Manifesto

Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy • 5

Combating Poverty within the Black Community: Conservative Policy Initiatives Hold Potential Solutions

Mary Elizabeth Taylor

Mary Elizabeth Taylor is entering her third year as a member of the Senate Republican Cloakroom staff that is charged with the coordination of policy and floor activities for the Republican leader and his caucus colleagues. While work remains her primary focus, she is also involved with The Fund for American Studies (TFAS), a networking and education program designed to develop young leaders with a shared commitment to helping improve public policy. She was a TFAS Public Policy Fellow in 2012 and continues to serve in various alumni capacities. She holds bachelor of arts degrees from Bryn Mawr College in Spanish and political science with a concentration in the United States governmental system. Her studies culminated in the completion of a year- long senior thesis analyzing the nexus between business and the U.S. federal government and investigating its uses through Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank, two laws that regulate the financial system. A native to the Washington, DC, area, Taylor grew up in Great Falls, Virginia, where she attended the National Cathedral School for Girls. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, honing her cooking skills, and pursuing her lifelong love of dance.

ABSTRACT

The 2008 Great Recession disproportionately impacted Black Americans, resulting in higher poverty for communities that were already impoverished. Traditionally, policies intended to combat poverty have been generated by Democrats; but the trillions of dollars spent have garnered very few positive results. Given the severity of poverty experienced by Black Americans, it is essential to explore new policy options, even if they derive from unlikely sources. In order to effectively alleviate poverty for Black Americans, elected officials need to both explore bipartisan approaches and rely heavily on insights from local community leaders.

W hile the 2008 Great Recession rocked the world’s fiscal foundation, certain sectors of the U.S. population disproportionately took

the brunt of the hit and have been supremely disturbed. Black Americans have been particularly impacted in a remarkably short amount of time. According to the University of Massachusetts’ Political Economy Research Institute, “The Great Recession produced the largest setback in racial wealth equality in the United

States over the last quarter century.” With more than one-quarter of America’s Black population currently struggling with poverty, this issue requires an immediate and thoughtful response from policy makers.

In order to combat the truly staggering poverty levels, it is essential for policy makers to reevaluate the causes of poverty in order to determine more effective means of combating it. To create a successful strategy for decreasing poverty levels in African American communities, major federal policy initiatives should include two groups whose voices have not been heard in the past: conservative politicians and local community leaders. Political dialogue between conservatives and liberals must be dramatically improved especially since conservative leaders have demonstrated an ability to foster particularly useful approaches in the battle against poverty. Individual grassroots leaders have employed techniques based on firsthand experience that have also proved successful. Local community leaders’ personal experiences provide valuable information that must be incorporated into efforts targeting poverty. The poverty experienced by Black Americans is simply too drastic to ignore. Future poverty campaigns should utilize knowledge from both sides of the nation’s political

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spectrum and incorporate this community knowledge- base.

Economic data reveals the harsh impact of the Great Recession of 2008 on Black Americans. A 2013 U.S. Census Bureau study focusing on poverty rates by race concluded that 14.3 percent of Americans fell below the poverty line between 2007 and 2011; however, while 11.6 percent of White Americans currently struggle with poverty, more than a quarter of the Black population has fallen into poverty at a whopping 25.8 percent.1 According to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Economic Policy Institute, in 2004, the median net worth of White households was $134,280, with Black households’ median net worth at $13,450.2 Come 2009, the median net worth for White households had fallen only 24 percent, compared to Black household net worth, which plummeted a full 83 percent, to $2,170. Historically, when it comes to the Black community, poverty rates and national economic status are closely aligned. As noted in a Washington Post article on 11 July 2012, White poverty rates remain

steady withstanding the influence of larger economic trends while Black poverty rates are linked with the nation’s fiscal standing. As illustrated in Figure 1, the number of Blacks below the poverty line fell and rose in concurrence with both the economic boom of the 1990s and the 2008 recession. This suggests that when the nation undergoes economic strain, Black Americans take the brunt of the hit.

Black Americans’ economic susceptibility to downturns appears to be due to a host of related challenges, including a high rate of concentrated poverty. According to a 2013 article from the Economic Policy Institute, 45 percent of poor Black children live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, compared to only 12 percent of poor White children.4 This article further highlights that concentrated poverty is coupled with a variety of severe social issues currently plaguing the Black community. Children living in these conditions not only “experience more social and behavioral problems, have lower test scores, and are more likely to drop out of school,”5 but also are exposed to various “environmental hazards that impact health.”6

FIGURE 1 — POVERTY RATES BY RACE FOR THE PAST FIFTY YEARS.3

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Another severe issue within poorer cities is heightened crime rates, which explains why Black youth have some of the highest homicide mortality rates.7 The overwhelming poverty issue currently affecting Black America is quite literally a matter of life and death, and subsequently requires immediate and effective policy attention.

