Barack Obama on Welfare & Poverty Democratic incumbent President; IL Senator (2004-2008)

Expand tax cuts for childless low income workers

FactCheck: Upward mobility hasn't stalled; US always was low

THE FACTS: The most recent evidence suggests that mobility hasn't worsened. A team of Harvard economists released a study last week that found the US isn't any less socially mobile than it was in the 1970s. Looking at children born between 1971 and 1993, the economists found that the odds of a child born in the poorest 20% of families making it into the top 20% hasn't changed.

Still, other research has found that the US isn't as mobile a society as most Americans would like to believe. In a study of 22 countries, [one study] found that the US ranked 15th in social mobility. Only Italy and Britain among wealthy countries ranked lower. By some measures, children in the US are as likely to inherit their parents' economic status as their height

Earned Income Tax Credit has helped half of all families

Community organizing brings about redistributive change

"The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.

One of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change."

During his presidency, we've seen Mr. Obama's many attempts to skirt the law and get around the Constitution to implement his redistribution agenda. His crowning achievement was one of the most immense pieces of redistributionist legislation in America history--the federal health care law.

People want a hand up, not a handout

A: The day I was elected, I said 47% of the people didn't vote for me, but I've heard your voices and I'm going to work just as hard for you as I did for those who did vote for me. That's how you have to operate as a President. But I will say this. When you express an attitude that half the country considers itself victims, that somehow they want to be dependent on government, my thinking is maybe you haven't gotten around a lot. Their problem is not that they're not working hard enough, or they don't want to work, or they're being taxed too little, or they just want to loaf around and gather government checks. We've gone through a challenging time. People want a hand up, not a handout. Are there people who abuse the system? Yes, both at the bottom and at the top.

Help refinancing for homeowners facing foreclosure

FactCheck: Cannot limit refinancing to responsible borrowers

But even the program's defenders concede that it can't possibly distinguish between "responsible" borrowers and those who foolishly (or fraudulently) signed up for mortgages beyond their means.

The chair of the FDIC, also said there was no easy way to vet homeowners. "I think it's just simply impractical to try to do a forensic analysis of each and every one of these delinquent loans," she told NPR, adding that it's in the "collective economic interest" to not have more foreclosed homes on the market.

Still denying decent wages, good benefits, & fair treatment

AdWatch: Fought for workers from college thru Senate

Turned down big money offers, and helped lift neighborhoods stung by job loss. Fought for workers’ rights.

He passed a law to move people from welfare to work, slashed the rolls by eighty percent. Passed tax cuts for workers; health care for kids.

As president, he’ll end tax breaks for companies that export jobs, reward those that create jobs in America.

And never forget the dignity that comes from work.

GovWatch: Welfare laws he “passed” were federally mandated

The bill that’s cited is the 1997 law that created the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program in Illinois, based on the federal welfare reform act of 1996. That law gave states the ability to design their own welfare programs. The bill that Obama cosponsored was Illinois’ version.

And far from having “passed” the bill single-handedly, Obama was among 5 Senate sponsors of the measure. But even the 5 co-sponsors of the Illinois law can’t take credit alone: It was the federal law, hammered out by Clinton & the Republican Congress, that set the wheels in motion and forced states to act.

Cut poverty in half in 10 years, with faith-based help

A: I absolutely will make that commitment. I make that commitment with humility because we’ve got a lot of work to do economically in this country to bring about a more just and fair economy. It starts with recognizing the wages for average families have gone down during the most recent economic expansion. That’s never happened before. We’ve got to shore up the mortgage market. We’re going to have to change our tax code. It is a moral imperative to provide health care to every single American. And invest in early childhood education. Many of these can be part of faith-based initiatives I want to keep the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives open, but I want to make sure that its mission is clear. Faith-based initiatives should be targeted specifically at the issue of poverty and how to lift people up.

Welfare policies contributed to erosion of black families

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination but how many men and women overcame the odds, how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

Create 20 Promise Neighborhoods in high-poverty cities

• Establish 20 Promise Neighborhoods: Obama will create 20 Promise Neighborhoods in cities across the nation that have high levels of poverty and crime and low levels of student academic achievement. The Promise Neighborhoods will be modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone, which provides a full network of services, including early childhood education, youth violence prevention efforts and after-school activities, to an entire neighborhood from birth to college.
• Ensure Community-Based Investment Resources in Every Urban Community: Obama will work with community and business leaders to identify and address the unique economic development barriers of every major metropolitan area. Obama will provide additional resources to the federal Community Development Financial Institution Fund, the Small Business Administration and other federal agencies, especially to their local branch offices, to address community needs.

1980s: Director of the Developing Communities Project

Obama considers his work on political empowerment, economic development, & grassroots community organizing to be the “best education” he has received. He noted, “Organizing teaches as nothing else does the beauty & strength of everyday people.”

Obama learned that “ordinar citizens are taught that decisions are made based on the public interest or grant principles, when in fact, what really moves things is money and votes and power.” This was his first lesson that fighting cynicism was a first step in political change.

