Note: this is a cross-post from The Realignment Project. Follow TRP on Facebook.
Introduction:
Back in what turned out to be the halcyon days of 2007, policy types were actually beginning to talk about cutting the poverty rate in half. Three years later, we're looking at one of the largest and fastest increases in poverty in a generation. 44 million Americans - one in seven of us - now live in poverty, an increase of four million people just in the last year.
Even if one were to grant that the lenient treatment shown to the banks on TARP, the bonuses, the cramdown bill, credit card regulation, and other progressive defeats over the last two years were part of the cost of rescuing a postindustrial, neoliberal economic system (and I don't), there is nonetheless a moral obligation for the Obama Administration to do something for those who have been hit hardest, and who have been least able to protect themselves going forward into the second term.
To the extent that it ever was put on the agenda, poverty must come back on the agenda.
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