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The Hunger Action Network of New York State announced today a campaign to get state legislative candidates to sign a Poverty to Prosperity Pledge. The Pledge highlights seven key economic security issues: raising the welfare grant after 18 years; raising the state minimum wage to $10 an hour; supporting job creation, including a massive home energy conservation initiative; single payer universal health care; affordable housing; state funding for the Home Energy Assistance Program; and tax reform.

Speakers included Mark Dunlea and Bill Peltz of Hunger Action Network, Patti Jo Newell of the NYS Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and Rev. James Reisner of the Albany Presbytery. The Presbyterian Hunger Program has been a long time funder of Hunger Action.

As former New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." By this measure, New York is failing.

"Poverty, homelessness, and hunger are significant problems in New York, a shameful situation in the richest nation in the world. New York has the greatest income inequality between the poor and rich in the country. Poverty is seldom discussed in the State Capitol, and is generally treated as an insolvable problem. It is time for lawmakers to not only make ending poverty a state priority but to be held accountable for their success in doing so,” stated Mark Dunlea, Executive Director of Hunger Action Network of New York State

Dunlea noted that there were only a handful of food pantries and soup kitchens in NYS prior to the 1981 federal budget cuts under President Reagan. There are now more than 3,000, feeding more than 2 million New Yorkers annually. “New Yorkers shouldn’t have to rely on emergency food programs to feed themselves. It is time that state lawmakers make a commitment to shut these programs down by ensuring that all New Yorkers have the resources to support their families. We need to provide economic security not just for the poor but for all New Yorkers,” added Dunlea.

"Survivors of domestic violence keenly feel economic pressures, and challenges associated with housing, employment, public assistance, health care and child care are typically identified among as the primary reasons for remaining with batterers. Economic independence is a prerequisite to independence from batterers. Leaving is not in itself sufficient. Survivors are routinely driven back to batterers because of economic pressures, even after using emergency shelter and other services. This is an unnecessary tragedy in New York's response to domestic violence," said Patti Jo Newell, deputy director at the NYS Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

For the last nine years more than 200 human services, faith and labor groups have promoted the Empire State Economic Security Campaign (ES2) which has included the issues in the Poverty to Prosperity Pledge. Last year Governor Spitzer announced the creation of an Economic Security cabinet for the state, which recently completed a series of Town Hall meetings to get input from residents.

In addition to the pledge, ES2 will be holding town hall meetings with state legislative candidates on economic security and poverty in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, and Westchester in October.

A similar campaign is being launched at the national level to cut poverty in half in the next decade by the Center for American Progress. Thirty-seven million Americans live below the official poverty line. Millions more struggle each month to pay for basic necessities, or run out of savings when they lose their jobs or face health emergencies. Poverty imposes enormous costs on society. Persistent childhood poverty is estimated to cost our nation $500 billion each year, or about four percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.

More than 2.6 million New Yorkers are living in poverty – one in five children (858,000) and one in ten families (575,000) had incomes below the official federal poverty thresholds in 2006.  Over one million of these New Yorkers had incomes below half the official poverty threshold -- or less than about $10,000 a year for a family of four. New York State and New York City still have the highest measures of income inequality in the nation, and New York is the only state that is considered both a high income state and a high poverty state.

Poverty is particularly severe in the state's cities.  New York City's poverty rate was 19 percent but poverty rates in Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse exceeded 30 percent.  Child poverty rates were greater than 40 percent in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Albany and more than 10 percent of the residents of these four cities had incomes below 50 percent of poverty.

A family of four is considered poor if the family’s income is below $19,971—a bar far below what most people believe a family needs to get by. All economists agree that the official poverty measurement is inaccurate – they just can’t agree on how to fix it. The poverty measure also doesn’t reflect regional variations in cost. NYC recent revision of the poverty measurement raised the poverty threshold for a family of two adults and two children in New York City to $26,138 annually compared to the official level of $20,444, raising the percentage of poor city residents from 19% to 23%.

A recent report by the Fiscal Policy Institute found that the median “hardship” gap in New York is a staggering $1,079 a month – the second worst in the country. The hardship gap is the difference between the basic family budget (for food, housing, energy, health care, etc.) and their monthly income.

Poverty in the United States is far higher than in many other developed nations. At the turn of the 21st century, the United States ranked 24th among 25 countries when measuring the share of the population below 50 percent of median income.

The groups are especially upset that the state’s basic welfare grant has not been raised in over 18 years. Children have been the prime victims of this inaction.  In 1975 public assistance for a three-person family was equal to 110% of the Federal Poverty Level. Today it has fallen to less than 50% of the poverty level. Within the past two years, there has been a modest, inadequate, increase in the shelter portion of the public assistance grant, but the basic allowance for all other expenses has been unchanged for 16 years. To keep pace with the rising cost of living, the $291 a family of three received in the non-shelter portion of its public assistance grant in 1990 would today have to be increased by 55% to $450.

