This story appears courtesy of RCN partner KYForward and is a Question & Answer session with Rick Axtell, the Paul L. Cantrell Associate Professor of Religion at Centre College in Danville.
Q: How important have issues of poverty been during this election cycle?
One disappointing aspect of this campaign is that no one is talking substantively about poverty. The issue has been largely absent from the national dialogue. In fact, the political conventions consistently emphasized helping the middle class, improving the lives of the middle class, tax cuts for the middle class. Someone should have put an empty chair on the convention stage to represent poor people.
They were simply absent.
Here’s one example: Bill Clinton’s speech lamented the fact that pundits have focused on Paul Ryan’s proposed cuts in Medicare, our federal health care program for the elderly, while ignoring his proposed cuts in Medicaid. Since Medicaid is our primary federal health care program for the poor, I thought, “Finally, someone is going to talk about poverty.” Clinton went on to ask, “Why should you care about this?” And then he reminded us that Medicaid also finances nursing home care for millions of elderly middle class Americans and disability payments for middle class Americans. In other words: “Care about this because it’s a middle class program—not because it is the only source of health insurance for millions of America’s poorest people.” The speech was perfectly emblematic of the pervasive moral failure that has led to calculated silence on this pressing issue.
Read more, including Axtell’s analysis of the key differences between Democrats and Republicans on how best to address poverty: KYForward