'Vote Out Poverty,' Say Christians

from Crosswalk

Monisha Bansal
Staff Writer

(CNSNews.com) - Progressive Christian groups are looking to put poverty at the top of the national agenda for the 2008 elections with a campaign to "vote out poverty" that was launched on Monday.

"We've seen a robust conversation about health care last night [at the Democratic debate in New Hampshire], but we have yet to see a conversation about poverty in general," said Adam Taylor, director of campaigns and organizing at Sojourners/Call to Renewal, at the National City Christian Church in Washington, D.C.

"Poverty has been a marginalized, third-rail issue in American politics," he said, but added: "The majority of American voters believe poverty should be a priority issue but don't vote that way or haven't convinced politicians to vote that way."

As the first step in their campaign, the group held a Democratic candidates' forum Monday night on faith, values and poverty with Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York, Barack Obama of Illinois and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

Poverty is a major campaign issue for Edwards, who calls it "the great moral issue of our time." He has proposed a plan that he says will eliminate poverty in 30 years.

Taylor said their goal is to "force politicians to change what have been so many misguided political priorities" and to "ask them what they are committed to do to overcome domestic and global poverty."

He added that candidates need to focus on comprehensive immigration reform and expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in order to "[cut] in half the number of Americans living in poverty in 10 years."

Marshall Ganz, a public policy lecturer at Harvard University, joined Taylor, saying "I think this election is the most important since 1968, in terms of trying to get us back on the path that we disastrously left 40 years ago," with Sen. Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign, which focused on poverty.

Ganz said poverty is caused by a "power inequality," which he said requires government intervention.

"When you find these enormous problems of social inequality, it's usually not because somebody lacks information, or somebody lacks inspiration, or somebody lacks coordination, it's because somebody benefits and somebody loses," he said.

But Michael Tanner, director of Health and Welfare Studies at the Cato Institute, said while "poverty remains a problem in the U.S.," more money and more government programs won't solve the problem.

"There are certainly areas of this country where people are suffering," Tanner told Cybercast News Service. "The problem is that you have a very one-sided and outmoded debate -- what you essentially have is a handful on the left who are arguing for the same solutions that have failed for 40 odd years now."

"Since Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty back in '65, we've spent over $9 trillion [on poverty]," he said. "We spend some $400 billion every year on anti-poverty programs, and we aren't doing anything to reduce poverty. So clearly, that's not working."

"But you have one side... that argues in favor of just throwing more money at those programs, and that is what Hillary and Obama and Edwards will do," said Tanner. "The other side is silent. There is no discussion of poverty on the right."

He called the lack of a voice on the right "a shame because it deprives this country of the debate it really needs."

"The right actually has answers. The way to deal with poverty is to create more economic opportunity. It is to allow more jobs because you have more economic growth through lower taxes and deregulation. You do want to deal with the disincentives welfare creates in having out-of-wedlock births and limiting work ethic," he said.