News & Politics

Robert Devaney •

A unique panel met May 12 at Georgetown University’s Gaston Hall to discuss the difficult topic of poverty in America. One of the panelists happened to be the President of the United States.

President Barack Obama sat next to discussion moderator E.J. Dionne, a Washington Post columnist and Georgetown faculty member, along with Harvard professor Robert Putnam and Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute.

The four men looked for solutions and advanced perspectives that went beyond the everyday left-right rigidity in addressing the plight of poor Americans, a widening economic gap and how to advance opportunity for all.

If the dialogue was not quite a clarion call for concerted national action, it almost did become that, as the president showed a more personal side to issues about national policy.

The president first answered the question of why this panel and this discussion: “I think that we are at a moment — in part because of what’s happened in Baltimore and Ferguson and other places, but in part because a growing awareness of inequality in our society — where it may be possible not only to refocus attention on the issue of poverty, but also maybe to bridge some of the gaps that have existed and the ideological divides that have prevented us from making progress.”

“And there are a lot of folks here who I have worked with — they disagree with me on some issues, but they have great sincerity when it comes to wanting to deal with helping the least of these.  And so this is a wonderful occasion for us to join together,” Obama continued.

“Part of the reason I thought this venue would be useful and I wanted to have a dialogue with Bob and Arthur is that we have been stuck, I think for a long time, in a debate that creates a couple of straw men.  The stereotype is that you’ve got folks on the left who just want to pour more money into social programs, and don’t care anything about culture or parenting or family structures, and that’s one stereotype.  And then you’ve got cold-hearted, free market, capitalist types who are reading Ayn Rand and think everybody are moochers.  And I think the truth is more complicated.”

Putnam, author of the recently published “Our Kids: the American Dream in Crisis,” spoke of the slowing of social and economic mobility — a given for Americans for decades.

“I think in this domain there’s good news and bad news, and it’s important to begin with the bad news because we have to understand where we are,” Putnam said. “The president is absolutely right that the War on Poverty did make a real difference, but it made a difference more for poverty among people of my age than it did for poverty among kids.” 

“And with respect to kids, I completely agree with the president that we know about some things that would work and things that would make a real difference in the lives of poor kids, but what the book that you’ve referred to, “Our Kids,” what it presents is a lot of evidence of growing gaps between rich kids and poor kids; that over the last 30 or 40 years, things have gotten better and better for kids coming from well-off homes, and worse and worse for kids coming from less well-off homes.” 

“And I don’t mean Bill Gates and some homeless person,” Putnam continued. “I mean people coming from college-educated homes — their kids are doing better and better, and people coming from high school-educated homes, they’re kids aren’t.  And it’s not just that there’s this class gap, but a class gap on our watch — I don’t mean just the president’s watch, but I mean on my generation’s watch — that gap has grown.”

“You can see it in measures of family stability. You can see it in measures of the investments that parents are able to make in their kids, the investments of money and the investments of time.  You can see it in the quality of schools kids go to.  You can see it in the character of the social and community support that kids — rich kids and poor kids are getting from their communities.  Church attendance is a good example of that, actually.  Churches are an important source of social support for kids outside their own family, but church attendance is down much more rapidly among kids coming from impoverished backgrounds than among kids coming from wealthy backgrounds.”

Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute answered the question on expanding the socio-economic safety net in a non-partisan way: “One concept that rides along with that is to point out — and this is what I do to many of my friends on Capitol Hill — I remind them that just because people are on public assistance doesn’t mean they want to be on public assistance.  And that’s the difference between people who factually are making a living and who are accepting public assistance.  It’s an important matter to remember about the motivations of people and humanizing them.  And then the question is, how can we come together?  How can we come together?”

“I have, indeed, written that it’s time to declare peace on the safety net.  And I say that as a political conservative.  Why?  Because Ronald Reagan said that; because Friedrich Hayek said that.  This is not a radical position.  In fact, the social safety net is one of the greatest achievements of free enterprise — that we could have the wealth and largesse as a society, that we can help take care of people who are poor that we’ve never even met.  It’s historic; it’s never happened before.  We should be proud of that.”

