A New Lens on Policy

A collaboration between The Mobility Agenda and the Minnesota Community Action Partnership

The Mobility Agenda staff is collaborating with a coalition of state associations representing Community Action Agencies in our ongoing effort to reframe the poverty debate for better policy results. The Mobility Agenda staff wrote these articles to illustrate the use of frames designed to enhance public support for strengthening public policy and systems.  We're working together to highlight new ideas to improve and strengthen the low-wage labor market.  

December 2008
 
Talking About Better Wages

Margy Waller
The Mobility Agenda
for
The Community Action New Narrative Initiative
 
December 2008


Residents of nine states - Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington - will see a boost to the economy from a state minimum wage increase taking effect in the new year.

Yet, media coverage of the change varies across place and can contribute to an unfortunate framing of the increase as a charitable effort to support the poor.

For example, an article in the Cincinnati Enquirer begins with the suggestion that the increase benefits only the workers getting the increase:

    “Local minimum wage workers will have something to celebrate with the coming of a new year.”

The reporters continue with this narrow frame by noting that certain employers and the state’s 300,000 minimum wage workers will be the only ones to feel the impact of the change.

The online comments regarding the article illustrate the debate that inevitably flows from this framing. When the benefit is to a small group of employees and the impact on certain employers, the debate is over the worthiness of the workers for an increase and the us-vs.-them over who benefits and who suffers.

For example, one commenter shares an out-of-date (but widely held) perspective on the ability of workers to climb the wage ladder.

“You're not supposed to survive on minimum wage as an adult, because it's supposed to be the starting point not what you make an hour when you have chosen to add more mouths to feed. Secondly, if you start at minimum wage, within a very short period of time you will get raises. now the conditions are: you have to show up on time, do a good job, and make yourself a valuable employee. Wow, big surprise, then you continue up the ladder.”


Another commenter illustrates how the charitable framing leads to the us-vs.-them debate that undermines public support for improving jobs

“all this does is hurt the middle class. Push up the wages off teenagers and young college students, which force up prices in storesfor the average middle class america....stupid stupid stupid.”


A better framing would portray the increase as one that strengthens the local ecnomy by ensuring that there are better jobs in the community – a benefit that accrues to everyone.
 

 

November 2008
 
Poverty – We Need a New Conversation More Than a New Measure
 
Margy Waller
The Mobility Agenda
for
The Community Action New Narrative Initiative

 

As a new set of federal policymakers gets ready to address the current economic crisis, academics and advocates are proposing changes to the official measures of poverty.

Unfortunately, as long as we keep talking about “poverty”, this is much ado about almost nothing.

Earlier this year, a similar discussion ensued in Congress. At the national level, that new proposal would move the bar ever so slightly, so that being poor equals household income of less than $21,818 for two adults with two children, up from the current $20,444. 

To be sure, a new measure would likely be a better reflection of the rate of material deprivation in our nation than the current one. And Brookings’ Rebecca Blank proposes a very thoughtful approach. 

Why is this even necessary?

Today’s measure still uses a formula based on 1950s household expenditures – before housing and transportation costs went up and two-income households became the requirement, causing average child care expenses to soar. In contrast, the new measure would allow for regional reflection of differences in the cost of living and would count some federally-funded employment benefits as income for the first time.

Yet, it’s important to note that we aren’t really accomplishing what we desire with this goal – even with a more accurate formula. This is especially true since this high-level reconsideration of the formula is occurring at a time when there are numerous calls for a national goal to reduce poverty by 50 percent over the next ten years.

What’s wrong with expending a whole lot of energy on this discussion?

First, it’s only a proposal to measure income and not the other resources that communities need for a strong economy and full participation in our democracy and civil society. The proposal isn’t about quality education or clean air or reasonable housing costs or access to health care or reducing prejudice…. and so on. (Although, notably, Blank’s long-term proposal goes much further.)

Second, a if we want a measure of income, a relative measure would be a much more useful test of how well our nation is doing at making sure all residents can contribute to a strong society. As higher income earners do better, low-wage workers must see increases in income relative to the higher earners – otherwise poverty increases. As one leading newspaper said of a new relative measure:

“Certainly, the relative poverty measure is hard to budge. Yet, when all the research shows that it is how one's income compares to the average that drives health, happiness and opportunity, the target must be the right one.”