The severity of poverty that reigns within the Black community makes it even more essential that policy makers consider all initiatives with the potential to help the problem, no matter from which side of the aisle these ideas may originate. What some may view as an arena for political gamesmanship and posturing is in fact a daunting real-life crisis that hampers progress, dampens spirits, and suffocates financial growth and independence. The political gamesmanship in Washington has created deep “partisan divide . . . [such that political] parties are more polarized than they ever have been in [the past twenty-five years],” said Carroll Doherty, associate director of a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.8 However, the Black community can no longer afford its economic well-being to be unduly affected by the political gamesmanship of Washington. The harshness of these economic times calls for bold, creative approaches that evolve from various sources and alliances.

In various fields and disciplines, oftentimes success is the result of collaboration. Historically, when the federal government has responded to the welfare of U.S. citizens with the input of politicians from both sides of the aisle, the result has been astounding. Revisiting this history provides an example of why bipartisan approaches to alleviating poverty in Black communities are not just a utopian idea, they are also a necessity. The 1996 Welfare Reform Act is an example of an initiative that was proposed by Democrats, but was based largely on the conservative value of limiting the role of the federal government and granting increased power to the states. The Welfare Reform Act was incredibly successful, and yet when a similar initiative was proposed by a conservative politician some years later, it was rejected. This example shows that bipartisan policy making has the potential to alleviate poverty in the United States; however, when one side is not included in the conversation, the nation’s poor are the ones who suffer.

Signed into law by President Bill Clinton in August 1996, the Welfare Reform Act was an enormous

fundamental shift in how the federal government managed poverty through policy. This law changed the foundation of how the federal government financed cash welfare to low-income families,9 and Clinton promised Americans that the law would “end welfare as we know it.”10 The biggest changes rested within the transformation of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program into the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.11 Doing away with AFDC put to bed the practice of the federal government matching between fifty and eighty- five cents for every dollar the state government spent on these welfare assistance programs.12 As opposed to the federal government simply matching these funds, TANF states would instead “receive block grants that were usually equal to the amount of federal aid a state received for its AFDC program in 1994.”13 The new law gave extraordinary power to the states, granting them wider flexibility in how to implement their own welfare programs.

In the years following enactment, the Welfare Reform Act appeared to be a resounding success. After gutting the AFDC and giving significant power to the states, from 1994 to 2005, the caseload of welfare recipients declined by about 60 percent.14 According to a Brookings Institution testimony before the House Committee on Ways and Means in 2006, just two years before the recent Great Recession, “the number of families receiving cash welfare [was] . . . the lowest it [had] been since 1969, and the percentage of children on welfare [was] lower than it [had] been since 1966.”15 A Manhattan Institute for Policy Research study found that TANF “accounts for more than half of the decline in welfare participation and more than 60 percent of the rise in employment among single mothers.”16 While the numbers suggest that Clinton’s Welfare Reform Act greatly improved livelihoods for a significant portion of low-income Americans, what is particularly astounding is the impact the act had within the Black community specifically. The same Manhattan Institute for Policy Research study also found that the severe decrease in welfare participation was largest among disadvantaged single mothers, including Black single mothers.17 This law is a particularly poignant example of the type of legislation that can and should be used to eradicate poverty in the United States. Although it was signed into law by a Democratic president, the act was based on traditionally conservative ideals.

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In January 2014, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) proposed a policy initiative mirroring that of Clinton’s Welfare Reform Act, in remarks delivered to highlight conservative reforms for combating poverty. Rubio proposed a “fundamental change to how the federal government fights poverty . . . [by turning] Washington’s anti-poverty programs—and the trillions spent on them—over to the states.”18 Similar to the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, today’s federal anti-poverty programs would be transformed into a revenue-neutral Flex Fund. Rubio suggested that the United States “streamline most of our existing federal anti-poverty funding into one single agency. Then each year, these Flex Funds would be transferred to the states so they could design and fund creative initiatives that address the factors behind inequality of opportunity.”19 The conservative foundation of granting increased independent power and wider latitude to the states significantly decreased the need of welfare assistance in 1996, but Rubio’s proposal did not garner the same support a little more than decade later.

In today’s remarkably partisan political atmosphere, too many great policy approaches are tossed aside without receiving due consideration simply because of their political sponsors. Particularly as it concerns the Black community, many conservative ideas are rarely given reasonable consideration. Rubio’s proposal of turning power back over to the states has already been criticized, citing that when asked “what might be included in the Flex Fund, [Rubio just replied] that it was being ‘worked out,’” and clearly, according to Slate writer David Weigel, legislation is not yet ready.20 While Senator Rubio’s initiative may not include the complexities of such large-scale laws as the Welfare Reform Act, it does employ the fundamental concept that helped to improve the lives of millions of Americans—specifically Black Americans—in the 1990s. When Clinton, a Democrat, supported the legislation, ninety-eight Democratic Congressmen and twenty-five Democratic Senators all voted to support the legislation.21 Even though Rubio, a Republican, is offering similar ideas, solid Democratic support is nowhere to be found.

