Hawkins Calls for An End to Poverty in America
Howie Hawkins for Congress
25th District, New York
www.howiehawkins.org
For Immediate Release: Wednesday, September 17, 2008
For More Information: Howie Hawkins, 315-425-1019, hhawkins@igc.org
Congress Should Promote Economic Prosperity for All, Not Making the Rich Richer
Howie Hawkins, the Green Populist candidate for candidate in the 25th Congressional District, called today for a national commitment to end poverty in America.
In Syracuse, the census data released August 26, 2008 showed that almost 40,000 people (31 percent of the population) lived in families with incomes below the official poverty thresholds.
Among Hawkins' proposals are a federal guarantee of the right to a job at a living wage; a guaranteed minimum income above poverty; universal health care through a single public payer; and progressive tax reform to reduce the burden on working people and make the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share.
Hawkins said he believed that "Americans will support a government programs to end poverty. In the aftermath of Katrina when the reality of poverty in America was exposed, eradicating poverty became the number one priority of Americans in public opinion polls. But poverty doesn't get the focus it needs from elected officials because those officials owe their careers to wealthy campaign contributors. As US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said, ‘We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of few. But we can't have both.' Poverty amidst plenty in America is an indictment of the state of our democracy as well as an inexcusable burden on the poor."
The richest one percent of U.S. households now owns 34.3 percent of the nation's private wealth, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent.
Hawkins said that "Maffei's support for ‘empowerment zones' are just a recycled Republican idea from Jack Kemp that has failed for two decades and not different in principle from Sweetland's call for tax cuts to stimulate investment. Both are the failed approach of trickle-down economics that gives tax breaks to businesses on the theory that they will invest, create jobs, and the benefits will trickle down. Four decades of such corporate welfare for the rich has yielded wage and income stagnation for the bottom 90 percent and refutes the trickle-down theory."
"Instead, government spending should directly help low-income people and provide economic security for all working people, most of whom are just a lost job or illness away from poverty. It's time to enact long over due reforms that were called for by FDR in his Economic Bill of Rights in his 1944 State of the Union address, which he called upon Congress to enact. Our country has more than enough wealth to ensure that everyone has a basic standard of living. The problem is that the rich buy the candidates of both major parties to do their bidding to ensure they get richer at our expense. Campaign contributions are about the only investments Wall Street has made lately that have earned positive returns," Hawkins added.
Hawkins outlined a number of proposals to help move Syracuse residents and other Americans from poverty to prosperity:
- Jobs for All at Living Wages. Public works and services to guarantee living wage jobs for all. The government should be the employer of last resort providing jobs meeting community-defined needs for infrastructure, public amenities, and services.
- A Minimum Wage that is a Living Wage. Raise the federal minimum wage to a level that can support at family of four at a modest standard of living. As a short-term step, would support an increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit.
- A Guaranteed Minimum Income. Build taxable Basic Income Grants into the progressive income tax structure to ensure everyone has income for at least a modest standard of living above the poverty line.
- Universal Health Care through a Single Public Payer. Enact HR 676, The US National Health Insurance Act (Improved and Expanded Medicare for All). Health care should be a right, not a commodity that private insurance companies restrict access to in order to increase profits. More than 60 percent of bankruptcies in upstate New York are due to high medical bills and 75 percent of those people had health insurance.
- Affordable Housing, Energy, Food, and Mass Transit. To make these basic necessities abundant and affordable requires public investment. Leaving these to the market alone has failed.
- Lifelong Public Education. Tuition-Free from Head Start through University. Like the GI Bill of Rights, everyone 18 years or over should receive a minimum livable wage for four years when attending a post-secondary educational institution.
- Universal Child Care. The US and South Africa are the two only industrial countries that don't provide free childcare to all their residents.
- Strengthen Social Security and Pensions. Oppose privatization of Social Security. Raise the cap on the Social Security tax for high incomes. In longer run, fund Social Security through progressive income and wealth taxes, not regressive payroll taxes. Secure defined-benefit pensions for all workers by making corporations pay 10% of profits annually in new shares to a universal defined-benefit pension system in which all workers are vested and which is administered by workers' elected representatives. Only one in five working Americans enjoy defined-benefit pension benefits, about half as many workers as in 1980, and less than half the workforce has any employer-provided pension plan at all, defined-benefit or defined-contribution.