Third, while we do need a better standard for measuring progress as a nation on income deprivation, we’re not likely to succeed in achieving the goal of better policy outcomes if we insist on maintaining a subsistence standard. Indeed, if the goal is based on any measure of “poverty” as it is currently understood in this country – material deprivation blamed on immoral or ill-considered personal choices – we should not expect much policy progress on efforts to strengthen our economy.

At The Mobility Agenda, we’re engaged in a conversation about developing a goal that is more consistent with widely supported policy proposals – which tend to go way beyond income deprivation and include paid time off at work, worker voices at the table for establishing workplace policy, fair wages, and access to affordable health insurance.

When we put the poverty headline over these policy options, policymakers face real resistance created by the widely-held public beliefs about causes of poverty. We cannot change these beliefs by adopting a goal to end or reduce poverty – no matter which formula we use to define the term.

Of course, we should adopt a more current measure of income deprivation, but only as part of  larger goals related to well-being and inclusion.

Unfortunately, we're not doing so well on the policy front as it is, and changing the poverty formula will not have much of an impact on this reality. Progress on policy requires a different goal and new measures for testing our progress toward that goal. Moreover, we’ll need to have a different conversation altogether – one that isn’t about “poverty”.
 
 
 
October 2008
 
Memo to the Next President: Don't Focus on Poverty

Margy Waller
The Mobility Agenda
for
The Community Action New Narrative Initiative


While acknowledging the good intentions of all who are supporting the recent calls for a presidential focus on poverty, it is critical to recognize that the nation has changed in the years since advocates made a similar plea to citizens – over 40 years ago. Even trying to revive a policy and political focus on the poor will demand significant energy and resources, and unfortunately, cannot yield the desired policy results.

Instead, we should adopt goals that establish what Robert F. Kennedy called our desired "bond of common fate" within a new national framework for advancing economic and social policy.

Advocates and other stakeholders have already reached everyone persuadable by describing policy proposals as "anti-poverty" initiatives. Yet that level of support still has not been enough to overcome opponents of legislation designed to alleviate poverty.

While many people will say they want government to do something about poverty—it is not a high priority. When the Gallup Poll asked voters to name "the most important problem facing the country" in October, only 1 percent named poverty, hunger, or homelessness. (This percentage has actually declined from 2 percent since early 2008!)

This means policymakers do not have the political space they need to take on opponents. Talking about poverty more loudly and more often will not change this fact.

Indeed, continuing to use the poverty banner will lead to failure. There are a few reasons for this:

    * The U.S. definition of poverty (strictly based on income, it's currently about $21,000 for a family of four) is out of date and flawed, allowing opponents to limit policy solutions to a narrow and very low-income group.
    * Public understanding of the causes of (irresponsible and immoral behavior) and remedies for (responsible personal behavior) poverty hinders adoption of the policy solutions we seek to address it.
    * Defining the problem as "poverty" opens the door to a losing scenario in a legislative debate.

For example, critics have responded to Senator Obama's concession to Senator John Edwards that Democrats adopt a goal to halve poverty in ten years. Last week, in an interview with an analyst about Obama's policy proposals, Bill Cunningham, ranked by Talkers Magazine as one of the 100 most important talk radio hosts in the US, said:

The war on poverty was declared in the 1960s. It was lost in the 1970s. The funding continued for poverty. You know, people are poor in America…not because they lack money; they're poor because they lack values, morals, and ethics. And if government can't teach and instill that, we're wasting our time simply giving poor people money.

See the problem?

It would be a much better use of the good will and support generally accorded a new President to focus on setting a new and higher standard for our nation. A better goal would go well beyond income deprivation, or even a standard that assesses what is necessary to "make ends meet". Our real goals are higher than this, and our policy proposals already reflect a desire to do more.

Unless we want to limit policy solutions at the outset, the next President should focus instead on how to establish goals that measure our progress toward an inclusive economy that works for all of us.

Other nations have taken up this effort. Every European Union member country must have a plan for social inclusion, a multi-dimensional concept that can incorporate notions of adequate income (using a relative measure designed to assess whether the gap is getting too big for a strong nation), as well as neighborhood quality, access to the arts, education, health care, participation in civic events, housing, pensions, and other factors.