In response, Obama said: “We don’t dispute that the free market is the greatest producer of wealth in history. It has lifted billions of people out of poverty.  We believe in property rights, rule of law, so forth.  But there has always been trends in the market in which concentrations of wealth can lead to some being left behind.  And what’s happened in our economy is that those who are doing better and better — more skilled, more educated, luckier, having greater advantages — are withdrawing from sort of the commons — kids start going to private schools; kids start working out at private clubs instead of the public parks.  An anti-government ideology then disinvests from those common goods and those things that draw us together.  And that, in part, contributes to the fact that there’s less opportunity for our kids, all of our kids.

“Now, that’s not inevitable.  A free market is perfectly compatible with also us making investment in good public schools, public universities; investments in public parks; investments in a whole bunch — public infrastructure that grows our economy and spreads it around.  But that’s, in part, what’s been under attack for the last 30 years.  And so, in some ways, rather than soften the edges of the market, we’ve turbocharged it.  And we have not been willing, I think, to make some of those common investments so that everybody can play a part in getting opportunity.”

“Now, one other thing I’ve got to say about this is that even back in Bob’s day that was also happening.  It’s just it was happening to black people.  And so, in some ways, part of what’s changed is that those biases or those restrictions on who had access to resources that allowed them to climb out of poverty — who had access to the firefighters job, who had access to the assembly line job, the blue-collar job that paid well enough to be in the middle class and then got you to the suburbs, and then the next generation was suddenly office workers — all those things were foreclosed to a big chunk of the minority population in this country for decades.”

“And that accumulated and built up,” Obama continued. “And over time, people with less and less resources, more and more strains — because it’s hard being poor.  People don’t like being poor.  It’s time-consuming. It’s stressful.  It’s hard.  And so over time, families frayed.  Men who could not get jobs left.  Mothers who are single are not able to read as much to their kids.  So, all that was happening 40 years ago to African Americans. And now what we’re seeing is that those same trends have accelerated, and they’re spreading to the broader community. ”

The meeting was part of a three-day Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on Overcoming Poverty at Georgetown. At the summit, put together by the university’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life and the National Association of Evangelicals, attendees included leaders from various religious communities, policy makers, researchers and community organizers.
[gallery ids="0,0" nav="thumbs"]

Georgetowner •

We are fast coming up on the celebration of Memorial Day, the long weekend that is a signal and a symbol for so many things in the lives of Americans.

In America, Memorial Day means remembering, an ending and a beginning, gatherings at memorials and cemeteries, at parade routes and in your or someone else’s backyard. It means round-the-clock war movies on Turner Classic Movies. It means that school’s out, summer is starting and baseball is being played at every level and on many fields in heartland America and here, too.
Every town in America has a cemetery where veterans of our too-many wars are memorialized by headstones, angels and dates, and many towns have their parades – big, medium and small – characterized by the family of man, some distant or recent memories of loss and heroism and by the total lack of self-consciousness of the marchers.

Here in Washington, Memorial Day inevitably means a little more, because we have our own wall of remembrance here, still reaching out from mirrored stone at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Here are the battle wreaths and theaters of war at the National World War II Memorial, and here and everywhere are busts of men and generals, and the stark, solemn graves on the expanses of green at Arlington National Cemetery.

Generals will come out, and so will the president, and men old and not-so-old will don uniform and medals and roam the grounds near the fountains of the World War II Memorial, their numbers dwindling, the green and brown jackets worn, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren increasing the multitudes.

This is our national memorial by the pool and the trees, the Korean War platoon still seeming to move uphill with grit, the site of the small World War I Memorial, the picnic lawns and speeches and taps and the current soldiers standing squared away and tall, the newspapers still carrying rumblings of war in far away places.

