June 12, 1967
Page 15368
THE ANTIPOVERTY PROGRAM
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I invite the attention of the Senate to the informative and interesting evaluation of the Nation's strategy against poverty by Look magazine in its issue of June 13. This is no superficial study. Look's senior editor, Ira Mothner, has compiled a comprehensive, in-depth review of the antipoverty program, probing both its strengths and its weaknesses. The title, in fact, is "The Nickel Revolution."
Look magazine is right. We are trying to do a lot with a little. The problem is immense and the funds necessary for a speedy solution are limited. But this is not to say that the effort – however limited – should be abandoned or even curtailed. We must move on, and I was pleased to see Look reach such a conclusion in its editorial, "We Can't Quit Now."
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of this editorial be printed in the RECORD at this point.
There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
THE WAR ON POVERTY – WE CAN'T QUIT NOW
Why wage a war on poverty unless we intend to win it? Promises won't work any more, and we're not going to do the job with nickles. But it will take more than the extra billions we must spend to avoid the disgrace of failure and the fury of a vengeful poor. We need money, not to cushion poverty, but to help the poor help themselves and join the rest of us in a truly middle-class America.
To be poor in America is to stand at the candy-store window with an aching sweet tooth, to be a bitter spectator at our feast of plenty. The economy that keeps grinding out new and more elaborate gim-cracks for us also grinds down the poor. In those tumorous parts of the cities where they live, our fat wartime prosperity means nothing.
The recent Labor Department studies of big-city slums reported one-third of the work force was unemployed, underemployed or just couldn't be found. It was worse in Negro neighborhoods. Oakland's Bayside had a regular unemployment rate of 13 percent. Around Cleveland's troubled Hough, the rate was 15.6 percent, and one-half of the residents were what the study termed, "subemployed."
These are the most visible poor. They riot. They frighten us with the anger of their discontent. Negroes are one-third of the poor. Yet they get more than half the antipoverty aid, and with good reason. The War on Poverty must remedy years of stunted aspiration, for we are pledged to create equal – not just similar – opportunity.
Negro leaders, mostly middle class, have come out strongly for economic equality. They have helped organize the slums and proposed their own antipoverty formula in a massive Freedom Budget. But they have not become the voice of the poor, not even the Negro poor. And the poor have yet to find a voice of their own.
It is up to the Office of Economic Opportunity, not only to cope with the problems of poverty, but to argue the just demands of the poor from within the Government. Bureaucrats can run a Head Start program or even a Job Corps, once the wrinkles have been ironed out. OEO, however, has the rougher chore of goading the big Federal departments to respond to the needs of a powerless community.
But a real war on poverty means more than just providing added services for the poor, setting up better, but still separate, facilities for them. We cannot become so smug about Head Start classes and neighborhood centers in the slums that we forget our goal is to get people out of poverty and settle for the comfortable expedient of making poverty a more pleasant place for them to live.
When you ask the poor what they want, they'll tell you – good jobs. They're not just looking for work at $1.50 an hour for the rest of their lives (although many will grab it). They don't need the War on Poverty to live beneath the poverty line ($3,130 for an urban family of four). It's real jobs, with promotions and raises that they want, jobs they can't get. They need training, skills, but only if there is a job waiting for them when they are ready. First, many must be prepared to learn, taught the basics they never got in school, helped to overcome traits, like quick tempers and easy frustration, that make the poor difficult employees. We have programs for a few, but we need them for all the poor, and we have to open up more jobs by dropping unrealistic requirements. (One major food processor demands an eighth-grade education for chicken pluckers.) This way, we'll move millions up from poverty – and still be left with some unemployed.
There are workers who will never be paid a decent wage no matter how much training they get. Part of OEO's job is to figure out what's best for them. We could cut welfare costs by subsidizing their jobs, giving employers the difference between what thy are paid and what they are worth. The Government might put them in some of the four million useful public-service jobs that OEO believes can be created.
But jobs are not the only answer to poverty. They will not help the old, the sick and disabled or many mothers of small children. The answer to their problem is easy – give them money. Welfare is one way, but the minimal kind of assistance we now pay (and only half of those eligible are on the rolls) is too expensive for what it buys. This kind of welfare doesn't cure poverty, it perpetuates it. It locks in people whose children are born into poverty and often never leave.
To guarantee a "practical minimum level of income" for all, the Government's Advisory Council on Public Welfare has proposed a national standard for welfare payments. Public assistance can vary from state to state by as much as 600 percent. Under the Council's plan, the only eligibility requirement would be need, determined initially by no more than the applicant's word. Welfare would be a right, like free education, protected by the courts.
A better welfare system is one way to meet this need. But we must consider other alternatives, even direct payments to the poor. The President's Council of Economic Advisors estimates it would cost about $11 billion to insure that every family in America has an income of at least $3,000 a year. This might be accomplished through a negative income tax, a device that should be carefully studied and debated. A low-cost, negative-tax plan that would create an incentive to work, and is favored at OEO, would give families half the difference between their annual incomes (from welfare or work) and $3,000.
It will take jobs to win the War on Poverty, and a decent income for those who cannot work. Everyone has the right to be free from the fear of want, just as he has the right to adequate medical care (Look editorial, March 21, 1967). But the poor must join the middle-class rest of us socially as well as economically. They must fight a part of the war themselves, through their neighborhood councils and action groups. While businessmen and politicians, labor leaders and social workers should have their say about community action, they cannot be allowed to push the poor aside. They must learn to listen to the poor while the poor are still quiet or they will only hear them in rage.
Certainly, the poor are going to need better services. Yet we must not delude ourselves that this is enough. We can squander billions on ghetto schools and public housing. We can build a wall of services between ourselves and the poor, creating a permanent, subsidized lower class. The harder choice, this generation's unique commitment, is to help the poor climb up to where they can compete with us for housing education and the material pleasures of our world. We must make up our minds to do the whole job. It will be costly; it can't be done overnight. Business as much as Government must help. But we can end welfare waste, earn back our investment from the taxes and increased production of millions of new consumers. We have promised to let the poor in – and we can't quit now.
THE EDITOR.