Thursday, December 13, 2012

Deliberations Concerning Fiscal Cliff MUST Include Serious Discussions About the Poor In America



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.

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