Memorial Day weekend is not so much about losses as it is about individual sacrifice. With all unbounded respect, we do not celebrate triumphs and victories and defeats here as if wars were won and lost on playing fields. We respect the memory of people who answered a need and call, for hearth and country, and gave up, not willingly, but with fight and courage, their lives, leaving behind the rest of their unlived lives among us all.

We ought to really think and let it wash over us as we watch the parade, all the proceedings and flags and the tanks and jeeps and the muskets and rifles and politicians among us. There are heroes among us, remembered, and men and women just as heroic, protecting our communities, like policemen who do things right and fall in the line of duty, or D.C. Fire Lt. Kevin McRae, who died just after fighting a fire in Shaw.

You’ll see the others marching in tandem from long ago, the thousands dead in valor down to our own centuries. Lincoln presides over all in this corner of the city, looking across the mall and the pool at the thousands of us, visitors and the folks who live here.
And here they come, the drum and the fife, the blue coats and Billy Yanks, marines and airmen and sailors and grunts. And the people will bring what they died for: the families, the kids, the T-shirts, the car keys and pride, their photo IDs and precious phones and the memories, some of them, of men and women they lost.

The 90 somethings will wander with their families at the memorial, the motorcycles and tanned, grizzled faces from Vietnam, leather vests and ponytails, rolling like thunder.

And then, some part of that time, the old pictures will come out, from a scrapbook or a computer file. There will be a different, sweet and dusty parade in the neighborhood, smoke coming from the barbecue. And on Capitol Hill, they will gather for the yearly concert, and then the long summer commences in familiar heat, and beaches and sparklers and hoses beckon, in a time when the need for heroes remains strong.

At the memorials, at night, they are all at rest, remembered.

Georgetowner •

April and May are busy months for the D.C. Council. Mayor Bowser released her budget request for fiscal year 2016 early in April, and the Council has been undertaking a complete evaluation. Much of the initial review is finished, and I’m happy to share some of the Council’s recommendations.

I’ll start with the Finance and Revenue Committee, which I chair. The committee recommended that the sales and parking tax not be increased in the upcoming budget (as the Mayor had proposed). Our economy – and the revenue that the District government collects in taxes and fees – continue to grow. At a time when the government has more money to spend than ever before, we shouldn’t be raising taxes on residents, instead making sure we are utilizing those funds as appropriately and effectively as possible.

The committee also recommended that the Council find $4 million in additional funding for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH). Currently, DCCAH is scheduled to receive just $16 million to support programs for our children, artists across the city and the diverse community that makes Washington the most dynamic city in the country. In the nation’s capital, we should commit more than $16 million to this valuable work.

In addition to chairing the Finance and Revenue Committee, I also sit on the Judiciary and Transportation Committees. Both panels have submitted their recommendations to the full Council for review and approval.

I was disappointed that the Transportation Committee suggested reducing funding for alley and street rehabilitation, while we have alleys all across the city that are literally crumbling. I proposed an amendment to increase the funding by $5 million next year, but despite my vigorous lobbying on the dais, my colleagues rejected the increase. There is still some funding available for alley rehab, and I will continue to push the D.C. Department of Transportation to make sure Ward 2 alleys are being fixed as quickly as possible.

On the Judiciary Committee, the most notable change from the mayor’s proposal was a reduction in funding for police body cameras in the upcoming budget year. Council member Kenyan McDuffie, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, and I both fully support the body cameras. The recommendation is based on limited planning for how the cameras would be deployed and the still-undecided policy on how the footage would be made available to the public and the press.

The mayor has proposed to exempt all of this footage from the District’s open records law, but this significantly undermines our goal of greater accountability and safety. I’ll continue to work to make sure we have a fully funded, accountable body camera program for the District’s police officers.

The next step in the budget process is a review and vote by the entire Council on May 27 at 10 a.m. in the Council Chambers. The hearing will be open to the public and available on television and on the Council’s website. I’ll continue to keep you apprised of updates to the planned use of your tax dollars.

Jack Evans is the Ward 2 Councilmember, representing Georgetown since 1991.

Georgetowner •