Sounds of silence greet new report showing jump in child poverty

The annual Kids Count report just released by the Annie E Casey Foundation shows that the child poverty rate in the U.S. has grown by 18% between 2000 and 2009, with 15 million of our children now living in poverty. More than twice that number live in homes where no parent has a full-time job. Poverty rose in 38 of our 50 states over the last decade.

Given the unemployment and economic crisis, these statistics are not surprising. But what does shock is the lack of response to so many kids in jeopardy.

When our banks are in trouble, Congress and the White House act. It’s the same when its auto companies or insurance firms. During the debt ceiling crisis there was enormous concern over whether the markets would suffer. But when it comes to children who are the most vulnerable and most voiceless, a report like this is greeted by sounds of silence. Where are the White House summits with the Speaker of the House? Where is the legislation that could help children?

This type of poverty is not just an economic issue. It’s a political issue as well. These children don’t belong to organizations, make campaign contributions, or have lobbyists. The result: their needs are not heard – and don’t make it onto the national agenda.

We can’t expect others to lead for us when it comes to changing the political climate. What are you doing to press policymakers for a response? At Share Our Strength we are working with governors across the country to ensure that they at least do everything possible to enroll more children in vital food and nutrition programs like school breakfast and summer meals. That is necessary but not sufficient. Is your nonprofit urging policymakers to do something about child poverty? If not, no matter how much good you are doing, it may not be good enough.

Washington is not just out of money, it is out of big and bold ideas

The stock market continues to plummet. Unemployment is stubbornly stuck above 9 per cent. A record 45 million Americans are on food stamps for the first time in U.S. history. The median wealth of white households is now 20 times that of black households. The debt ceiling legislation underscores Congress’s unwillingness to make the tough choices necessary to get our budget under control.


One is tempted to ask how so many bad things could be happening at once. But the real question is: how could they not? Because these are not randomly coinciding unfortunate events. As is often the case they are inextricably interconnected as symptoms of a deeper problem. That problem has to do with a political agenda that is set by and centers on the needs of the influential and elite.

Did it really take the stock market dropping 1000 points and losing 15% of its value for the light bulb to go off that when nearly a fifth of the nation’s adults are out of work or have quit looking they are unlikely to have the money to buy the kinds of things that cause businesses to expand and leads to economic growth?

One of Washington’s iron laws is that nature abhors a vacuum, and its corollary is that you can’t beat something with nothing. The President came to the podium yesterday, in the midst of Wall Street’s precipitous plunge, and sought to counter it with nothing more than platitudes. Instead of reassuring he inadvertently showed a hand that held no aces, and the effect was just the opposite of what was intended.

Washington is not just out of money, it is out of big ideas. Or perhaps worse, it lacks the courage to put forth big ideas that may seem unfashionable in the prevailing political climate.

Given the enormously complex economic issues facing our country, our challenge of ending childhood hunger begins to look manageable by comparison. And in a way it is, especially since the programs are in place to achieve it, and the need is so basic as to be undeniable. But the deep hole we’ve dug for our economy means the forces of gravity must be surmounted at the same time. That means we must multi-task – executing our No Kid Hungry campaign with focus and determination – but also getting behind bold new ideas to move our economy forward.

In Reducing the Federal Budget we have Reduced the National Imagination

There is a shockingly large inverse correlation between the number of pundits and politicians now saying that Obama should focus on jobs, and the small number of ideas being put forth to actually create them. One reason we hear so few specific big ideas about creating jobs is that to do so on the scale necessary to impact 9.1% unemployment would require an enormously ambitious and probably expensive agenda. Of the many negative consequences of the debt ceiling debacle, perhaps the greatest of all has been the national accommodation and acclimation to thinking small.


But that’s where presidential leadership is supposed to come in. Presidents are elected and paid to think bigger than the rest of us – to not be constrained by petty political considerations – even given the reality of the political environment in which their operate. From Lincoln to FDR, from Nixon to Reagan, we’ve seen presidents take risks when the stakes were high. President Obama needs to do more than call for a renewed focus on job creation as he did in his weekend radio address. He needs to put forth ideas on the scale that the problem exists, to show what our nation needs to do, not just center the debate around what some believe we can afford to do.

In reducing the federal budget we have also reduced the national imagination. The political failure we are witnessing today is not just a failure of fiscal discipline or of political civility, or even of long-range thinking. It is a failure of imagination. As I learned in writing The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men (@ http://ow.ly/5XC58 ) that is what most failures are really all about.

Of course presidents don’t have a monopoly on big ideas. Other policymakers, academics and advocates have a responsibility to step up as well. Enough cowering under the covers as unfavorable political winds blow. Let’s debate what we’d like to do, and then we can talk about whether it is worth the price. Our politicians might be surprised to learn just how much most Americans, who are more used to sacrifice than the elites, are willing to do to get this country working again.

Falling stocks and the need to create community wealth

When the stock market drops by more than 500 points as it did yesterday, it is not only bad for the many companies who lost value, it is also bad for the endowments of the foundations that fund many of our grant recipients at Share Our Strength. During the last market turndown, foundations ranging from Annie E. Casey to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation saw their endowments shrink by double digit percentages.