It will take hard work, high-level attention, and resources to develop a framework and narrative for this concept in the United States. We need consensus on targets to measure progress and assess the effectiveness of new initiatives.

Establishing a new cross-agency effort to develop and focus on such goals is worthy of Presidential attention and cabinet-member status.

In contrast, renewed attention to the limited target of income poverty is not. Even eliminating poverty sets the bar too low and, as a national goal, it simply will not work to achieve our shared hopes for a strong nation.

Margy Waller is executive director of The Mobility Agenda.  She served in the Clinton-Gore White House and is co-author of "Social Inclusion for the United States."
 

September 2008
 
Looking at the Economy through a New Lens
Or
The Big Price of Bad Jobs

Margy Waller, Jonny Finity, and Sandra Gustitus
The Mobility Agenda
for
The Community Action New Narrative Initiative

There are a lot of places to point fingers when trying to assign responsibility for recent failures of major corporations and the perceived need for a “bailout” of other institutions.

Among those who deserve some of the blame are employers, particularly those who pay low-wages and don’t offer employment benefits like health care and paid sick days. One in three jobs – over 40 million in our economy – pay low-wages, and most of these are without benefits.

In recent years, wages for these jobs, like too many middle income jobs as well, have been flat or even declining. At the same time, costs for gas, food, and other everyday expenses have continued to rise.

Workers were forced to go into debt to cover this loss in purchasing power. People at all income levels borrowed against the home equity that they had accumulated within the housing bubble in order to pay for cost increases. This debt, over time, artificially inflated the economy to levels sustained only by consumers’ willingness, and need, to assume more debt. Workers across the country have found themselves spending on credit to survive while saddled in a spiral of ever decreasing net worth – and for it, everyone has suffered.


Our colleague Dean Baker, at the Center for Economic Policy Research, put it this way:

The main cause of the economy's weakness is not insolvent banks and lack of credit; it's the loss of $4 trillion to $5 trillion in housing equity as a result of the bubble's partial deflation. Families used their equity to support their consumption in the years from 2002 to 2007, as the savings rate fell to almost zero.

With much of this equity now eliminated by the collapse of the bubble, many families can no longer sustain their levels of consumption. The main reason that banks won't lend to these families is that they no longer have home equity to serve as collateral. It wouldn't matter how much money the banks had, they are not going to make mortgage loans to people who have no equity.

And house prices are not going to come back. This is like Pets.com. We are not going to get the price of $200,000 homes in central California back up to $500,000.

The main problem in recovering from the recession will be finding ways to boost demand other than household consumption…. In the short-run, we will have to rely on government stimulus to help spur growth and reduce unemployment…. demands for stimulus were not extraneous to the legitimate goal of a bank bailout bill. Fiscal stimulus must be central to any serious effort to boost the economy.

With workers stuck in bad jobs and prices soaring, no one’s debt is going to disappear. It will take bold policy changes, to effect the kind of change we need.

To strengthen the labor market, policymakers could 1) make changes and extensions to unemployment insurance options, 2) invest in good jobs created to strengthen our infrastructure, build green, and improve transit options, and 3) guarantee paid sick days for all workers. Any of these improvements would strengthen our economy for all of us.
 
 August 2008
 
Economic Inclusion

Margy Waller
The Mobility Agenda
for
The Community Action New Narrative Initiative


In a recent New York Times Magazine article, reporter David Leonhardt offers a useful summary and analysis of recent changes in our economy:

In some fundamental ways, the American economy has stopped working.

The fact that the economy grows — that it produces more goods and services one year than it did in the previous one — no longer ensures that most families will benefit from its growth. For the first time on record, an economic expansion seems to have ended without family income having risen substantially. Most families are still making less, after accounting for inflation, than they were in 2000. For these workers, roughly the bottom 60 percent of the income ladder, economic growth has become a theoretical concept rather than the wellspring of better medical care, a new car, a nicer house — a better life than their parents had.

Americans have still been buying such things, but they have been doing so with debt. A big chunk of that debt will never be repaid, which is the most basic explanation for the financial crisis. Even after the crisis has passed, the larger problem of income stagnation will remain. It’s hardly the economy’s only serious problem either. There is also the slow unraveling of the employer-based health-insurance system and the fact that, come 2011, the baby boomers will start to turn 65, setting off an enormous rise in the government’s Medicare and Social Security obligations.

