Burnt Orange Report

We Must Confront This Moral Poverty

By Phillip Martin

On September 15, President Bush addressed the nation to talk about his plans for rebuilding the city of New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf Coast region. During his address, he made the following comment about poverty in the region:

"As all of us saw on television, there is also some deep and persistent poverty in this region. That poverty has roots in racism and discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action."

Poverty is hardly unique to the Gulf Coast region, nor is it solely rooted in racism and discrimination. Though racial discrimination has played its part in perpetuating Southern poverty levels, so too have the policy decisions of this and previous administrations.

The same policy decisions that have impacted the South are rooted in a moral poverty that has perpetuated economic poverty in every region of the country – among Americans of all races and ethnicities. In fact, the U.S. Census Bureau recently reported that the Midwest was the only region in America to see an overall increase in the poverty level last year. The Census Bureau also reports that "both the number and rate (of people living in poverty) have risen for four consecutive years, from 31.6 million and 11.3 percent in 2000, to 37.0 million and 12.7 percent in 2004 respectively." That's 5.4 million new people in poverty in the last four years under the Bush administration and a Republican Congress.

The primary cause for the increased poverty rate is a failed economic policy in which a vast majority of "new" jobs are actually replacement jobs that do not pay as well as jobs we have lost. These replacement jobs have caused the median income for American families to decrease for the second straight year, leaving more people with less money.

The President's suggestion that he can raise New Orleans out of its "legacy of inequality" by creating a few minority-owned businesses is naïve at best, and condescending at worst. Poverty is not a disease we can cure with a prescription, nor is it a bad business deal we can counter with deeper investments.

Poverty, at its most devastating level, cuts the hope from our lives and the good from our hearts. Among all races in all regions, poverty fills too many Americans with desperation and despair so real that the great American dream provides no real hope, opportunity or possibility.

The cure for poverty is a true compassion that is carried beyond promise to practices and policies that reflect all the goodness we have and offer it to every single American, just as we have offered such to the people of the Gulf Coast. We cannot be conservative with our compassion, opening our hearts only in times of disaster, to those we choose, or when it is far too late. We must create policies that reach out to each and every citizen, just as we create weapons that search to destroy the most isolated of enemies.

Unfortunately, our government does not provide or support such compassionate policies. Instead, we send money to fight wars where we don't belong while giving tax cuts to people who don't need them. We try to outlaw love between two people, yet are proud to sentence others to death. We talk about how our children are our most precious resource, yet cut public education funding and stand idly by while 1 in 4 American children have no health insurance.

We will never be able to fully address the economic poverty in this country until we confront the moral poverty of our government.

We have a duty to change our country, starting at the top, along with all those elected officials -- Democrat, Republican, or otherwise -- who choose to embrace or endure our President’s hollow promises. By taking responsibility with our voices and votes, we can turn from the path of willful ignorance to a course worthy of our country's central ideal: all men are created equal. A moral government would treat everyone that way.