The fragility of our economy underscores the need for nonprofits to diversify their revenues, and to not be completely dependent on traditional philanthropic giving.

The conventional wisdom was that if Congress did not agree to a debt ceiling deal the markets would react negatively. Despite everyone’s unhappiness with the substance, there was relief and self-congratulation on Capitol Hill when the deal was reached.

So why did the markets react so negatively anyway? Unfortunately it did not occur to the politicians who are so acclimated to political spin, that achieving a deal in name only, especially one that kicked down the road the tough decisions to yet another commission, would not be enough to reassure investors whose livelihoods are at stake.

It’s also a deal that threatens to tear at some of the basic fabric of American society: programs like WIC, Medicaid, the military while it is fighting two wars, and the unknown of potential across the board cuts in all government agencies. Our political system is failing to create either community or wealth. But putting them together, by aspiring to create community wealth as we do at CWV and Share Our Strength, may be the best way forward for our nation.

forgetting the unforgettable

Yesterday a wise friend and accomplished leader in the New York business community wrote the following in response to my Washington Post article about famine in the Horn of Africa (@ http://ow.ly/5UYXP ) “The juxtaposition of the concentration of personal wealth with the increasing poverty and desperation of so many is more and more startling every day. It is clear that American politics today is dominated by greed with only a camera-ready nod toward compassion when it serves greed’s purpose."


I thought of his words while reading this morning’s NY Times. On Monday the Times had unforgettable images of suffering children from Somalia on page one, but today there is nothing to be found in the paper about this enormous ongoing catastrophe except a one paragraph AP wire service story buried inside. Page one instead has a photo of Louis Vuitton shoes being sold at Bergdorf Goodman for $1,495 a pair.

So the world inexorably moves on, even past the most horrific suffering, or perhaps especially past the most horrific suffering. The Czech author Milan Kundera wrote in 1979 in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting: “The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai and so on and so forth, until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten.”



That is the way of the world. But it need not be the way of the world we strive to achieve. Thanks to all at Share Our Strength who for nearly three decades have found a way to keep remembering, keep bearing witness, keep caring and organizing to bring change on behalf of those most vulnerable and voiceless.

Why the Debt Ceiling Deal Makes Our No Kid Hungry Strategy More Important

I have received several inquiries as to how the debt ceiling deal and proposed federal budget cuts will affect our No Kid Hungry strategy. Most people assume it will make our work harder. In the broad sense that is likely to be the case, especially because the nation’s economic growth is much slower than expected and the mandated budget cuts are unlikely to change that. Also, some important hunger programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infant and Children (WIC) and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program face potential cuts.




But while there is not much in the deal to be happy about, there are some rays of light regarding the specific anti-hunger and child nutrition programs that are core to our No Kid Hungry campaign strategy. Here are three examples:



First, the entitlement programs that are the focus of our efforts to enroll more children: e.g. school breakfast, summer meals, and food stamps are not included in the proposed cuts. Although that could change in the future, this means everything we are doing in our No Kid Hungry state campaigns has as great a potential as ever to dramatically reduce and eventually end childhood hunger.



Second, the debt ceiling package reflects an implicit bi-partisan endorsement of our strategy which is based on the conviction that these programs work, they protect those most vulnerable and least responsible for their situation, and that they should be protected even when the economy and the political climate change – perhaps especially when the economy and political climate change.



Third, the legislative cuts in non-entitlement discretionary spending makes our strategy all of the more necessary and important. As other essential services, especially in health and education are cut, the safety net represented by the child nutrition entitlement programs stands out as all the more vital an oasis in the desert.



So we are more determined than ever to expand our No Kid Hungry campaign, with a renewed sense of urgency, to protect more children by ensuring they are enrolled in programs available where they live learn and play. I hope you will join our efforts to advocate for the vital role these programs play and to protect them from cuts, especially as the new Congressional Joint Committee debates their future.



Share Our Strength board member Bob Greenstein, the director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, has an analysis of the policy implications of the debt ceiling deal on the Center’s website @ http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3555

Avoiding the Truth: The Hypocrisy of Debt Ceiling Deals and Bad Marriages

The debt ceiling deal has exposed our political system to be a lot like a bad marriage that perpetuates itself only when both parties to it tacitly agree to keep the relationship wholly superficial and at all costs avoid confronting the truth. It requires not only duplicity, but pretense, cynicism, hypocrisy, and a near complete abandonment of hope.


The details of the debt ceiling agreement are convoluted, upon which the illusion of substantive progress depends. But in fact most of the hard work has been left to the future, and that time-honored political dodge – a commission. As in a bad marriage there is so little confidence of it improving that even future action to reduce federal spending is predicated on automatic triggers rather than thoughtful deliberation.

Most observers would not have thought it possible for politicians to abdicate their responsibilities, let alone their principles, even further than they had over the past few weeks of negotiations. But with the final deal they managed to create a living monument to such cowardice.

The weak smiles of Senators Harry Reid and Charles Schumer walking through a Capitol corridor and captured on the front page of many papers the day the deal was done, betrayed the embarrassment of leading a party that has evolved, at least for now, into a paler, weaker version of their Republican counterpart. And President Obama, who put getting a deal ahead of his own once eloquently stated ideals, has unintentionally shown us just how much audacity it does take to continue to hope.