FIGHTING POVERTY IN THE YEAR 2001

On Monday morning, President Bush announced the establishment of a new
White House office of faith-based and community initiatives intended to
help the neediest Americans by integrating religious organizations into the
provision of social services.

The announcement came at the same time as Alan Greenspan was making it
official that the economy is at nearly "zero growth" and as I was reading
Searching for America's Heart, the just-released book by Peter Edelman, who
resigned as assistant secretary of Health and Human Services when Bill
Clinton signed the welfare reform bill.

The bad news is that, as Edelman reminds us in the book, "when the economy
catches cold, the poor get pneumonia." The good news is that we may be
about to re-engage in a debate abandoned in 1996 when welfare reform was
passed: What are the most effective ways to combat poverty and turn lives
around? Edelman's book can help rekindle this debate by taking us beyond
the sterile squabbling of the Great Society vs. the Rising Tide.

"Robert Kennedy," writes Edelman, who served as RFK's legislative
assistant, "was the first 'new' Democrat, the first to espouse values of
grassroots empowerment and express doubts about big bureaucratic
approaches, the first to call for partnerships between the private and
public sectors and insist that what we now call civic renewal is essential,
the first to put particular emphasis on personal responsibility."

So RFK would likely have been entirely comfortable with Bush's emphasis on
the mobilization of "church and charity, synagogue and mosque" in the fight
against poverty. The question is, would Bush be equally comfortable with
RFK's insistence that this battle be a national priority, with national
funding to leverage grassroots efforts? The "points of light" that Bush's
father hailed are critical, but they have to be connected to a central grid
and powered by a sense of urgency.

"I'm entirely in favor of faith-based organizations playing a role in
helping the poor," Edelman told me. But he's weary of the policy debate on
poverty degenerating into a zero-sum Church vs. State argument. Tell that
to Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of
Church and State, who's trodding the talk-show circuit, fretting about
chipping away at this wall of separation.

"It's just a big distraction," Edelman says. "We should be talking about
what's going to happen when welfare reform's five-year time limits hit at
the very moment that jobs are drying up."

There are still 5.78 million people on the welfare rolls. And of the 6.5
million who are off the rolls, how many will be among the first to lose
their jobs as demand for labor drops? Especially since so many of these are
service jobs dependent on a high rate of consumer consumption. So what will
welfare reform look like without the shine of the bull market? We're about
to find out. Or, given our political leaders' and the media's attention
span for this issue, at least the poor are.

As Jared Bernstein, of the Economic Policy Institute, puts it: "The rule of
last hired, first fired has not been revoked, and we're likely to see some
major layoffs in the low-wage labor markets. If the recession is relatively
long and deep, as many as one-half of those who left welfare for work could
lose their jobs."

It's not a moment too early to start preparing for this eventuality. What
makes Edelman's book so wise and relevant is that he wastes not a line on
meaningless Big Government vs. No Government or Church vs. State arguments.
"Much of what we need to do," Edelman writes, "has nothing to do with
Washington, or with government at all. Private action is as much a part of
the answer as public policy."

Bush echoed that sentiment — after a fashion — in his inaugural address:
"Government has great responsibilities, for public safety and public
health, for civil rights and common schools. Yet compassion is the work of
a nation, not just a government."

So, what's missing? What's missing is what infuses Edelman's whole section
on Bobby Kennedy: a passionate devotion to the issue. Here was a leader
consumed with finding solutions to the problems of "the excluded." Edelman
recounts a day in 1963 when RFK brought the Cabinet to his office at the
Justice Department and locked the door, "keeping them there for four hours
to discuss doing something about poverty."

What's also missing is the recognition that faith-based initiatives on
poverty cannot be pursued in isolation from the rest of Bush's agenda. No
church or synagogue is an island, unaffected by other national policies —
especially those that impact our criminal justice system and the war on
drugs. The divide that starts with the poverty line has been increasingly
ending at the jailhouse wall. Religious leaders will find it's tough to be
your brother's keeper when the warden holds the keys.

To breach the gulf between the two Americas that Bush spoke about, it will
take national leadership of the kind Edelman so fondly remembers. The
president could start by reading his book.