Just Like the 2009 TARP,
Will the Poor Be Left Out of the Fiscal Cliff Deal?
The long and politically
contentious 2012 election cycle is finally over—well sort of. The Republicans and Democrats have wasted no
time in drawing battle lines in this “fiscal cliff political scuffle. It all really seems like déjá vu – a repeat of
the “too big to fail” debate we endured at the onset of President Obama’s first
term. Then the American public was sold
a bill of goods that resulted in a $700 billion bailout to save failing
financial institutions and the automobile industry from get falling off a
fiscal cliff. The honey added to the
bitter medicine then that the American people had to swallow as we considered
the reckless and avaricious behavior that got our economy in the fiscal crisis
was that we would throw Wall Street a life line so that they could help save Main
Street. Well guess what—the security
rafts never made it to Wall Street. What
has happened however is more and more Americans who have been holding on to the
edge of the fiscal cliff by their finger nails began to fall into the poverty
abyss. And still no one from the White
House to the divided and cantankerous Congress have shown the least bit of
concern for the poor—the seemingly forgotten Americans who apparently don’t
matter much in the larger debate. The plight of the poor in America especially
women are only good for votes but not as the foci of economic policy. During the 2012 election cycle, just like in
2008, I delivered numerous speeches to support President Obama. I, like so many others, felt a bit uneasy
about stomping through the battle grounds (for me in NC and VA) fully cognizant
of the conspicuous absence of poverty as a core issue of President Obama’s campaign
platform. However, once the GOP and far
right extreme conservatives had launched their attacks against minorities, the
poor, and women including voter suppression, I knew that this election year was
not the time to publically challenge President Obama on his failure to work on
a poverty-elimination domestic policy agenda. While he made a lot of speeches
and statements about the middle class as the cornerstone of his economic and
social policies, his glaring omission of the poor was quite disturbing and
disappointing to say the least.
President Obama and many
of his staunchest supporters often proclaim that trickledown economics doesn’t
work in terms of wealth flowing from the top to the middle class. Well, many poor people and their advocates
happened to believe that neither does wealth automatically trickle down from
the middle to the bottom.
On one occasion Dr. Cornell
West, who has been ostracized due to his public criticism of the Presient for
failing to address the needs of the poor, when asked why he was still voting
for President Obama for reelection despite the fact that he has been one of his
harshest critics said:
“I’m strategic. We have
to tell that truth about a system that’s corrupt—both parties are poisoned by
big money and tied to big banks and corporations. Speaking on that is a matter
of intellectual integrity. American politics are not a matter of voting your
moral conscience…but it's strategic in terms of the actual possibilities and
real options available for poor and working people…A Romney administration
would be a catastrophic response to an already catastrophic condition.”
While I agree with this,
it still warrants iterating that the President must begin to give serious attention
to including an anti-poverty focus to his economic and domestic policy agendas
because right now, it is hard to make a case that harm his silence is causing is
any less grievous than the harm Romney’s policies would have caused.
Addressing America’s
poverty crisis is going to require a sound and aggressive interrogation into
the social structures, policies and actions of those in leadership positions
that intersect to reproduce and sustain poverty in America. Contrary to those
who like to “blame the victims” of poverty or attribute being poor to some
personal or individual failures or the cultural deficits, the poor are created
in large part due to structural social arrangements including
deinsustrialization and outsourcing jobs to overseas labor markets that exploit
the poor in other countries to prevent paying living wages to low-skilled
workers in America, antiquated education
curricula and systems that fail to prepare all children to compete in a global
market place, and opportunity hoarding by those at the top.
The Swedish economist and
sociologist, Gunnar Myrdal (1963) observed in his seminal work An American
Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy: “There is an ugly smell rising form the
basement of the stately American Mansion” (Myrdal, 1944). At the time he was talking about racial
segregation and oppression. I contend
that that today, there is still a rancid odor is emanating from the basement of
congress and the White House and this time it is their blatant neglect and disregard for the poor.
