U.S. poverty moral wound to nation’s soul, Catholic Charities report says

from Catholic Online

Poverty in the United States is a moral and social wound to the nation, a human-made unnatural disaster that cries out change, said a report from a Catholic and one of the country’s largest social service networks.

"Poverty in America: A Threat to the Common Good," the title of the 28-page Catholic Charities USA policy paper released at a Jan. 10 press briefing on Capital Hill here, provides a “moral reasoning” to the call to fight poverty, offers specific public policy changes to reduce it and argues for a society-wide commitment to action.

“In one of the richest, most powerful nations on earth, tens of millions of people lack some of the basic material necessities of life,” the report says. “The existence of such widespread poverty amidst such enormous wealth is a moral and social wound in the soul of this country.”

“The scourge of poverty is getting worse,” it said, noting that 37 million Americans – almost 13 percent of the population – live below the official poverty level, a number that increased by 5.3 million from between 2000 to 2004. It added that 7 million are unemployed and actively seeking work, and that even those who are working at the minimum wage cannot reach above the poverty level.

At the news conference, Father Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA announced a new multi-year initiative – the “Campaign to Reduce Poverty in America” – to cut poverty in half by 2020, a goal noted in the report.

"The Campaign to Reduce Poverty in America is about who we are as a nation," Father Snyder said, urging Congress and the Administration to give a much higher priority to the needs of the poor in budget and policy decisions on issues such as health care, housing, nutrition, and economic security.

"We must no longer ignore the injustice of poverty and the extreme inequality in America and instead must seize this opportunity to advocate for changes that promote human dignity and the common good," he said.

The poverty report pointed to the “growing gap between the haves and have-nots,” citing statistics that indicated the United States “had not seen such extreme inequality since the 1920s.”

It attacked societal myths, noting that most Americans will experience poverty at least one year of their life, most of the poor work and are white, and, while much wealthier than other nations, the United States leads the industrialized world in having the greatest share of its population living in poverty.

“There has been a conscious and deliberate retreat from our nation’s commitment to economic justice for those who are poor,” it says. “Poverty remains our nation’s most serious political blind spot and one of our nation’s most profound moral failing,” seen in the faces of infants, children and elderly, urban and rural dwellers, the working poor, those with limited economic opportunity, the homeless, veterans, immigrants and refugees.

Drawing on Catholic social teaching, the scriptures and the words of popes Benedict XVI, John Paul II, Paul VI and John XXIII, the report argues that poverty ruptures man’s covenant with God as a “fundamental violation of human dignity and also a form of violence against the God who is present in every human person.”

It decried “a philosophy of radical individualism” held by many today who suggest that government has little or no role in alleviating poverty.

“It is our conviction that this view is serious misguided and even dangerous. It clearly runs counter to the substance of Catholic social teaching,” the report said, urging “a renewed sense of community, a renewed commitment to the common good” to enable society to combat poverty successfully.

“Catholic social thought,” it states, “says quite explicitly that it is not morally acceptable for a society to allow extreme inequality in the distribution of good as long as there are some in the society who do not have the most basic material good to lead a decent life.”

That so many are left behind is a clear indication “that something in our social and economic system is seriously broken,” the Catholic Charities USA report said, adding federal government policies have not kept up with changes wrought by globalization, the decline in the nation’s manufacturing sector and the rise in the number of service industry jobs and the shift to an information economy.

“The problem isn’t necessarily that the United States spends too little overall on social expenditures – but rather that the United States spends too much on private social expenditures that disproportionately benefit those who are well-off and too little on public social expenditures that are designed to ameliorate inequality and promote the common good,” the report said.

Noting that poverty afflicts one in eight American families, the Catholic Charities report outlined specific policy proposals that would create “more livable wage jobs,” raise the wages of those in low-paying employment and invest more in social welfare programs for the poor.

Among the proposals it urges federal and state governments to pursue include:

- Increasing the minimum wage that has not been raised in 10 years and is currently at a 51-year low in terms of buying power.

- Promoting of living-wage initiatives.

- Reforming the nation’s labor laws to encourage union membership.

- Strengthening and protecting federal food and nutrition programs.

- Improving the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program to help permanently lift families out of poverty.

- Expanding and ensuring adequate health care for all Americans, especially the 46.6 million that lack health insurance.

- Improving access to safe and stable child care.

- Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit to adults without children and non-custodial parents.

- Reforming unemployment insurance to provide greater protection to those out of work.

- Extending services, benefits and training, including to promote healthy fatherhood, to low-income men.

- Increasing funding for more affordable housing, including for programming aimed at home ownership.

- Extending the child tax credit to all low-income families with children.

- Improving protection and care of abused, neglected and abandoned children.

- Promoting life-long learning, including expansion of Head Start for pre-school-age children and increased funding for post-secondary education and job training.

The report declared the commitment of Catholic Charities USA to work with its affiliated agencies to “attack the structural roots of poverty” through advocacy to state and national governmental bodies, to speak out to generate greater public awareness and understanding and to continue to service “individuals and families who are poor” and to “model this delivery of service on the principles of human dignity and empowerment.”

The goal of reducing the rate of poverty at least by half by 2020 “will require major social change,” the report said.

“The change of heart and the change of structures that we are calling for must begin with the realization that we are all diminished as a result of poverty,” it said. “In untold and unseen ways, poverty harms our nation economically, socially and morally.”

A nation without widespread poverty would, the charities report said, “unleash an enormous amount of human and economic potential.”

“Calculate the money we would save due to fewer high-school dropouts, fewer teen pregnancies, higher levels of educational achievement, higher employment and earnings, less welfare dependency, fewer drug addictions, less crisis health care, less crime and lower prison costs. The savings would be truly enormous,” it said.

“This picture of the future is not a pipe dream,” it added. “It is a real possibility. It can be done if we have the moral and political will to act together according to our deepest values and in our collective self interest.”

Acknowledging that “new and expanded revenues” will be needed to meet the poverty reduction goal, the report urged the establishment of progressive tax policies that shifts the burden “to those who are more wealthy to pay more – to bear more of the responsibility for alleviating poverty and investing in the future of this country.”

Noting that “upper income families … have prospered most during the last 25 years, it stated that “it is only fair and just to ask these same families to bear a great share of the responsibility for the costs of fighting poverty.” “By doing so, they will help to make some of these same freedoms and opportunities available to those who are impoverished.”

“Government has a positive moral function,” it said, “to ensure that no one goes without the basic material necessities of life.”

Noting that these necessities are “moral rights,” Catholic Charities, in the report, pledged its commitment and desire to partner with government to fulfill the responsibility of combating poverty. “We share in this responsibility and we believe that we have a moral mandate to lift up those who are tied down by the bonds of poverty.”

Catholic Charities USA's members - 1,640 local agencies and institutions nationwide - provide aid and support ranging from day care and counseling to food and housing for an estimated more than nine million people a year.