March 2011

There was time, in the 1960s and ‘70s, when the United States was "more of a mind to tackle poverty," Georgetown University law school professor Peter Edelman tells Greg Kaufmann in an interview for The Nation.

In "US Poverty: Past, Present and Future," Edelman, an ACS Board member and husband of Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund, reflected on his storied career of fighting poverty. That career included working closely with Robert F. Kennedy and serving, for a time, in the Clinton administration. (Kaufmann notes that Edelman left his post in the administration in protest over its involvement in the creation of so-called welfare reform.)

Today a sense of outrage is sorely lacking over the ever-growing number of people in poverty, Edelman (pictured at the 2010 ACS National Convention) says:

We now have over 19 million people who live in extreme poverty - that's 6.3 percent of the population - unbelievable! These are people below half the poverty line - below about $8,500 for a family of three, $11,500 for a family of four. Up from 12.6 million in 2000! You have 6 million people in this country whose only income is food stamps - which provide income at just one-third of the poverty line. We've effectively destroyed welfare as a form of assistance - that's TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), the cash assistance that ought to go along with food stamps - because in so many states it's become virtually nonexistent. The states decide who gets it, and so in state after state - with a few exceptions - it's really hard to get on welfare.

Regarding child poverty, Edelman says:

Over 20 percent of children live in poverty, and over 36 percent of the extremely poor are children. Also, over half of the children in this country under age 6 who live in a household where there's a single mom are poor. That's another stunning number.

Poverty in the country continues to hit certain races and ethnicities the hardest, Edelman adds:

We still have poverty rates for African-Americans that are close to three times the white rate. Same for Latinos. But the African-American poverty rate tends to be more intergenerational, more persistent. Same for Native Americans. And what are the causes of that?

I have now reviewed the transcript of yesterday's oral argument. News reports from oral argument are unanimous in predicting that the Court will strike down the matching fund provision of Arizona's public financing law, which provides extra funding (up to a point) for candidates who participate in the voluntary public financing system and face a high spending opponent or a high independent spending against the candidate. This is no suprise; indeed I predicted this in June, when the Court granted an extraordinary stay in the case.

More interesting at this point is the question whether there will remain other viable and constitutional public financing systems after the Arizona system falls. In Slate, I explained the logic of why a rational candidate would not choose to participate in a flat public financing system (like the way the moribund presidential public financing system works) unless there are adequate safeguards that the participating candidate won't be outspent. As I wrote at Summary Judgments back in November,

[A ruling striking down the Arizona law] is likely to take away one of the only tools available to drafters of public financing measures to make such financing attractive to candidates. Public financing has a number of benefits, including reducing the threat of corruption and the appearance of corruption, providing a jump start for new candidates who are not professional politicians, and freeing up candidates and officeholders to have more time to interact with voters. But rational politicians who are serious candidates will not opt into the public financing plan unless they think they will be able to run a competitive campaign under the public financing system. The whole point of the extra matching funds in the Arizona plan is to give candidates assurance they won't be vastly outspent in their election. While an adverse ruling by the Supreme Court in McComish would not mean that all public financing systems would be unconstitutional, it would eliminate one of the best ways to create effective public financing systems.