning praise from her former opponent, former N.C. Sen. John Edwards. When Edwards exited the race earlier this year, he took with him the highest priority that any of the candidates had assigned to the issue of poverty in America. When Edwards endorsed Obama in Michigan, it seemed as though Obama was making Edwards’ positions on poverty part of his campaign.
Obama has often pointed to his experience as a community organizer and lawyer when asked about his approach to poverty, but now that he has secured the Democratic nomination, he needs to lay out more specific plans to tackle the issue. Much of the approach that he has outlined thus far relies on expanding Earned Income Tax Credit and workforce development efforts. He has pointed to the widely respected Harlem Children’s Zone as a model for community-based solutions to poverty and has spoken vaguely of creating “promise neighborhoods” in cities with the most concentrated areas of poverty.
Like Obama, McCain has indicated that the eradication of poverty will be a cornerstone of his campaign. Unlike Obama, however, McCain has not done much to expand on this statement with specific steps that he would take. His Web site states that he will “set aside the needs of the special interests” to fight poverty, but thus far has only mentioned these efforts briefly in his speeches. Speaking in April on the same Appalachian front porch where President Lyndon B. Johnson declared his “war on poverty” 44 years ago, McCain distanced himself from Johnson’s approach, saying “I have no doubt President Johnson was serious and had the very best of intentions ? but the army that he enlisted was mostly drawn from the ranks of government bureaucracies.” Instead, McCain said he would start a “People Connect Program” that would provide tax benefits and federal loans to companies to address some aspects of poverty on the local level.
While Obama has offered greater detail about how he would address poverty in America than McCain has, neither candidate has laid the sufficiently concrete steps to really sway voters who value this issue. Meanwhile, a variety of individuals and organizations are actively working to encourage the candidates to address the issue of poverty.
Learn more by visiting the Web sites of Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, www.spotlightonpoverty.org, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, www.aecf.org. Encourage your candidate of choice to make the eradication of poverty a primary issue this fall. An industrialized nation with the wealth of the United States need not have almost 40 percent of its children living in poverty — such numbers are not just concerning, but simply unacceptable.
Ryan Dinkgrave is a State News columnist. Reach him at dinkgrave@msu.edu .
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