Poverty as a Political Issue

The American Prospect featured a great piece last week about how politicians frame poverty - and how that impacts public sentiment towards the poor. After Reagan effectively boogey-womaned mothers on welfare, President Clinton reframed Democratic economic policy as one concerned with the middle-class. This was a political maneuver to fight poverty subtly using a more inclusive rhetoric; many political observers claim that President Obama is doing the same thing today. What's especially interesting here is how their policy actions within our economic circumstances influence our general attitudes toward the poor. Is the best time to fight poverty now - during an historic recession - or when the good times roll again?

Turns out, unsurprisingly to me, that welfare reform at the cusp of the boom years of the late 1990s hardened public attitudes about poverty. After welfare reform and its emphasis on work, if Americans were still receiving public assistance, the reasoning went, they must seriously be doing something wrong to still be poor. The distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor was sharper than ever.

Now, amidst a recession, public sympathy for the poor has increased, in part, policymakers and political strategists theorize, because many middle-class Americans are experiencing economic hardship. Suddenly, those rigid boundaries between hard-working "us" and an irresponsible "them" have blurred.

Yet, President Obama and other prominent politicians have not used this opportunity to publicly voice support for anti-poverty policy. They may be secretly pushing through an expansion of the social safety net via the stimulus, but there's been little explicit assertion that we're long overdue for such an expansion, in part because of historic inequality and blocked opportunity.

Does this matter? If we push policy under the rubric that we're all in this together, and what's good for the middle-class is good for everyone, and the poor benefit in the process - as activists should we demand a less veiled attempt to reduce poverty in the US? I'd argue yes, because it's clear from this piece and the historical record that political framing of poverty harnesses and solidifies public sentiment. That is, even if more low-income families are benefiting from food stamps, but we're only reporting about middle-class use of food stamps, can we expect political will to remain once the recession ends and middle-income families are back on solid ground? The recession will have the likely effect of sentencing countless families to multi-generational poverty long after it's over, and long after families newly in crisis have regained their economic footing. What will we do then?

Some analysts say it's during the boom times that we can truly fight poverty, when there's more to go around. Yet, the Clinton years of "peace and prosperity" complicate that suggestion. We need to pay attention to President Obama's long-term anti-poverty initiatives, including how he frames them to win broad-based support.

(Photo of Obama, Biden and DOT Secretary Ray LaHood by Scott Bernstein for the Center for Neighborhood Technology)