Now's time to repair debt ceiling for future -- Feb. 12, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER  

“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining,” President Kennedy said in his 1962 State of the Union Address.

The sun is shining, and now’s the time to fix the debt ceiling for the future.  

Led by Speaker John Boehner, the House stepped back from the brink Tuesday and approved extending the federal government’s borrowing authority until March 15, 2015, no strings attached. The Senate followed Wednesday.  

Congress does its job -- hip, hip, hurray!

It’s a sign of our low expectations of Washington that the absence of a last-minute game of chicken was considered a great achievement.  

The country will not suffer a self-inflicted fiscal black eye. Yes! The government will honor its debts, federal parks will stay open and our economy won’t go into a tailspin. We’re No. 1!

There will be peace in the valley again. Ha. Let’s not go overboard. Forget peace in the valley or on the Hill.   

Boehner tried for two weeks to squeeze concessions from the White House in return for Republican votes to lift the debt ceiling. A change in the Affordable Care Act? No.  Approval of the Keystone XL pipeline? No. Restoration of cost-of-living increases to military pensions? No. 

President Barack Obama wouldn’t budge from a “clean” bill.

Boehner told his House Republican colleagues at a private breakfast Tuesday that the measure would include no special conditions. The goal was practical: Congress would do its job and avoid an election-year repeat of last fall’s high drama showdown and shutdown.

Last October, Republicans hoping to kill the health law forced a 16-day federal government shutdown that did nothing to dislodge Obamacare but took a $24 billion bite out of the economy, as estimated by Standard & Poor. Americans mostly blamed Republicans, although Democrats’ approval ratings slid as well.  

“We’re not going to make ourselves the story,” Boehner said at the breakfast, The Washington Post reported. The room was hushed as he returned to his seat.

“I’m getting this monkey off your back, and you’re not going to even clap?” the Ohio Republican asked in mock scorn. Such is party unity among the GOP.

Boehner has long had problems bringing his conference together at all, much less mustering the 218 votes that constitute a House majority.

“When you don’t have 218 votes, you have nothing,” he told reporters.

The debt limit measure passed 221 to 201 in the House, with 199 Republicans voting no. Boehner and 27 of his fellow Republicans voted for it. Most of the GOP yes votes came from House leaders, such as Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, or members who are retiring, such as Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia. 

The White House didn’t gloat, but press secretary Jay Carney did suggest that Congress now get behind Obama’s push to hike the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and renew long-term jobless benefits. As if.

Congress and the White House should use the breathing room of the next year to work together to make the debt ceiling a non- issue, as it once was. Neither party should lose stature because it acts responsibly. Paying our bills should be a given, not a bargaining chip.

Some in Congress have introduced fixes to the recurring debit limit debacle. Rep. Mike Honda, a California Democrat, and Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California, Chuck Schumer of New York and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii have bills that would shift the role of Congress. Instead of approving increases in the debt ceiling, Congress would have to disapprove them.

A similar proposal by Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, became part of last fall’s deal that raised the debt ceiling until Feb. 7. Democrats want to make permanent the McConnell fix.

A few centrist Republicans say they’re interested in the idea, but it’s unlikely to gain traction this year as Democrats and Republicans score political points before the midterm elections.

Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, “When this is over, we will focus on our agenda and – if we win six seats in the Senate – what we will do different if we control all of Congress.”

Boehner was wrong about one thing.  Republicans did become the story. Washington news has become a running tally of winners and losers.    

“GOP’s debt ceiling surrender,” read headlines in Politico and other news outlets.

This time, though, the Republicans’ political retreat was a victory for the country. Boehner deserves a hand. 

And as the sun shines, Democrats and Republicans should join in fixing the debt ceiling for the future.

©2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Health law empowers workers to love -- or shove -- their jobs -- Feb. 6, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The latest skirmish in the Capitol over the Affordable Care Act – the false claim that it would force 2.3 million people onto the jobless rolls -- reveals more about the sorry state of our politics than a search for sound policy. That’s a shame.

Most congressional Democrats, spooked by the botched rollout of insurance exchanges, distance themselves from the unpopular law. They cling to the rosy view that one day it will be as popular as Medicare – and can only hope voters warm to it by the midterm elections.

Congressional Republicans have such animosity for Obamacare that they look for the dark side of every study or report. They disavow the very policies they once championed.

A few years ago, Republicans abandoned support for the individual mandate – the requirement that everyone have health insurance – even though it was a Republican idea, endorsed by the conservative Heritage Foundation. It became a horrible idea once President Barack Obama adopted it.

This week, the health law’s haters were quick to tweet that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had projected that the law would cost 2.3 million jobs over 10 years. The report said no such thing. 

The study, “The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2014 to 2024,” does estimate an employment reduction of 2.3 million people by 2024 -- due not to employer layoffs but to employee choice.

Some Americans have long been tied to jobs because they couldn’t obtain or couldn’t afford health insurance on their own, a phenomenon called “job lock.” Now, the near-universal availability of health insurance under the law means no one has to stay in a job because of benefits. People have options. They can quit, reduce their work hours, retire early or go into business for themselves.