Most of these problems aren’t immediate, which helps explain why they have gone unaddressed for so long. And the United States remains a fabulously prosperous country, relative to almost any other country, at any point in history. Yet Americans seem to realize that something has gone wrong. In recent polls, about 80 percent of respondents say the economy is in bad shape, and almost 70 percent say it’s going to get worse. Together, these answers make for the most downbeat assessment since at least the early 1980s, and underscore that the next president will be inheriting a set of domestic problems as serious as any the country has faced in a long time.

Leonhardt’s article is primarily an attempt to place Senator Obama’s economic policy on the political spectrum. The reporter focuses on the democratic nominee for President because “John McCain’s economic vision, as he has laid it out during the campaign, amounts to a slightly altered version of Republican orthodoxy….”

We recommend the article to readers who are interested in a review of the changes in the economy impacting communities and the labor market, and choices we will face when a new administration begins the job of proposing and promoting policies designed to strengthen our economy.

Finally, we note, with interest, the inclusive description of economic theory offered by Senator Obama when asked for a “bumper-sticker summary” by the reporter:

"…what we need to bring about is the end of the era of unresponsive and inefficient government and short-term thinking in government, so that the government is laying the groundwork, the framework, the foundation for the market to operate effectively and for every single individual to be able to be connected with that market and to succeed in that market." [Our emphasis.]

 
 
July 2008
 
Better Jobs and Wages are Good for Communities

Margy Waller and Jonny Finity
The Mobility Agenda
for
The Community Action New Narrative Initiative


After ten years – the longest gap between changes in history – our national policy on wages for entry-level workers increased recently, so employers finally gave a raise to workers in the lowest paying jobs. As of this July, these employers will offer workers the still woefully low hourly pay of $6.55 an hour, a 70-cent increase.

Though this was the second increase in as many years as a result of the 2007 change in national policy, employers paying minimum wage still offer less than the 1997 level, which was equivalent to $6.88 an hour in today's dollars. And while the raise does little to immediately address our difficult current economic situation, it is good for the long-term health of our communities.

In the US today, over 40 million jobs – about 1 in 3 – pay wages well below the mid-range. The majority of these jobs lack worker benefits (such as paid sick days, health insurance, or retirement accounts) as well as any career advancement or training opportunities. Having so many of these low-wage jobs weakens our economy and creates a lower standard of living for everyone. Good jobs keep our communities strong by increasing participation in our economy and democracy, and making sure that no one falls too far behind.

It used to be that employer gains from productivity were passed onto the workers who helped to produce them. Productivity has increased 83 percent in the last 25 years. Yet, as this writer in the Miami Herald reminds us, employers have not been holding up their end of the bargain. Corporate profits have risen over 200% since 1973, while real wages have been falling over the same period.

Our nation has become too reliant on bad jobs – low-wage jobs without benefits – which weigh down the economy. That is bad for everyone. We've turned this around before when we improved manufacturing jobs with a combination of worker voices and changes in public policy. Through the recent minimum wage increase, Congress is asking employers to share prosperity with the communities in which they operate. This policy recognizes that we need more good jobs for a strong economy and democracy - and we should share the benefits that come from hard work.

Raise too little, too late -- make it $10 in 2010

By HOLLY SKLAR

Minimum-wage workers have been stuck in a losing game of ``Mother, May I'' with the federal government.

Workers step forward when the government says yes to raising the minimum wage. Workers step backward when the cost of living increases, but the minimum wage doesn't.

Until 1968, minimum-wage workers took frequent and big enough steps forward to make overall progress. Since 1968, when the minimum wage reached its peak buying power, workers have taken many steps backward for every step forward.

The latest minimum-wage raise, which took effect Thursday, is so little, so late that workers will still make less than they did in 1997, adjusting for the increased cost of living, and way less than in 1968.

The decade between the federal minimum wage increase to $5.15 an hour on Sept. 1, 1997, and the July 24, 2007, increase to $5.85 was the longest period in history without a raise.

Gas prices rose from $1.23 to $2.97 a gallon in the same period. Now it's more than $4.

The new $6.55 minimum wage is lower than the 1997 minimum wage, which is worth $6.88 in 2008 dollars, and way lower than the inflation adjusted $9.86 minimum wage of 1968. For full-time workers that translates into $20,509 a year at the 1968 rate, compared with just $13,624 at the hourly rate of $6.55.

