McCain’ Missing Poverty Plan»

Our guest blogger is Brian Levine, a senior policy advisor at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

This morning, we learned that 37.3 million Americans are living in poverty. Every year, the release of these numbers brings a wave of attention to the plight of the poor. This year, it might even prompt some curious voters to check out the websites of the presidential candidates. But don’t bother scouring JohnMcCain.com looking for the Senator’s poverty plan – it doesn’t exist.

Visitors to JohnMcCain.com can learn where the Republican nominee stands on the Second Amendment, “liberal judicial activists” — even the space program. While John McCain “understands the importance of investing in key industries such as space,” he apparently does not understand the importance of helping the 37.3 million Americans living in poverty right here on Planet Earth.

You can’t really blame John McCain for ignoring poverty. After all, it would take $90 billion a year to cut poverty in half. That might seem like a reasonable cost for lifting more than 18 million people over the poverty line. But McCain doesn’t have room in his budget – he needs $100 billion a year for his corporate tax break and there better be enough left over to deliver a $992,000 tax cut to each household in the top 0.1 percent of the income scale.

Maybe John McCain will come up with a poverty plan sometime between now and the election. In the meantime, at least we know that in a McCain Administration, the poor will be protected from activist judges and anti-astronaut zealots.

Gingrich On Poverty: Culturally Inferior Blacks Should Learn From My Success»

Our guest blogger is Joy Moses, Policy Analyst with the Poverty Prosperity program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Newt Gingrich has recently been advancing policy proposals for reducing poverty in America. Gingrich’s description of the poverty problem reveals a condescending approach to the poor, while his tried-and-failed market-based solutions do little to help Americans living below the poverty line.

First, Gingrich assumes that poor people are culturally inferior. According to Gingrich, poor people need to develop a culture of “productivity” and that when they are around people who have money, they “learn very rapidly to show up at work on time, to actually keep part of their paycheck every week, to do all the things successful people do.” In short, poor people don’t work hard enough, don’t work well enough, and don’t save. However, the reality is:

- Full time minimum wage workers live below the poverty line. The federal minimum wage is simply not a living wage.

- Poor Americans do not work less than poor people in other nations.

- Low income people are experiencing the big squeeze of working longer hours, including multiple jobs and extended overtime just to make ends meet.

- By definition, poor people have less income to save. They are less likely to have employer-sponsored retirement plans or benefit from tax breaks that primarily go to middle- and high-income people. They pay more for basic financial services.

The second faulty assumption is that poverty is a black and urban issue. Gingrich chooses to frame his ideas about poverty around Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, and the city of Detroit. Otherwise, he refers to Native Americans living on reservations. Although such frames are an effective tool in diverting attention from troubling issues facing the U.S. economy, serious discussions about ending poverty can not be based on stereotypes or reinforce the idea that it is someone else’s problem. The reality is:

- Although poverty disproportionately affects people of color, all races are impacted, including whites who are the largest group (45 percent) amongst the poor.

- Rural communities experience levels of poverty that are similar to urban communities—14.5% and 17% respectively. And poverty also reaches the suburbs.

Not surprisingly, one of Gingrich’s primary suggestions is to cut taxes for corporations and the rich so that they will create more jobs. Nearly eight years of such tax cuts under the Bush Administration has increased the poverty rates and demonstrated that this is not a valid policy solution. Similarly, Gingrich’s proposals to encourage kids to work at the age of 14 and to only spend two or three years in high school would probably advance the contrary goal of creating an undereducated permanent underclass, but not get us very far in ending poverty.

McCain Tax Plan Gives Nothing To Families In Poverty»

Our guest bloggers are Ben Furnas, Robert Gordon, and James Kvaal, who are a research associate and fellows at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, respectively.

Later this morning, Sen. John McCain will visit New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward as he continues his tour of impoverished America. His rhetoric is great, but so far the scorecard for his “poverty tour” is four days, one new idea: another corporate write-off, this one allowing “companies to write off the cost” of providing high-speed Internet in low-income communities.

Sen. McCain is proposing $3 trillion in tax cuts that would offer nothing to people living and working in poverty. More than half would go to corporations, and much of the rest to high-income taxpayers in the form of AMT relief.

Even McCain’s one tax cut that really will help the middle class — doubling the personal exemption for dependents from $3,500 to $7,000 – will do little or nothing for working poor families. These families usually do not pay any income taxes and thus will not benefit, even though they pay thousands of dollars in sales and payroll taxes. Meanwhile, the largest tax cuts will go to families at the top.

Read more here.