Even though poverty is such a widespread issue of concern at the national level, it remains an especially local issue in that its victims are affected on a particularly personal level. As opposed to solely large- scale challenges (e.g., macroeconomic shifts), it is

essential to understand the root causes of poverty from the local community level in order to pinpoint more effective solutions. The basic foundations that give rise to poverty may seem quite different while sitting in a politician’s chair on Capitol Hill than they do while actually living in those kinds of conditions. The solutions to combating poverty effectively must ultimately come from within the communities themselves. From there, community leaders must work in conjunction with a larger, more expansive support system provided by policy makers. Federal policies to advance local change are most effective when they support the smaller-scale more concentrated efforts from within communities. These initiatives should be developed with direct input from community leaders and the individuals most closely affected by the crisis itself.

In September 2012, the Republican Study Committee launched its Anti-Poverty Initiative, which commenced by bringing together local grassroots leaders to Washington, DC, to work with lawmakers in identifying effective poverty-combating solutions.22 Spearheaded by the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE) and the Heritage Institute, the 2012 summit joined a group of members of Congress and local community leaders, working in a cooperative spirit on a nonpartisan agenda. Here, what impressed the national policy leaders was the depth and breadth of the community leaders’ individual and collective experience and expertise. Many of these grassroots leaders spent their entire careers building their own organizations to help “overcome drug addiction, homelessness, poor education, criminal histories, violence, a lack of role models,” all various causes and effects of poverty.23 This particular nexus of people brought together for the Anti-Poverty Initiative summit provides a particularly useful perspective on efforts to pinpoint effective, timely means of reducing and eradicating poverty in our nation. During the conference, lawmakers listened to the message that the community leaders brought to the conference and aligned it with available research and statistical information.

One issue highlighted during the Initiative that drastically affects poverty within the Black community is the rate of married households versus single parent households. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 2007 and 2009, only 7 percent of Black households with a married couple fell below the poverty line, while a staggering 35.6 percent of Black

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households led solely by a female fell below the poverty line.24 In a 2009 report, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimated that approximately twenty-five million children are living without their biological (or adoptive) fathers and have, on average, at least a two to three times higher chance to use drugs, face poverty, or experience health and emotional problems.25 While there is no sufficient evidence to claim that a fatherless home assuredly leads toward poverty, there is undeniable data demonstrating that those children without an engaged father have a drastically higher rate of social and economic setbacks.26 Grassroots leaders during the Anti-Poverty Initiative 2012 summit confirmed the numerical evidence that suggests that there are immense benefits to having a strong two-parent family.

A prime resource for information during the summit was Bishop Shirley Holloway, CEO and founder of the House of Help City of Hope, a substance abuse and homeless program providing assistance to men, women, and families, which has helped over two thousand individuals in Washington, DC, for more than ten years.27 Holloway specifically highlighted the importance of creating and maintaining a strong family unit in her strategy to her long-standing, successful assistance. Holloway prides herself on simply providing those struggling with poverty the “building blocks” to mend their lives.28 An essential building block involves sustaining guidance for men and women to help form and foster their marriages. Holloway has an impeccable retention rate: one hundred couples have married through her ministry, ninety-seven of which are still intact.29 With several personal anecdotes about the importance of providing help to pull individuals up over the poverty level, a central factor remains that a strong, stable family with a two-parent household has been a particularly successful part of the formula.

Paul Echtencamp of the Youth Challenge of Connecticut program, another summit attendee, believes,“If you [want to] reach the addict, you have to reach the family.”30 Roman Herrera of the San Antonio, Texas–based Outcry in the Barrio ministry echoed the efforts of Holloway: “We live in a fatherless society . . . and there will always be a hole in a heart where that relationship is missing.”31

The conclusions derived from discussions during the summit support one overriding message: the federal government must support the vital work that

local community leaders can and should initiate independently. As enormous as it is, the federal government simply does not have the resources to provide personalized care that is the true key to alleviating poverty. It is just too large, and programs at the federal level are too rigid. It can, however, help the fight against poverty by supporting the efforts deployed at the state and local levels. The success stories of Bishop Holloway, echoed by her peers within the field, are a testament to how fruitful and successful the local community can be when it is able to work independently of big government restraints. Grassroots initiatives have proven to be successful in the past, while many view federal government welfare spending as inefficient and ineffective. While well intentioned, founder and president of the CNE Robert Woodson believes that “[lawmakers] ask not which problems are solvable, but which problems are fundable.”32 With federal funds on low-income assistance programs reaching $746 billion in 2011, grassroots leaders want to ensure that the money is being spent effectively.33 The root causes of poverty tend to rest in an individual’s failed relationships, which, to heal, ultimately take genuine and long-term personal commitment—two qualities the gigantic federal government may not necessarily be able to offer by itself.34 The local communities are the best environment in which to immediately spearhead these efforts, which can be supported by the federal government. The federal government needs to take the lead from the community in combating poverty within the Black community—not the other way around.

