By Alexandra DeSanctis
Thursday, August 25, 2016
The daily grind of Washington politics may seem of little
import to the man who spends every day standing on a street corner holding out
an empty cup for spare change. But, as Democrats and Republicans wage a bitter
war over this year’s presidential election, it’s worth remembering just how
much is at stake. It has been nearly 80 years since the progressive movement
began its attempt to alleviate systemic poverty with federal action: first, in
the 1930s, via Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” and then, in the 1960s, via
Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society.” But judging by today’s landscape, neither
vision has proven adequate to the task. Today, government at both the federal and
state level spends a combined $1 trillion per year on programs meant to help
low-income Americans. Over the last half-century, an estimated $16 trillion has
been spent in this manner. And yet, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the
official poverty rate in 2014 was 14.8 percent, no better than it was in 1966.
In a recent column for National Review Online, Florida senator Marco Rubio offered a
possible reason for anti-poverty programs’ lack of success: “Where liberals see
the world of individual and state — that individual needs must be met by an
ever-expanding, top-down government — conservatives have the opportunity to
promote a vision of society that embraces community-driven, grassroots
solutions.”
Most leftists would have voters believe that all conservatives
despise the poor and are desperate to end entitlement programs so that they can
funnel more government money to big businesses. But as many Republican leaders
have proven through their efforts, the GOP’s locally oriented approach is often
more successful at lifting people out of poverty than are expansive welfare
programs.
One such leader, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, is a
staunch advocate of community-based solutions to poverty and unemployment.
Moreover, in attesting to the value of local anti-poverty efforts, Johnson can
point to his considerable firsthand experience. After traveling around
Wisconsin during his first five years as senator — he was elected in 2010, in
the wave of tea-party enthusiasm that brought many new conservative faces to
Congress — Johnson realized that despite the high levels of unemployment in
metropolitan areas such as Milwaukee and Madison, manufacturers across his
state still had thousands of unfilled jobs. And so, seeking to solve both
problems at once, Johnson partnered with a Milwaukee-area church to institute
the Joseph Project, a program that recruits and trains impoverished people,
connects them to potential employers, and supports their subsequent careers.
In Milwaukee, where the recent shooting death of a black
man prompted three days of riots, it is easy to see why low-income black people
are dissatisfied with their situation and ready for new solutions. Wisconsin
had the worst socioeconomic conditions in the country for African Americans in
2015, with black unemployment hovering around 20 percent, as well as a high
quotient of violence, illegal drug usage, and failing schools. And the
unemployment rate for blacks in Milwaukee was four times higher than that of
white Americans in the city.
In the face of this untenable situation — one mirrored in
most metropolitan areas across the country — Johnson and his staff teamed up
with Pastor Jerome Smith Sr., of the Greater Praise Church of God in Christ, to
provide unemployed people in Milwaukee, usually African Americans with a
history of incarceration or drug and alcohol abuse, with a hopeful path out of
poverty and crime.
The project was “a coming together of concepts, of the
knowledge that you have all this job opportunity and yet so many people are
trapped in that cycle of dependency, despair, and poverty,” Johnson told NRO.
According to Smith, the idea for the project arose after
he and several other pastors visited the Sheboygan Economic Development
Corporation about an hour’s drive from Milwaukee, a visit facilitated by
Orlando Owens, who was serving as director of African-American outreach for the
Wisconsin GOP and who later joined Johnson’s staff. It became clear during this
trip that a number of corporations had unfilled manufacturing jobs, while Smith
knew of countless people in the Milwaukee area who were looking for work.
On the drive back, the Joseph Project was born. Two weeks
later, Smith, Johnson, and members of Johnson’s staff conducted the inaugural
training session with a class of 14 individuals. Now, almost a year on, nearly
140 people have received job interviews; more than 80 of them have received job
offers, and about 60 have maintained employment since.
For each session, Smith identifies about 60 people
through his church who are looking for work; he then interviews them to select
ten or twelve who are most committed to contributing the effort needed to
succeed. Each week-long session takes place in the Greater Praise church
building and teaches participants soft skills such as time management and
spiritual fitness, as well as how to interview. So far, the Joseph Project has
held twelve sessions, and as the program has developed, successful graduates
have returned to speak to each new class about the importance of hard work.
Johnson himself has attended nearly every session to give
an orientation pep talk. “Having been an employer myself, I tell them the most
important attribute to exhibit in an interview is a good attitude,” Johnson
said, “and the fact that you want to help the organization succeed.”
Smith gave an analogy to explain Johnson’s essential role
in the initiation and continuation of the Joseph Project. “Senator Johnson . .
. goes out and kicks open the door by talking to manufacturing companies, and
he convinces them that we’re the type of organization that they should be
taking employees from,” Smith said.
Smith and the staff members running the program then work
to keep that “door” open. “It’s like a big fire door,” Smith explained. “The
people trying to close the door are the people in the program who don’t show up
for the van on time, who don’t show up for class, who call in sick to work.”
At the end of training, participants are driven in vans
to Sheboygan, where they interview with potential employers. So far, 20
companies have hired individuals from the Joseph Project, and, thanks to the
program’s success, Sheboygan donated two vans for transportation purposes.
