Barbara Lee Responds to Report on Poverty in the U.S.
(Washington, DC) – Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), Co-Chair of the House Out-of-Poverty Caucus, responded to a report released today on the growth of poverty in the United States over the last six years and praised its recommendations for cutting poverty in half over the next ten years.
“Our country should be a land of opportunity, but the sad reality is that income inequality continues to grow, and more people are falling into poverty than are getting ahead. We are heading in the wrong direction, and we need a national commitment to addressing the growing poverty crisis in this nation,” said Lee, who helped found the Out of Poverty Caucus earlier this year and has led Congressional efforts to make fighting poverty a priority. “Fighting poverty isn’t a mystery, it just requires us to make a commitment and dedicate the resources, and this report offers a welcome blueprint.”
The report, From Poverty to Prosperity, a National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half, was released by the Washington, DC based Center for American Progress. It found that 37 million Americans, more than the population of the state of California, are living in poverty and that the number has grown by five million since 2000. The report based its recommendations on four principles: promoting decent work, providing opportunity for all, ensuring economic security, and helping people build wealth. They included: raising the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation, expanding the earned income and child tax credits, promoting unionization by making it easier for employees to vote to join a union, offering child care assistance for low income families and guaranteeing early education for all, and providing two million people with “opportunity housing vouchers.” The report is available online at: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/04/poverty_report.html .
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