“Apparently the $22 trillion we’ve spent fighting poverty since 1965 — including just under $1 trillion last year — isn’t enough,” writes the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner. In the aftermath of the Baltimore riots, Democrats have been calling for more “investments” to fight poverty. Barack Obama wants “massive investments in urban communities.” Baltimore Rep. Elijah Cummings would “invest in our cities and our children.” And Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer would “invest if we’re going to have the kinds of communities we want.”
Democrats seemingly want to double down on the failed policies of the past to fight poverty. Read here from Mr. Tanner how Republican candidates are opening the debate with “innovative proposals for creating opportunity and lifting people out of poverty.”
In a separate piece from the WSJ, William McGurn writes of last week’s conference at Georgetown University, in which President Obama appeared on a panel billed as a “conversation” on poverty.
Mr. Obama used the occasion to review his enemies list. It included the Republican Congress (their budgets prove they don’t care), hedge-fund managers (they take money that belongs to kindergarten teachers), the churches (they’re not committed to helping the poor because they worry too much about abortion and marriage), Fox News (it vilifies the poor) and, for good measure, parents who send their children to private schools (they are withdrawing from the “commons”).
As Mr. McGurn also notes, ironically it is Mr. Obama who has tried “to kill the Opportunity Scholarship program that gives poor parents in the District of Columbia the opportunity to send their children to schools such as the one where he and Michelle Obama send their own kids, the exclusive private school Sidwell Friends.” Thanks to Republican John Boehner, the program and public funding is still in place for those children who need it.
Read more here from Mr. McGurn who suggests that it’s time for the president to engage in a genuine conversation on poverty rather than “a stacked stage for the president to once again parade his moral superiority as the answer to his critics.”
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