Fight poverty for Americans’ and America’s sake

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Are you better off today than before Barack Obama was elected in 2008? Depends on who’s doing the asking and who’s answering.

That’s why there’s got to be a better way to fight poverty.

Every November since the assassination in 1963, John F. Kennedy’s rise to the White House has been replayed in black-and-white images. The stark footage shows him meeting with coal miners who easily could be considered black, their faces covered as they were a by-product of their profitable industry.

After his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, took office, and the White House turned its attention, not to the Appalachian coal-mining region and rural areas that helped deliver the Kennedy-Johnson ticket, but to black America.

One of the legacies is the War on Poverty, a 51-year-old initiative that failed to remove the shackles of poverty from blacks and whites in urban and rural America.

Like the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty compounded problems of the poor.

Interestingly enough, poverty is one of those issues, policies, facts of life we really and truly do not like discussing. One reason is because the discussions here in America usually springboard to one of two stereotypes: poor white trash and slovenly blacks.

The reality is that poverty — like HIV/AIDS, bullets, domestic violence, ignorance and stupidity, and such — does not discriminate. South America and Canada, Asia and Europe, Australia and Africa. Indeed, everywhere around the globe that humankind inhabits.

Yet, in America, poverty is a red hot political football. Democrats will use the poor for political power and gain, and to increase the size of government “intervention” efforts. Recall, as an example, the images of Democrat John Edwards using the black children in New Orleans, stricken by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, as his presidential campaign props.

Meanwhile, for their part, Republicans are often excoriated by progressives when they offer anti-poverty solutions and take historical victimization out of the poverty equation. Coal-mining regions are poverty-stricken because of coal miners? Egads!

In other words, Republican proposals blame neither whites nor blacks, as the War on Poverty did. Recall, as an example, that Donald Trump used the term “inner cities” during the campaign and on election night. We all know that “inner city” is a substitute for black Americans.

Yet in his election night speech, Mr. Trump said we are going to “fix our inner cities,” and “rebuild” was one of the next words out of his mouth.

So now, he’s used one of President Obama’s oft-spoken words — rebuild. (Veterans Affairs, America’s infrastructure, and the Democratic Party are three of his examples.)

There’s no escaping how and why poverty is tied to rebuilding America, even if you do not want Mr. Trump to make America great again. Or you never were a Kennedy supporter. Or you think LBJ played a handful of race cards. Or that the Bill Clinton-signed welfare reform and NAFTA trade deal were part of the poverty problem.

For sure, employment must be part of the solution to anti-poverty efforts.

We must produce the America we want, and change doesn’t come by osmosis. Change comes from vision, discourse and leadership.

Just because people protest and try to raise Cain every time change is in our midst, doesn’t mean they have a vision and want discourse or even a leader.

Congress already has an anti-poverty plan in hand; it’s titled “A Better Way” and is the product of the Republican Task Force on Poverty, Opportunity, and Upward Mobility. House Speaker Paul Ryan is a huge supporter of the blueprint.

Don’t reject “A Better Way” out of hand. Go online and read it. Discuss it and grab a seat at the table.

Anti-poverty legislation is a must-do for the incoming Trump administration and Congress.

Go online and read the document for yourself. Don’t let others speak on your behalf.

• Deborah Simmons can be contacted at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.