Stop Fraud Act: full disclosure in subprime lending

A: I think it is absolutely critical that we step in and work with financial institutions that gave these loans, oftentimes under false pretenses. And part of the problem of the whole subprime lending market is that we did not have enough regulation of this market, we didn’t have adequate disclosure. I meet families that thought they were getting a low interest mortgage and did not realize that unless their home prices kept on going up they could end up losing their home, and that’s a failure of regulation. And that’s something that we have to work on prospectively. I’ve got legislation called the STOP FRAUD Act that basically requires the kinds of disclosure that should have been in there in the first place. But in the meantime, we’ve got to take a portion of the profits and make certain that people have a chance to refinance their home or least get bridge loans.

Engages people of faith on all aspects of his public service

In June of 2006, Obama delivered what a Washington Post columnist called perhaps the most important speech on religion and politics in 40 years. Speaking before an evangelical audience, Senator Obama candidly discussed his own Christian faith and the need for a deeper, more substantive conversation about the role of faith in American life.

In December of 2006, Obama joined Pastor Rick Warren to discuss moral leadership and Global AIDS. And in June of 2007, Obama challenged Americans to come together around a ‘Politics of Conscience’ to move our nation forward.

Saw dire poverty as a child in Indonesia

For the first time, he also bore witness to the unpleasantness of dire poverty. Beggars would come to their door, and even his mother, who had a woman’s “soft heart,” according to Lolo Soetoro, Obama’s mother’s 2nd husband] eventually learned to “calibrate the level of misery” before handing out money Obama wrote that, over time, he also developed his own calculations, a result of lectures from Lolo advising him not to give all his money away.

Said Obama in a 2004 radio interview: “I think [Indonesia] made me more mindful of not only my blessings as a US citizen, but also the ways that fate can determine the lives of young children, so that one ends up being fabulously wealthy and another ends up being extremely poor.”

1985: Launched project to give voice to disempowered

Obama launched the Developing Communities Project, an ecumenically funded group whose mission still today is to empower the poor and disenfranchised through grassroots organization. The group is based in the community organizing tradition of Saul Alinsky.

Alinsky taught organizers to work behind the scenes, listening to residents for hours upon hours to decipher what their community needed and what it coul realistically achieve. Alinsky’s life mission and his methodologies are both central to Obama’s modern political message. A recurring passage in many of Obama’s speeches is his mission of “giving voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless.”

Ownership Society is another term for “Social Darwinism”

But in our past there has been another term for it--Social Darwinism--every man or woman for him or herself. It’s a tempting idea, because it doesn’t require much thought or ingenuity. It allows us to say that those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford--tough luck.

But there is a problem. It won’t work. It ignores our history. Our economic dominance has depended on individual initiative and belief in the free market; but it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, that we’re all in it together and everybody’s got a shot at opportunity--that has produced our unrivaled political stability.

Community organizer on Chicago’s South Side

Working with a tiny network of community activists and volunteers from South Side churches who were attempting to help residents improve conditions--and, often, simply cope--in deteriorating neighborhoods plagued by sky-high unemployment & crime; where city services were slow at best; where parks were left untended & schools under-funded; where sometimes it seemed only those who couldn’t afford to leave stayed; Obama did the same thing he would do when he later ran for office: he knocked on doors and attended neighborhood meetings.

In 2007, when Obama announced for the presidency, he alluded to his years as a community organizer when he said, “I learned that meaningful change always begins at the grassroots.”

Black churches minister to social needs out of necessity

I was drawn to the power of the African American religious tradition to spur social change. Out of necessity, the black church had to minister to the whole person. Out of necessity, the black church rarely had the luxury of separating individual salvation from collective salvation .It had to serve as the center of the community’s political, economic, and social as well as spiritual life; it understood in an intimate way the biblical call to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and challenge powers and principalities. I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary; rather, it was an active, palpable agent in the world.

Welfare recipients know how to succeed but need help

Belief that "I am my brother's keeper" makes America work

$100M increase in IL Earned Income Tax Credit

• Provided tax relief for working families. Obama was the driving force behind Illinois’ Earned Income Tax Credit, which has provided more than $100 million in tax relief to working families. [SB004, 2003]
• Expanded access to health care. Obama was the chief sponsor of the law that extended the Comprehensive Health Insurance Program (CHIP) by three years and increased the number of children eligible for the program. As a result, 65,000 additional families qualify for health insurance coverage. [SB130, 2003]

Inner city problems are the painful truths

Exorcise the ghostly figure that haunts black dreams

Develop a strategy to eliminate extreme global poverty.

A BILL to require the President to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day.

Congress makes the following findings:
1. More than 1 billion people worldwide live on less than $1 per day, and another 1.6 billion people struggle to survive on less than $2 per day.
2. At the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, the US joined more than 180 other countries in committing to work toward goals to improve life for the world's poorest people by 2015.
3. The year 2007 marks the mid-point to the Millennium Development Goals deadline of 2015.
4. The UN Millennium Development Goals include the goal of reducing by 1/2 the proportion of people that live on less than $1 per day, & cutting in half the proportion of people suffering from hunger and unable to access safe drinking water and sanitation.

REQUIREMENT TO DEVELOP COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY: The US Government shall develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the US foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by 1/2 the proportion of people worldwide who live on less than $1 per day. The strategy shall include specific and measurable goals, efforts to be undertaken, benchmarks, and timetables to achieve the objectives.