Palmeri on Poverty
[note: On August 28, 2004 a fundraiser was held at South Park in Oshkosh to benefit the Oshkosh Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Funds were raised specifically to help Oshkosh resident Carla Eichinger's attempt to pay for swimming lessons for poor children. I was asked by the event's organizers to talk about poverty. I spoke extemporaneously from notes; below is a slightly revised and extended version of the remarks]. --Tony Palmeri
I would like to thank Carla Eichinger for giving us the opportunity to begin a conversation about poverty in our community. Perhaps the major reason we have so much difficulty solving the problem of poverty at the global, national, state, and local levels is because the topic is simply not talked about. Most people, especially those who are not poor, are not aware of the gravity of the problem.
And the problem of poverty is grave. Here are some sobering numbers:
And please don't fall prey to the myth that the problem of poverty is strictly a third world phenomenon. The United States Census Bureau's most recent report on poverty is quite disturbing:
I must emphasize that these numbers are highly misleading because in order to be classified as "poor" in our country, you have to be dirt poor. A single person, for example, is classified as poor if he or she earns less than $9,310 per year. A family of four is classified as poor if it earns less than $18,850 per year.
I must also emphasize that in relation to politics, these shameful numbers are a bipartisan disgrace. Democrats quickly jumped on the Census Bureau report to blame its findings on the Bush Administration. What they neglect to mention is that the Democrats long ago ceased being the party of the poor. The Dems retreat from decency was most powerfully symbolized by Democrat Bill Clinton's 1996 signing of legislation that repealed Aid To Families With Dependent Children (AFDC), the federal safety net signed into law sixty years earlier by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Twenty-five Senate Democrats including John Kerry voted for the legislation Clinton signed. Indeed, Kerry's "help is on the way" campaign is hardly a call to arms for a modern war on poverty.
Please let me be clear: the Bush Administration HAS been a disaster for the poor. Unfortunately, the commitment of both establishment parties to economic policies hatched on Wall St. makes it unlikely that we will see any sustained effort to tackle the problem of poverty regardless of who sits in the White House.
What about Wisconsin? Under Tommy Thompson we became a national model for programs to "end welfare as we know it." The W-2 program was supposed to end the so-called "culture of dependency" while costing the state less to operate than AFDC. Yet W-2 has been mostly a human and financial disaster. As noted by journalist Mark Engler:
" . . . Thompson's brainchild is nothing to cheer about. Food pantries, emergency homeless shelters, and charitable hospitals all saw demand for their services shoot skyward between 1997 and 2000, according to groups like the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee, the Center for Economic Development at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the Institute for Wisconsin's Future. In the same period, forcible evictions in Milwaukee increased by more than 200 percent. And when the state's Department of Workforce Development surveyed former AFDC recipients, they found 68 percent of those who had 'successfully' found work said they were 'just barely getting by day to day.'"
And even though the program has not put a dent in poverty, it is costing us a bundle. The Associated Press in 2003 reported that "Wisconsin’s welfare-to-work program and related services are expected to cost $276.9 million more this year than the program they replaced."
Late in 2003 the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel argued that there's only one problem with W-2: "it isn't working."
The Center On Wisconsin Strategy on its website features a valuable database of poverty indicators for all of Wisconsin's 72 counties. On it we find that here in Winnebago County 37% of families could not afford fair market rent in 1999, while in that same year 6.7% of the county's residents lived in poverty. In 1993, 26.9% of the county's residents were receiving AFDC, but in 2001 only 2.6% were participating in the W-2 program. Does this mean that the bulk of former AFDC recipients are now out of poverty and happily employed? Hardly. Since the region has lost thousands of manufacturing jobs that were not replaced, the bulk of the former AFDC recipients remaining in the region have migrated into "working poor" status. Many make use of emergency shelters, the Salvation Army, and other service providers of last resort.
At a spring workshop on Winnebago County homelessness and poverty sponsored by the League of Women Voters, speakers from Advocap, the Red Cross, the Christine Ann Shelter, the Oshkosh Housing Authority, the Department of Human Services, the Salvation Army, and Father Martin Carr described disturbing increases in demand for emergency food, rent, and other poverty related assistance. The Salvation Army alone spent $15,000 in 2003 in the city of Oshkosh just for hotel rooms for homeless people. The Christine Ann Shelter served 21 families in 1984 and today serves 85. The Housing Authority has 1 rental subsidy available for every 3 persons who apply. Last year the Department of Human Services' Emergency Assistance Program served 102 families, almost all of them homeless or in threat of impending homelessness
Friends, we clearly have a crisis of poverty at the global, national, state, and local levels. Sadly, the presidential campaign is so consumed with discussion of swift boats and qualifications of the potential first ladies that poverty has scarcely been mentioned. Even if it were, neither major candidate treats the issue with the urgency it deserves.
Our job is to get started a serious discussion of poverty. A few weeks ago an Oshkosh resident named Merrilee Janness wrote a wonderful letter to the Oshkosh Northwestern addressing the problem of poverty and despair in our community. We need many more letters like that, just like we need many more meetings like this one where we can at least begin the process of getting elected officials and other community leaders to put the issue of poverty on the table.
And once again, I want to thank Carla Eichinger for her great work on behalf of poor children and for making this event happen today. Thank you.