Pubdate: Wed, 31 Jan 2001
Source: Abilene Reporter-News (TX)
Copyright: 2001 Abilene Reporter-News
Contact:  P.O. Box 30, Abilene, TX 79604
Fax: 915 670-5242
Website: http://www.reporternews.com
Author: Arianna Huffington
Note: Arianna links fighting poverty to the war on drugs at the end of the 
article.

FIGHTING POVERTY IN THE YEAR 2001

On Monday morning, President Bush announced the establishment of a new 
White House office of faith-based and community initiatives intended to 
help the neediest Americans by integrating religious organizations into the 
provision of social services.

The announcement came at the same time as Alan Greenspan was making it 
official that the economy is at nearly "zero growth" and as I was reading 
Searching for America's Heart, the just-released book by Peter Edelman, who 
resigned as assistant secretary of Health and Human Services when Bill 
Clinton signed the welfare reform bill.

The bad news is that, as Edelman reminds us in the book, "when the economy 
catches cold, the poor get pneumonia." The good news is that we may be 
about to re-engage in a debate abandoned in 1996 when welfare reform was 
passed: What are the most effective ways to combat poverty and turn lives 
around? Edelman's book can help rekindle this debate by taking us beyond 
the sterile squabbling of the Great Society vs. the Rising Tide.

"Robert Kennedy," writes Edelman, who served as RFK's legislative 
assistant, "was the first 'new' Democrat, the first to espouse values of 
grassroots empowerment and express doubts about big bureaucratic 
approaches, the first to call for partnerships between the private and 
public sectors and insist that what we now call civic renewal is essential, 
the first to put particular emphasis on personal responsibility."

So RFK would likely have been entirely comfortable with Bush's emphasis on 
the mobilization of "church and charity, synagogue and mosque" in the fight 
against poverty. The question is, would Bush be equally comfortable with 
RFK's insistence that this battle be a national priority, with national 
funding to leverage grassroots efforts? The "points of light" that Bush's 
father hailed are critical, but they have to be connected to a central grid 
and powered by a sense of urgency.

"I'm entirely in favor of faith-based organizations playing a role in 
helping the poor," Edelman told me. But he's weary of the policy debate on 
poverty degenerating into a zero-sum Church vs. State argument. Tell that 
to Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of 
Church and State, who's trodding the talk-show circuit, fretting about 
chipping away at this wall of separation.

"It's just a big distraction," Edelman says. "We should be talking about 
what's going to happen when welfare reform's five-year time limits hit at 
the very moment that jobs are drying up."

There are still 5.78 million people on the welfare rolls. And of the 6.5 
million who are off the rolls, how many will be among the first to lose 
their jobs as demand for labor drops? Especially since so many of these are 
service jobs dependent on a high rate of consumer consumption. So what will 
welfare reform look like without the shine of the bull market? We're about 
to find out. Or, given our political leaders' and the media's attention 
span for this issue, at least the poor are.

As Jared Bernstein, of the Economic Policy Institute, puts it: "The rule of 
last hired, first fired has not been revoked, and we're likely to see some 
major layoffs in the low-wage labor markets. If the recession is relatively 
long and deep, as many as one-half of those who left welfare for work could 
lose their jobs."

It's not a moment too early to start preparing for this eventuality. What 
makes Edelman's book so wise and relevant is that he wastes not a line on 
meaningless Big Government vs. No Government or Church vs. State arguments. 
"Much of what we need to do," Edelman writes, "has nothing to do with 
Washington, or with government at all. Private action is as much a part of 
the answer as public policy."

Bush echoed that sentiment — after a fashion — in his inaugural address: 
"Government has great responsibilities, for public safety and public 
health, for civil rights and common schools. Yet compassion is the work of 
a nation, not just a government."

So, what's missing? What's missing is what infuses Edelman's whole section 
on Bobby Kennedy: a passionate devotion to the issue. Here was a leader 
consumed with finding solutions to the problems of "the excluded." Edelman 
recounts a day in 1963 when RFK brought the Cabinet to his office at the 
Justice Department and locked the door, "keeping them there for four hours 
to discuss doing something about poverty."

What's also missing is the recognition that faith-based initiatives on 
poverty cannot be pursued in isolation from the rest of Bush's agenda. No 
church or synagogue is an island, unaffected by other national policies — 
especially those that impact our criminal justice system and the war on 
drugs. The divide that starts with the poverty line has been increasingly 
ending at the jailhouse wall. Religious leaders will find it's tough to be 
your brother's keeper when the warden holds the keys.

To breach the gulf between the two Americas that Bush spoke about, it will 
take national leadership of the kind Edelman so fondly remembers. The 
president could start by reading his book.
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