War Time Presiden Bush surrenders - in War on poverty

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-garcetti9feb09.story

Bush's Budget Transforms the War on Poverty Into a War on the Poor
By Eric Garcetti
Eric Garcetti, who represents the 13th District on the Los Angeles City Council, chairs the city's Housing, Community and Economic Development Committee.

February 9, 2005

President Bush refers to himself as a wartime president, and he has shown resolve not to back down on the battlefield. But the budget he released this week waves a flag of surrender in another war, the 40-year "war on poverty."<snip>

<snip>In the prosperous decades after World War II, the nation found too many Americans still without access to decent housing, education and economic opportunity. Later, from President Johnson's declaration of a war on poverty in 1964 to the expansion of federal anti-poverty programs under presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter, a national consensus emerged supporting the federal government's power and duty to alleviate disenfranchisement and powerlessness in our poorest urban and rural areas. Even President Reagan, a conservative hero, expanded block grants.

The programs Bush intends to cut enjoy bipartisan support in Congress: Conservatives often favor block grants, which allow local governments to set their own agenda to fight poverty. Federal officials have suggested that the cuts are intended to hold local governments "more accountable." The Department of Housing and Urban Development already conditions grants on oversight and meeting exacting standards.

Even more perverse, the president himself has called the country's attention to causes that his own budget abandons. His State of the Union address admirably underscored the fight against gang violence. But the organizations that struggle to do what Bush called "giving young people, especially young men in our cities, better options than apathy, or gangs, or jail" rely on block grant funds.

The president has also sworn to end homelessness in a decade, but block grants finance the city and county's homeless services and make up 20% of the city's Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

New ideas are welcome in the struggle against poverty. Fiscal discipline will be necessary to balance an overstretched budget. But this budget attempts neither. The war on poverty has suddenly become a war on the poor.