The overwhelming poverty adversely affecting today’s Black population demands immediate and effective policy attention. Instead of throwing billions of dollars at what they believe will help alleviate poverty, lawmakers need to listen to local grassroots leaders who truly know the techniques that are effective at alleviating poverty. The people who have dedicated their lives to helping uplift individuals around them are the experts. These are the people who have identified and implemented successful strategies to do what the government cannot necessarily do on its own. While the federal government should support the efforts of local initiatives—perhaps helping to fund future fatherhood programs led by personalized institutions—it should caution against stamping its heavy-handed foot down in the way of local approaches. To be effective, partisanship should be laid aside, paving the way for both government

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and community leaders to work in tandem to tackle the problem from both a macro and a micro level. Only then can the issue of poverty in Black America be vetted, examined, and, eventually, successfully tackled.

ENDNOTES

1. Macartney, Suzanne, Alemayehu Bishaw, and Kayla Fontenot. Poverty Rates for Selected Detailed Race and Hispanic Groups by State and Place: 2007- 2011. American Community Survey Briefs. United States Census Bureau. February 2013.

2. Washington, Jesse. “Black Economic Gains Reversed in Great Recession.” Associated Press, 7 July 2011.

3. Matthews, Dylan. “Poverty in the 50 Years since ‘the Other America,’ in Five Charts.” Washington Post, 11 July 2012.

4. Austin, Algernon. The Unfinished March: An Overview. Economic Policy Institute, 18 June 2013.

5. The Annie E. Casey Foundation. KIDS COUNT Data Snapshot on High Poverty Communities. The Annie E. Casey Foundation, February 2012.

6. Austin, The Unfinished March. 7. Ibid. 8. Madison, Lucy. “Poll: Surging Partisanship among

American Voters.” CBS News, 4 June 2012. 9. McGuire, Therese J. and David F. Merriman.

Has Welfare Reform Changed State Expenditure Patterns? National Poverty Center, September 2006.

10. Vobejda, Barbara. “Clinton Signs Welfare Bill Amid Division.” Washington Post, 23 August 1996.

11. Urban Institute. A Decade of Welfare Reform: Facts and Figures. Assessing the New Federalism. Urban Institute, June 2006.

12. McGuire and Merriman, Has Welfare Reform Changed State Expenditure Patterns?

13. Ibid 14. Testimony of Ron Haskins, codirector for the

Center on Children and Families, Brookings Institution, before the House Committee on Ways and Means. 2006.

15. Ibid. 16. O’Neill, June E., and M. Anne Hill. Gaining

Ground? Measuring the Impact of Welfare Reform

on Welfare and Work. Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Civic Report No. 17, July 2001.

17. Ibid. 18. Rubio, Marco. “Reclaiming the Land of

Opportunity: Conservative Reforms for Combating Poverty.” Speech by Marco Rubio, 8 January 2014.

19. Ibid. 20. Weigel, David. “The GOP’s All-Star Anti-Poverty

Tour.” Slate, 10 January 2014. 21. Social Security: Official Social Security Web site.

1996 Welfare Amendments. United States Social Security Administration.

22. Republican Study Committee. “Conservatives Launch Anti-Poverty Initiative, Hear from Effective Community Activists.” Press release. Republican Study Committee, 13 September 2012.

23. Ibid. 24. United States Census Bureau. Poverty Status in the

Past 12 Months of Families 2007-2009 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates. United States Census Bureau. S1702.

25. National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse. “Ad Council and National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse Join ESPN to Encourage Fathers to “Take Time to be a Dad Today.” Press Release. National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse, 1 June 2009.

26. Jordan, Jr., Darrell. “Alternative Approaches to Reducing Poverty.” Capstone project, master of arts in public management, Johns Hopkins University. 2013.

27. Center for Neighborhood Enterprise. House of Help/ City of Hope. Center for Neighborhood Enterprise.

28. Capara, Collette. “Helping the Poor and Addicted Turn Their Life Around.” The Foundry, the Heritage Network, 2 December 2012.

29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. May, Caroline. “Republicans Begin to Confront

Poverty at the Grassroots.” Daily Caller, 13 September 2012.

33. Dinan, Stephen. “Welfare Spending Jumps 32% During Obama’s Presidency.” Washington Times, 18 October 2013.

34. Capara, Collette. “How to Cure Poverty in America.” The Foundry, the Heritage Network, 1 November 2012.

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