The minimum wage does not provide a minimally adequate living standard -- and it still won't when the last scheduled raise to $7.25 takes place next July.

Workers are constantly choosing what to go without -- ''heat or eat,'' child care or healthcare.

Healthcare aides can't afford to take sick days. Retail clerks and child-care workers depend on food banks. Security guards sleep at homeless shelters.

It wasn't always this way. Workers used to share in the gains of rising worker productivity.

Between 1947 and 1973, worker productivity rose 104 percent and the minimum wage rose 101 percent, adjusting for inflation. The middle class grew.

Between 1973 and 2007, productivity rose 83 percent and the minimum wage fell 22 percent, adjusting for inflation. Average worker wages fell 10 percent while domestic corporate profits rose 219 percent, and profits in the disproportionately low-wage retail industry jumped 346 percent. More jobs paid poverty wages.

Higher education does not protect you from falling wages. The inflation-adjusted wages of recent college graduates were lower in 2007 than they were in 2001.

There's been a massive shift of income from the bottom and middle to the top. The richest 1 percent of Americans has increased their share of the nation's income to a higher level than any year since 1928, the eve of the Great Depression.

Our modern robber baron age features people like Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo. He pocketed $103 million last year as the subprime mortgage ponzi scheme morphed into the worst financial crisis since the Depression.

Minimum wage workers don't put raises into predatory lending, commodity speculation or offshore tax havens. They recycle their needed raises back into local businesses and the economy through increased spending.

Eight of the ''SurePayroll Top Ten States for Small Businesses'' in 2008 have had state minimum wages above the federal level. They include Washington, California and Oregon, three of the four states with the highest minimums.

Minimum wage raises are stimulus for an economy tanking from a housing bubble gone bust, sharply higher oil prices, extreme inequality, unsustainable debt, and fraud and speculation crowding out productive investment.

Higher wages benefit business by increasing consumer purchasing power, reducing costly employee turnover, raising productivity, and improving product quality and company reputation. They reinforce long-term success.

Let Justice Roll -- a national faith, community, labor and business coalition, which I advise -- calls for a minimum wage of $10 in 2010. That would bring the minimum wage closer to the value it had in 1968, a year when the unemployment rate was a low 3.6 percent.

It will bring the minimum wage closer to the ''minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency and general well-being of workers'' promised by the Fair Labor Standards Act establishing the minimum wage 70 years ago.

It will strengthen the foundation under our unsound economy.

Holly Sklar is co-author of A Just Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Business and Our Future.


June 2008
 
Better Jobs for All:
Federal Government Considering Work-Life Policy Change

Margy Waller, The Mobility Agenda
for
The Community Action New Narrative Initiative



In June, the U.S. House of Representatives took a significant, if overdue, step to update federal workplace policy and signal that millions of jobs across the country could become better jobs if other employers follow that lead. The Washington Post reported on the news and noted that President Bush opposes this job benefit.

It’s not our grandfathers’ workforce anymore, but lots of employers seem to be pretending that nothing has changed in the last 50 years.

Too many workers have no paid sick days and no pay for parental leave. It’s past time for our public and private policy to recognize this reality.

If it becomes law, H.R. 5781, the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act, will ensure that nearly two million federal employees will be able to take time off to care for a new child.
The bill’s supporters propose that the federal government provide four weeks of paid parental leave to federal government workers in all three branches of government.

It’s surprising that the federal government is behind the curve on this public policy - the vast majority of Fortune 500 employers already provide six to eight weeks of paid parental leave, while federal employees are only entitled to unpaid leave.
The bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Carolyn Maloney noted:

As the nation’s largest employer, the Federal Government should be a leader in family-friendly workplace policy. Not only do we lag behind the private sector, but we also lag behind what is offered in other countries. We are the only industrialized country that does not offer any paid parental leave to all citizens. The European Union requires that its member-countries offer a minimum of 14 weeks of paid maternity leave, and most countries exceed that amount.


Next, it will be up to the Senate to pass this legislation. Providing paid parental leave to all federal workers would help the government with recruitment and retention. And, importantly, our government would send a powerful signal to all employers by adopting this necessary work-life policy.

