Plight of Poor Becomes Issue in 2000 Race

Bill Bradley says that reducing the number of children in poverty “should be the North Star for our society . . . [the way] we measure ourselves.” George W. Bush says that “the purpose of prosperity is to leave . . . no one behind.” And on Thursday in Iowa, Al Gore said that, if elected president, “I will use all its power to close the opportunity gaps” between rich and poor.

Opening some of the first clear lines of division in campaign 2000, an intriguing three-way debate is developing over one of the nation’s most intractable social problems: the persistence of poverty in a period of prosperity.

From Bradley’s left-leaning call for a new wave of government activism, to Gore’s center-left “third way” agenda focused on encouraging more private investment in inner cities, to Bush’s center-right “compassionate conservatism” emphasizing the role of faith-based charities, voters are being presented with simultaneously overlapping and conflicting alternatives on how best to help those left out of the economic recovery.

“People are going to be judged by the depth of their ideas about how to deal with this problem,” Bradley, the sole Democratic challenger to Gore, insisted in an interview.

None of the campaign 2000 contenders is yet proposing anything as ambitious as President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty 35 years ago. Yet the heightened campaign focus on poverty from Bradley, Gore and Bush--following President Clinton’s own high-profile tour of impoverished urban and rural communities last month--suggests that the problems of poor families, especially those with children, could be more visible in this presidential election than in any other in the last 20 years.

“Who would have thought one of the battlegrounds this year would be how our country reaches out to those who are left behind?” asks Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, the chief domestic policy advisor to Bush, the Texas governor who leads the Republican field.

Partly the result of tactical calculations by the candidates, the increased focus on poverty may also be a byproduct of sustained prosperity. Polls still show few Americans cite poverty when asked the most important problem facing the country. But with voters feeling more economically secure, analysts note, they may be more likely to believe the country can afford new initiatives for the poor.

Historian Robert Dallek, the author of a recent biography of Johnson, says it’s probably no coincidence that the War on Poverty was also launched during a booming economy. “In good times, there is a sense we are so economically successful we can reach out and take care of those left behind,” Dallek says.

As these three candidates circle the issue, two distinct debates are developing--one within the Democratic Party and one between the Democrats and Bush.

On the Democratic side, Bradley’s critique is that Clinton and Gore haven’t done enough to reduce the number of poor families--especially given the opportunity created by the economic boom. In a speech on poverty in Los Angeles in June--his first major policy address--Bradley charged that Clinton and Gore have merely “tinkered around the margins” while “the percentage of American children living in poverty has barely changed.”

Much of the argument between Bradley and Gore turns on whether the glass is half full or half empty.

Overall Poverty Rate Declines

When Clinton took office, the children’s poverty rate stood at 22.3%; it’s fallen since, but remained at 19.9% in 1997, the latest year for which census figures are available. Over the same period, the overall poverty rate has dipped from 14.8% to 13.3%. (The poverty level for that period was defined as $16,276 for a family of four.)

Gore notes that the decline in the children’s poverty rate has been greater than in any five-year period since the 1960s and that the poverty rate among African Americans (at 26.5%) is at the lowest level ever recorded. Bradley and his supporters say those numbers are still much too high this far into an economic expansion and point to the 6.4 million children living in deep poverty--families with incomes less than half the poverty rate.

Likewise, Gore points toward the administration’s record--even in a Republican-controlled Congress--of increasing funding for Head Start (up 68% since 1993), launching a $24-billion program to provide health care for uninsured children and providing tax relief for the working poor.

While praising many of those individual efforts, Bradley said the administration overall has “given not enough attention to the children themselves and clearly not enough attention to the parents.”

The argument between Gore and Bradley extends beyond Clinton’s record toward a more basic philosophical dispute about the role of government.

While Clinton and Gore have pushed to spend more on some government anti-poverty programs, they’ve put much of their energy into measures in which government acts as a “catalyst” to spur more private investment in the inner city. Those efforts--which Gore has helped design as chairman of the administration’s Community Empowerment Board--have included empowerment zones (which provide tax breaks for job creation in depressed areas) and tougher enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act (which requires banks to make loans available in low-income communities).

Gore Pledges a Focus on Investment

Gore says that as president he’d extend this focus on investment with new proposals he will detail later. In his speech in Iowa, Gore proposed increasing the number of empowerment zones, and he is also considering imposing a CRA-like community investment requirement on insurance companies and mutual funds.

For his part, Bradley is contemplating significant new government expenditures in areas like health care, day care and early childhood education as well as tax changes and increases in the minimum wage that could bolster the poor and working poor. Asked if government must spend more on the needy, Bradley fires back: “You look at the numbers now, and tell me: Has this been sufficient?”

Though he isn’t planning to reveal specifics in these areas until October, Bradley is likely to make more expansive (and expensive) promises than Gore. Yet the challenger may have difficulty establishing as clear a contrast as he hopes; Gore has also already called for increasing the minimum wage and funding preschool for all children.

A sharper difference may come over welfare reform. Like Clinton, Gore describes the 1996 welfare reform bill--which ended the federal entitlement to welfare and established strict time limits on benefits--as a “historic success.”

Bradley, who voted against the bill in 1996, condemns it on the campaign trail--particularly for ending the federal entitlement to welfare. And although Bradley has not proposed to repeal the time limits, he pointedly questions the wisdom of requiring welfare mothers en masse to leave the house and enter the work force, as the bill does.

While this dispute is sharpening among Democrats, Bush is trying to reshape the boundaries of the poverty debate between the parties.

To a greater extent than either Bradley or Gore, Bush ties the persistence of poverty to issues of personal responsibility and the decline of the two-parent family. Yet what makes Bush unusual among Republicans is his insistence that government must increase its own efforts to uplift the needy--albeit in new ways. “It is not enough to call for voluntarism,” Bush declared in his first major policy address--on poverty--last month.

At the center of Bush’s anti-poverty agenda is a proposal he issued last month to provide $8 billion in tax incentives and government grants to expand the work of faith-based charities in providing job training, mentoring and other services to the poor. Bush has also talked about cutting taxes for the working poor; providing new tax incentives for inner-city investment; and reforming inner-city schools through such measures as pilot projects to test school vouchers.

In its focus on cutting taxes for the working poor, relying more on neighborhood groups to deliver services and encouraging inner-city investment, Bush’s agenda overlaps his Democratic rivals’, especially Gore’s. That reflects a convergence between forward-looking thinkers in both parties around the themes of linking opportunity with responsibility and decentralizing authority for delivering social services.

In both those respects, as well as the drive to increase private-sector investment, these new initiatives depart from the War on Poverty, which lacked the emphasis on personal responsibility and focused much more on channeling the needy into government programs directed from Washington.

Democrats Try to Widen Gulf With GOP

Yet for all the similarities, real differences between the parties remain. And Democrats are already trying to widen the distinctions with Bush by challenging him on such issues as his support for the Congressional Republican tax plan, which critics claim would compel large cuts in domestic programs. Asked about Bush’s pledges both to sign the GOP tax bill and to “leave no one behind,” Gore charged: “Anyone who makes those two simultaneous pledges is engaging in an act of self-contradiction.”

Such comments suggest the problem of poverty is likely to generate plenty of heat in the campaign. The open question is whether it also produces agendas robust enough to provide real hope for struggling families.