This evening, CBS’s 60 Minutes presented an excellent, poignant report on childhood poverty in Central Florida’s Seminole County. According to correspondent Scott Pelley, “We’re told the recession ended in 2009. This is a jobless recovery we’re in. Millions and millions of people are hurting. It grinds on and on and on. We’re raising a generation of kids in hard times. These are formative years for these kids. They know this time as a time of hunger and homelessness.”
What’s happening in Seminole County is just an extreme example of what is happening in varying degrees all across the country. According to the Children’s Defense Fund of Minnesota, a state in which the median income is above average and the rate of families in which all available parents are working is actually one of the highest in the country, the child poverty rate in 2009 was 14 percent. But, as elsewhere, it was highest among Asian- and African-Americans. In the District of Columbia and Mississippi, 32 and 29 percent, respectively, of children were living in poverty in 2009.
According to Columbia University’s National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), referring to statistics from 2009, “Nearly 15 million children in the United States –-21% of all children-- live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level–-$22,050 a year for a family of four. Research shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice that level to cover basic expenses. Using this standard, 42% of children live in low-income families." In 2009, among infants and toddlers under the age of three, of whom there are more than 12 million in the United States, 46 percent lived in low-income families, 24 percent in poor families. It is probably even worse today. But, before we blame it all on the economic crisis of 2008, it is notable that child poverty has been on the increase since 2000. There is something deeper and more disturbing at work.
Contrary to common assumptions, moreover, poverty is not because parents do not want to work, or even because they aren’t working. As the NCCP observes, “most of these children have parents who work, but low wages and unstable employment leave their families struggling to make ends meet.” While 88 percent of infants and toddlers with no employed parents –1.4 million– live in low-income families, 29 percent of infants and toddlers with at least one parent who works full-time, year round –2.4 million– live in low-income families and 73 percent of infants and toddlers with at least one parent who works part-time or part year –-2.1 million-– live in low-income families. Many of these children --13 percent of infants and toddlers living in low-income families-- are not covered by any health insurance. Nationwide, among all children under 18, 16 percent of children living in low-income families –-5 million-- have none. That is simply barbaric.
But, contrast this with President Obama’s continual reference to the U.S. “winning the future.” That rousing phrase is meaningless in the face of what is happening, an inadequate rhetorical reaction to the scale of the crisis that American families and children are facing. Millions of hungry, homeless, ill-educated children present a challenge to our society’s moral economy, an affront to our national sense of justice, a collective injury to our country that, to our shame and disquiet, will live with us for many decades. That is our future. Yet, the White House conveys no sense that it appreciates this or that it has the means to express, less alone remedy, the real hopelessness and anguish that its victims feel. Obama is no FDR.
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Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Comments
You quoted Barak Obama’s “continual reference” to the U.S. “winning the future”…
…and then wrote:
That rousing phrase is meaningless in the face of what is happening….
Yes, it is a shame that in a land of plenty such as ours, so many children should live below the poverty level. And where I live in New Jersey, one would have a hard time supporting a family of four on the $22K which deliniates the poverty level.
I wish more were being done to remediate the problem...but we are beset with a mentality in conservative America that our poor have too much money and our rich have not nearly enough. (Borrowed that notion from today's Huffington Report!)
To suggest that Obama has no real appreciation for the problem…or to subtext that he really doesn’t care about it is a stretch much too far.
In any case, you ended your essay with the words,
Obama is no FDR.
That phrase, Eric, is much, much more meaningless than the Obama phrase.
The state of poverty and childhood conditions does indeed remain a national shame especially in a country that has so much. But to remedy that situation takes a combined effort of will and way from both parties, at the state and federal levels. And that kind of cooperation, simply, is not there.
Yep, it would be good if Obama was able to exercise his superhero powers ... but look how FDR had to bend and change the very face of government to accomplish his goals, and how much he is reviled for it on the right. I personally feel the Obama will be seen as a Woodrow Wilson-style Democratic President: brainy, pragmatic, cabinet-dependent, and not an FDR, even though his campaign certainly made "Hope" and "Change" phrases he may come to regret in 2012.
As far as Obama is concerned, he should be judged by the fruit he bears just like everyone else. And that, of course, damns him completely.
Compared to other presidents, debate on the debt limit took place in public. The net result was that the "no increase in debt limit" crowd eventually realized that they had a losing hand, and they folded. Obama's relentless search for bipartisan solutions in a culture that now punishes bipartisanship is a bad match. The POTUS needs to get up more on his hind legs and growl at the Repugs, but he can't because it's against his psychological make-up. And this character defect is compounded by his perpetual procrastination at making decisions.
A very wise man once said, that sooner or later all countries are aware of the personal psychoses of their supreme leaders. We are getting to be aware of that problem with President Obama only now.
I mean not to say Mr. Obama is entirely deviod of principle or a genuine desire to serve. He has, however, come this far by following certain political rules (including one barring him from getting up on his hind legs), and if he abandons them now, all will be lost.
Our current political climate cannot beget an FDR (or better yet, an equally true example of political courage--a TR) because of the bitter partisan divide and the growing unwillingness of people to process complexity and nuance in today's issues. Our media model of political discourse simply relies too much on simplistic and fragmented discussion and solutions.
I'm with Frank on this. If I am not putting words in his mouth, a true democracy works only when the citizens live up to their responsibility to be fully informed and to participate in the process. Too many of us allow the putative pundits to do our thinking for us so we can fly out like drones to spit our talking points out to the opponents. Both the left and the right are guilty of this. And to make up for the weak intellectual component of the debate, we inject an energizing but destructive personal animus.
As an electorate, we must look to ourselves for the solution. Given our wealth and resources as a society, we have come up woefully short, and our current situation is our penalty.
Still, Eric, your points still stand. We are not moving forward; our president is not showing true courage and leadership; we are not winning the future. I lament these realities, but I am pleased to have read and rated this post.
FDR enacted hard reforms that kept us safe until they were repealed. But Obama is just like the Republicans: he never, ever questions greed.