For more information on work-life policy options, check out the new report released by The Mobility Agenda this month.

 

May 2008

Note to the Next President

Margy Waller, The Mobility Agenda
for
The Community Action New Narrative Initiative

Imagine. It's early February 2009, and the new President of the United States is announcing one of his first executive orders – a high profile initiative of his administration.

Suppose he begins his remarks with something like this:

Everyone in the United States should have an opportunity to be a full participant in the life of the nation. Unfortunately, too many of us remain locked out of the benefits of work, education, community engagement and access to basic services.

This social exclusion is a significant barrier to sustained prosperity and restricts our nation's future economic growth.

Promoting social inclusion requires a new way of governing. The United States must rethink how policy and programs across portfolios and levels of government can work together to combat economic and social disadvantage.

Does this seem unlikely? It's not. Every member of the European Union has a plan for social inclusion.

And the newly elected political leaders in Australia just announced this initiative for that country, using the language quoted above.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Deputy Prime Minister, the Hon Julia Gillard MP announce the Australian Social Inclusion Board.

 

April 2008
 
Tax Rebate Checks – A Moment to Reflect on an Economy that Works for All

Margy Waller, The Mobility Agenda
for
The Community Action New Narrative Initiative

Tax rebate checks are starting to arrive in bank accounts. These checks represent the effort by Congress and our federal administration to discourage further economic downturn. This article from the Associated Press takes a look at how taxpayers intend to spend the check, which our government decided to send out as an effort at stimulating the economy because as the article points out:

"Personal spending accounts for the single-biggest chunk of gross domestic product, which measures national economic activity. Because of that, people's behavior is important in determining whether the country will survive the economic turmoil or fall victim to it."

The current economic situation presents us with a few lessons we should not ignore.

Why did people stop spending? This is a good question to examine. And the math isn't too complicated.

Employment wages have been flat or declining for about the last 8 years. Meanwhile, costs of gas, housing, food, education, and other daily expenses continued to rise.

How did workers deal with the increasing costs for necessities when their income wasn't going up?

They went into debt – including refinancing homes that seemed to be increasing in value every year. They took the money from the loan and spent it on everyday needs. Or they took out additional credit card debt to pay things like grocery bills.

Then suddenly, there was a crisis in the credit markets and it became a lot harder to get a loan. Meanwhile, housing values stopped going up in most places. So, there was no way to continue borrowing to manage the household budget. And people started spending less.

Remembering that a strong economy depends heavily on people spending, you can see why it started to sputter. And when everyone's economy goes south – everyone suffers. Even people whose income comes from the stock markets.

About one-third of the jobs in the labor market today are low-paying and come without benefits like health care and paid sick days. So, too many communities are forced to depend on employers with jobs that just don't pay well.

It's a good time to remember that everyone – even the very wealthy - suffers when the economy is bad. So, jobs that don't pay well end up hurting all of us. A strong economy actually requires that everyone is doing relatively well.

The current situation is unsustainable. Turning bad jobs into better jobs with higher wages, paid sick days, predictable hours, and a ladder for advancement will go a long way toward creating a stronger nation for everyone.

March 2008

The Downside of Talking about Poverty

Margy Waller, The Mobility Agenda
for
The Community Action New Narrative Initiative

For much more about the evidence on changing narratives, see this website: http://www.mobilityagenda.org/reframingthepovertydebate.

The Nation magazine recently praised efforts by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, led by Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D- CA), to introduce a plan to cut poverty. The detailed package of policy proposals, “The Anti-Poverty and Opportunity Initiative,” calls for:

…. $73 billion in FY 2009, increasing to $129 billion in FY 2018, to fund a comprehensive strategy to cut poverty in half in a decade, including: expanding child care and increasing Head Start funding; making the Child Tax Credit fully refundable and expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit for larger families; increasing funding for Food Stamps programs; increasing housing vouchers by 200,000 annually; lifting restrictions on TANF, Food Stamps, SSI and Medicaid for documented immigrant families; fully funding block grants to states with broad anti-poverty strategies and distributing targeted grants to states for families where a parent or child has a disability; increasing funding for Indian Health Services, education, housing and infrastructure, natural resources management, and other areas impacting Native American poverty; and reversing the 20 percent cut in child support enforcement.