“We have vans that leave every day at 5:30 a.m., 8:30
a.m., noon, and 1:30 p.m., as well as a Friday/Saturday/Sunday van at 5:30
p.m., and a van running seven days a week 8:45 p.m.,” said Smith. These vans
drive a total of 12,000 miles each month, as volunteer drivers shuttle Joseph
Project participants from Milwaukee to Sheboygan and back every day.
Johnson said that the employers, managers, and employees
at the companies that hire Joseph Project participants have been key to the
program’s success. “These workers have been incredibly supported by their
workplaces,” he said. He gave examples of two participants, one of whom said
being at his workplace felt like heaven, while the other said hers felt like a
family.
“People like us who have had opportunity already know how
fulfilling work can be,” Johnson said. “But people trapped in that cycle of
poverty don’t know about that.”
“Since we started this, people have moved into their own
apartments. . . . One 62-year-old fellow had never bought a car in his life,
but now he was able to buy a brand-new car,” said Smith.
Both Smith and Johnson stress the dignity that stems from
being able to provide for oneself and the crucial role this dignity plays in
the Joseph Project’s success stories. One young man, Trayvonn Brown, said in a
video that the Joseph Project taught him the distinction between a job and a
career. “A job is something where you just work to get by,” Brown explained. “A
career is something you do with your life, something that you like. So, I’m
trying to find a career.”
“This program shows that local control and local
involvement, as well as a faith-based approach, actually work, and we can
provide the pilot to have this grow into something bigger nationally,” Johnson
said. “I’m not just doing this because I’m a United States senator. . . . I’m
trying to use my position here to highlight a success and provide an example
for others to follow.”
He also noted that the tremendous government resources
poured into anti-poverty efforts have not paid off as anticipated: “There were
29 million poor Americans when the War on Poverty started, now there are 46 or
47 million. The evidence is clear that when we outsource our compassion to the
federal government, it hasn’t worked.”
The senator feels strongly, too, that support for local
efforts such as the Joseph Project shouldn’t be confined to one political
perspective. “There’s no one political party that has a monopoly on
compassion,” he said. “We all want our fellow citizens to succeed and to have
the opportunity to do so.”
He shot back at those who would accuse Republicans of
lacking compassion for impoverished Americans, accusations often based on the
fact that conservatives tend to support welfare or entitlement reform. “The charges
that Republicans are uncaring are just false. The Joseph Project proves that I
certainly care about each of my constituents.”
“This [project] has crossed political parties,” Smith
agreed. “It has crossed denominational boundaries. I’m not aware of any other
single thing that’s doing that. It’s crossing racial boundaries. That’s
powerful. This is making a heck of an impact in the lives of people. Because of
us, people are going to eat well on Labor Day and will go shopping with their
kids for school.”
Johnson said that local programs such as the Joseph
Project are closely tied to federal anti-poverty efforts like House Speaker
Paul Ryan’s “A Better Way: Our Vision for a Confident America” policy proposal.
As NRO has previously reported, Ryan
traveled extensively to meet with low-income people across the country as he
developed this plan, and an old friend of his, Bob Woodson, facilitated many of
those meetings. Woodson, who founded the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, is
also the author of The Triumphs of Joseph,
the book that inspired the name of the Joseph Project.
Ryan’s plan is practical, detailed, and comprehensive,
disproving liberals’ assertions that Republican leaders don’t care about the
fate of poor people. Drawing on the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, much of
the proposal focuses on solutions grounded at the local level, where it is
easiest to identify and address the particular causes of poverty. And, like
Johnson and Smith’s program, Ryan’s anti-poverty agenda emphasizes the inherent
dignity of work, a dignity afforded to impoverished Americans when they receive
employment opportunities rather than a government handout.
Ryan’s chief goals are to limit government regulation and
provide financial incentives to those who enable the transition from welfare to
work. According to the Republican agenda, the federal government’s main
contribution to state-level anti-poverty efforts should be to foster
public-private partnerships that support local programs.
In Albuquerque, N.M., Mayor Richard Berry — the city’s
first Republican mayor in 30 years — has implemented another such program.
After interacting with his city’s poorest residents, Berry instituted “There’s
a Better Way,” which uses a van to recruit local panhandlers to collect litter
and pull weeds around the city. According to the Washington Post, the program has provided 932 total jobs since it
began last September, and more than 100 people have been “connected to”
permanent employment (though reports don’t indicate how stable these
connections have been). This kind of solution provides a helping hand out of
poverty for those who believe they have no options other than panhandling.
Berry has said that dozens of cities have reached out to him about initiating
similar programs.
“We have seen the fruits of an approach to welfare that
puts work first,” Rubio wrote at NRO.
“We must now apply this principle through federalism, empowering
problem-solvers who are closest to the ground while teaching the benefits of a
working, productive life from doorstep to doorstep, not from on high in
Washington.”
No matter how vociferously liberals insist that federal
regulations, expansion of welfare, and protection of entitlements will lift
citizens out of poverty, the record shows that, in practice, compassionate,
conservative leaders such as Senator Johnson are the ones supporting and
empowering low-income Americans.
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