“One key issue in reducing poverty is to end the high rate of income inequality in America – the highest of any industrial country. This means both raising the wages of workers at the bottom and to reverse a regressive system of state and local taxes where the poorest 20% of New Yorkers pay twice as much of their income in state and local taxes as the richest 1%, those making more than $500,000 a year,” added Bill Peltz.

Nationally, the top one percent of households received 21.8 percent of all pre-tax income in 2005, more than double what that figure was in the 1970s. (The top one percent's share of total income bottomed out at 8.9 percent in 1976.) This is the greatest concentration of income since 1928, when 23.9 percent of all income went to the richest one percent. Between 1979 and 2005, the top five percent of American families saw their real incomes increase 81 percent. Over the same period, the lowest-income fifth saw their real incomes decline 1 percent. The situation is even worse in NY, which consistently ranks as the worst state in income inequality between the rich and the poor, and among the worse in income inequality between the rich and the middle class.

The richest one percent of U.S. households now owns 34.3 percent of the nation's private wealth, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent.

“The state budget is about our choices,” added Dunlea. “Lawmakers have chosen for too long to keep poor children and their families in abject poverty, balancing the state budget on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable. We hear from state budget officials that they face a revenue shortfall, so they can’t make needed investments. But revenue shortfalls are a political decision, not an act of God or nature. New York has a particularly unfair system of state and local taxes, where the poor pay more as a percent of their income than the wealthy. The state budgetary needs should be met through tax fairness that restores the principle that those who can most afford it bear a greater share of the burden.”

The Poverty Pledge incorporates the national Let Justice Roll campaign by faith, community and labor groups which is calling for a hike in the minimum wage to $10 in 2010. Even after the federal minimum wage rises to $7.25 in July 2009, it will be far below the minimum wage of 1968, which is worth $9.86 now. The groups support the raise because

• The present minimum wage is a poverty wage instead of an anti-poverty wage.
• $10 in 2010 is necessary to make up the ground lost in real wages since 1968.
• $10 in 2010 will bring us closer to the goal of the “minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency and general well-being of workers” articulated by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established the minimum wage 70 years ago.

The state minimum wage in NY is presently $7.15 an hour.

The group is also pushing for a single payer universal health care system like most of the industrial world has. A single payer system, such a Medicare, has one entity pay all bills, thus eliminating the costly and negative role that private health insurance plays, draining as much as a third of each dollar to pay for their profits, overhead and bureaucracy. Last year, Hunger Action Network and others convinced state lawmakers to fund studies on how New York could best provide health care to all residents. The studies have been delayed, with their completion expected this fall.

Groups have raised concerned that the group hired by the State Health Department to do the studies, Urban Institute, appears biased against single payer. In addition, even though Governor Paterson was a sponsor of single payer legislation while a member of the State Senate, the health care team left over from the Spitzer administration appears to be pushing an incremental approach based on the Massachusetts model of mandating that individuals purchase health insurance if they don’t get if from their employer or qualify for a government funded program. Critics argue that such approaches invariably fail, largely because they don’t control the costs and power involved with private health insurance.

2008 Poverty to Prosperity Pledge for State Legislative Candidates

Poverty, homelessness, and hunger are significant problems in our state, a shameful situation in the richest nation in the world. More than two million New Yorkers utilize emergency food programs.. New York has the greatest income inequality between the poor and rich in the country. As former New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."  As an elected official, I pledge to make ending poverty, hunger and homelessness a significant priority in our state. In particular, I pledge to support the following:

1. Raise the welfare grant. Immediately Restore the basic welfare grant to its purchasing power of 1990 and establish commission to determine how to further raise it to a reasonable level and then index to inflation. Welfare benefits have fallen to less than half of the federal poverty level.

2. NYS must invest in creating sustainable, living wage green jobs. We must enact a state fund to support a massive campaign of weatherization and energy conservation for homes. http://www.centerforworkingfamilies.info/cleanenergygreenjobs/NYS%20RRF%20Proposal.doc

3. Make work provide a living wage by raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour by 2010 and index it to inflation..  http://www.letjusticeroll.org/. Raise other workers support such as unemployment benefits and Earned Income Tax Credit.

4. Increase state funding for the Home Energy Assistance Plan (HEAP) (e.g., A11590)

5. Stop making the poorest New Yorkers pay twice as much of their income in State and local taxes as the wealthy. Increase the income tax for wealthiest New Yorkers. Raise the Property Tax Circuit Breaker, including for renters. http://www.abetterchoiceforny.org/

6. Recognize the right of all people to quality, affordable health care. Support a single payer “Medicare for All” type program that eliminates commercial for-profit health insurance.  (A7354 / S3107)

7. Support affordable housing initiatives for NYS, starting with $13 billion over the next ten years to create and preserve 220,000 units of affordable housing

Name ______________________________________

Signature __________________________________

District ___________________________________

Address ___________________________________________________________

Phone ____________________   Email ____________________________

(If can’t pledge to support all, pledge to support numbers ____________)

Return by: October 5, 2008 to Hunger Action Network, 275 State St., Albany NY 12210 or 260 W. 36th St., #504, NY NY 10018; fax 518 434-7390– For info, 518 434-7371 xt 1#