The initiative incorporates many policy ideas community organizations and other stakeholders have been wishing that Congress and the administration would adopt – for many years now. Individual lists might differ a bit from Congresswoman Lee’s, but any Congressional staffer from a progressive office already has a list like this memorized.

So why aren’t these proposals the law of the land?

It's probably because supporters have reached everyone persuadable by talking about the proposals as “anti-poverty” initiatives for forty years. And all that support still isn’t enough to overcome the opponents of legislation like this. While many people want to do something about poverty—it’s not a high priority for voters. In February, the Gallup Poll asked voters about "the most important problem facing the country" and just 2 percent named poverty/hunger/homelessness.

That means friendly policymakers don’t have the political space they need to take on opponents.

And continuing to use the poverty banner means it is unlikely that this plan will generate adequate support in the future. There are a few reasons for this:

* The U.S. definition of poverty is out of date and flawed, allowing opponents to use it to limit policy solutions to a narrow very low-income group.
* Public understanding of the causes of (irresponsible and immoral behavior) and remedies (responsible personal behavior) for poverty hinders adoption of the policy solutions we seek to address it.
* Defining the problem as “poverty” opens the door to a losing scenario in the legislative debate.

In fact, when Senator Clinton announced her support for a plan to adopt a goal to cut child poverty in late February, the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation took the opening to criticize and offer their alternative:

Robert Rector, senior research fellow on welfare and family issues at the Heritage Foundation, says Clinton refuses to even acknowledge the two primary causes of child poverty -- out-of-wedlock births, and parents living on welfare instead of working. "What she wants to do is combat poverty by putting the responsibility on the U.S. taxpayer, who already spends about $450 billion a year fighting poverty," says Rector, "while [at the same time] specifically avoiding the issue of changing the behaviors that are the cause of poverty.”

See the problem?

The poverty debate provides a classic example of the imperative not to sacrifice our larger policy goals for the sake of an incremental or different advance, particularly when that advance actually undermines the shared agenda for the long term. By advancing a plan to set a target for cutting poverty, elected officials and candidates set up a problematic future, and one that threatens to undermine the policy goals.

Let’s imagine the likely scenario to come. Whether or not a candidate who has promised to set a goal to cut poverty wins the White House, we can expect continued efforts by some advocacy groups and members of Congress to push for the goal and the policy to match.

The mainstream media will portray the likely legislative options as two competing proposals: one we like (a comprehensive approach to addressing inequality and economic mobility) and one we don’t (solve poverty with marriage and harder work).

Our opponents are able to push these concepts with success because they are consistent with a broad public understanding of the causes of poverty, and a widely held belief that government programs cannot really address the issue of poverty or inequality. We already lost this same fight in battles over welfare. Why would we want to engage in it again?

We don’t need to re-fight that battle. We know that some people (democrats and low-income voters) are persuaded by a sympathy lens on the issue (the one that the word “poverty” calls up for many people in this country) to support a limited set of policies. Unfortunately, this language actually decreases support for progressive policies like a living wage.

Moreover, we also know that using an economic narrative moves these same voters and others (working-class, non college-educated men, older men, Republican voters, union households, and older voters without a college education) to support more of our policy goals.

So, if there is no true demand for a goal to cut poverty and it won’t help add new support, it would be much smarter strategically to use an economic case to promote the same larger policy agenda without the damaging poverty headline. (You’ll find much more information about the evidence on the impact of using different narratives for policy results on our website: http://www.mobilityagenda.org/reframingthepovertydebate)

In fact, the Progressive Caucus members have proposals that would address poverty, social and economic mobility, and inequality that they’ve put under an economy title, the “Rebuild and Reinvest in America Initiative.” They should focus on this legislation and incorporate the “anti-poverty” agenda into that legislation.

Anyone who wants anti-poverty policy to be high on the agenda after the upcoming election should stop talking about goals to cut poverty and instead talk about an economy that will work for everyone. Changing the way we start the conversation with others about this issue doesn’t mean we don’t care about the poor anymore or that our policy goals have to change at all. It’s just an acknowledgment that if we want to win, we have to change the narrative to one that works for us, and for more of the public too.

Margy Waller is executive director of The Mobility Agenda, a national nonprofit policy research organization. She welcomes your comments and reactions at comments@mobilityagenda.org.