The United States continues to have poverty rates much higher than other industrial countries, especially among children. The recent data released by the US Census showed that despite several years of moderate economic growth, New York did not gain any ground against poverty from 2001 to 2007. New York had a higher poverty rate (14.3 percent) than the nation as a whole (12.4 percent) and the highest poverty rate of all the northern states. Poverty rates in upstate cities far exceeded the poverty rates in New York City and the rest of the state. The 31 percent poverty rate was in Syracuse was higher than other big cities in New York, including New York City, Rochester, and Buffalo.
"Thirty-seven million Americans live below the official poverty line," said Hawkins. "Millions more struggle each month to pay for basic necessities, or run out of savings when they lose their jobs or face health emergencies. Most of these people have jobs. The wages of 40 million workers are poverty wages of less than $10 an hour."
The 2005 US Census Bureau survey show that Syracuse has the third highest overall poverty rate (31.3%) and the very highest black poverty rate (42.5%) of the central cities in America's 100 largest metropolitan areas. Poverty particularly hits people of color, women and children hardest. A June 2004 study using 2000 US Census data by the Children's Defense Fund reported that the poverty rate for Syracuse children is more than 35 percent. The study found that one in six Syracuse children live in extreme poverty in households with less than $8,000 annual income. The 2000 US Census found that in the census tracts in the economically depressed Near South Side and Near West Side neighborhoods, household poverty rates were in the 40 to 55 percent range, with child poverty rates up to 60 percent.
A family of four is considered poor if the family's income is below $19,971far below what most people believe a family needs to get by. A recent report by the Fiscal Policy Institute found that the median "hardship" gap in New York State is a staggering $1,079 a month the second worst in the country. The hardship gap is the difference between the basic family budget (for food, housing, energy, health care, etc.) and their monthly income.
Hawkins said that Congress must finally take action to end the fact that the US has the greatest income inequality among industrial democracies with New York State having the greatest gap not only between the rich and the poor, but between the rich and the middle income in all of the United States.
"Americans as a whole saw a rise in their prosperity in the decades after World War II. That began to change in thee 1970s, as the wages for workers and the middle class stagnated while the rich became much richer. Income inequality has greatly accelerated in recent years," noted Hawkins.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, although the economy has expanded by 18% since 2000, most Americans' household income does not reflect that growth. Real income for the median family fell by 1.1% from 2000-2006. The people at the very top 10% of the income ladder reaped the lion's share of the rewards of economic growth, more than 90% of all the growth from 1989 to 2006. And the higher up the ladder they started out, the greater the rewards. There was a large scale skimming of the benefits of growth from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 10%, and especially to the top one percent and, even more so, the top one-tenth of a percent
Nationally, the top one percent of households received 21.8 percent of all pre-tax income in 2005, more than double what that figure was in the 1970s. This is the greatest concentration of income since 1928, when 23.9 percent of all income went to the richest one percent. Between 1979 and 2005, the top five percent of American families saw their real incomes increase 81 percent. Over the same period, the lowest-income fifth saw their real incomes decline 1 percent. The situation is even worse in New York State, which consistently ranks as the worst state in income inequality between the rich and the poor, and among the worse in income inequality between the rich and the middle class.
Hawkins said that as a short-term step he supported the national Let Justice Roll campaign by faith, community and labor groups that is calling for a hike in the minimum wage to $10 in 2010. Even after the federal minimum wage rises to $7.25 in July 2009, it will be far below the minimum wage of 1968, which is worth $9.86 now. The groups support the raise because:
· The present minimum wage is a poverty wage instead of an anti-poverty wage.
· $10 in 2010 is necessaryto make up the ground lost in real wages since 1968.
· $10 in 2010 will bring us closer to the goal of the "minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency and general well-being of workers" articulated by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established the minimum wage 70 years ago.
The state minimum wage in New York State is presently $7.15 an hour.
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