Being handed a pink slip is one thing, saying “take this job and shove it” quite another, as Douglas Elmendorf, CBO director, explained Wednesday at a hearing of the House Budget Committee:

“The reason that we don’t use the term `lost jobs’ is because there is a critical difference between people who would like to work and can’t find a job – or have a job that was lost for reasons beyond their control – and people who choose not to work.

“If somebody comes up to you and says, ‘Well the boss said I’m being laid off because we don’t have enough business to pay me,’ that person feels bad about that and we sympathize with them…If somebody comes up to you and says, `I’ve decided to retire or I’ve decided to stay home and spend more time with my family or spend more time doing my hobby,’ they don’t feel bad about it – they feel good about it. And we don’t sympathize. We say congratulations,” Elmendorf said.

Job seekers will snap up the jobs those people leave behind, he said, and the overall unemployment rate is projected to decline.

Under the health law, low- and moderate-income people can get immediate tax credits to pay for insurance. The tax credits phase out with higher income and may provide a disincentive for some workers to put in more hours, CBO says.

Critics claim that the law encourages slackers, and that’s terrible policy. They didn’t always think so. 

In 2008, Republican presidential candidate John McCain proposed a health care plan that would have ended job lock. Heritage Foundation analysts Robert E. Moffitt and Nina Owcharenko praised the plan. 

“Individuals would no longer feel obligated to stay with their employers simply because they need to keep their employer-based insurance. If the worker lost a job, changed jobs or retired early, he or she could buy an insurance policy and offset its cost with the McCain health care tax credit,” they wrote.

In the Budget Committee hearing, Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee, cited Heritage’s previous support.

“Well, the Affordable Care Act does end that job lock. It allows Americans to choose to spend more time with their family or pursue their dreams. And that is not a bad thing; it's a good thing,” he said.

I agree. Mobility in the workplace was good when McCain proposed it, and it’s good now.  

©2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Textiles are making a comeback -- STATELINE story

You may be surprised what's Made in the USA

Textile Industry Comes Back to Life, Especially in South

 

By Marsha Mercer, Special to Stateline

A shopper in Omaha, Neb., checks out Swiffer products. The U.S. textile industry is making a small resurgence making yarns and fibers for products such as Swiffer, diapers and towels. (AP)

American workers might have made the mop you waltz around the kitchen floor, your favorite bath towel or your facial wipes. Surprised? Decades after many people thought the U.S. textile industry was dead, the industrygenerated $54 billion in shipments in 2012 and employed about 233,000 people.

Business is on the upswing as Southern states, in particular, woo textile companies with tax breaks, reliable utilities, modern ports and airports and a dependable, trained and nonunion workforce.

In 2013, companies in Brazil, Canada, China, Dubai, Great Britain, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Mexico and Switzerland, as well as in the U.S., announced plans to open or expand textile plants in Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

The workers produce yarn, thread and fabric for apparel, furnishings, home products and industrial use. Examples include Huggies and Pampers diapers, Swiffer mops and Pledge furniture wipes, according to David Rousse, president of the Association of the Nonwoven Fabrics Industry.

“Textiles manufacturing – yarn, fabric, woven and nonwoven – is still here and growing,” said A. Blanton Godfrey, dean of the College of Textiles at North Carolina State University. “We’re selling cotton yarn cheaper than the Chinese.”

True, textile manufacturing in the U.S. dropped precipitously in the 1990s and 2000s as cheaper labor drew jobs overseas. Automation and increased productivity of textile mills also cost jobs. More than 200,000 textile manufacturing jobs have been lost to automation in the last decade.

Textiles, mostly cotton, once dominated the economy of the South. Employment peaked in June 1948 with 1.3 million jobs.  In just one state, North Carolina, 40 percent of its jobs were in textile and apparel manufacturing in 1940. By 2013, just 1.1 percent of that state’s jobs were in textiles.

About 650 textile plants closed between 1997 and 2009, draining thousands of jobs and depressing communities.

But rising wages in China and other countries, combined with higher transportation costs and tariffs, have prompted foreign and domestic companies to consider American manufacturing sites. Also, with more consumers looking for the “Made in the USA” label, some companies are turning to American goods. Wal-Mart, for example, pledged last year to buy $50 billion over a decade in American-made products, among them towels and washcloths.

Highly Automated Plants

More than a third of all textile jobs were located in Georgia and North Carolina in 2012, and that’s where many of the jobs are being created. The new plants are nothing like the dusty, noisy mills of the past.

These highly automated plants require far fewer — but more tech-savvy — workers who earn higher pay than their forebears. The average textile wage in the U.S. in 2012 was $37,900, compared with $60,496 for all manufacturing jobs. In North Carolina, the average textile wage was $33,219, up from $28,216 in 2002.

“Norma Rae would have trouble getting a job,” said Godfrey, the college dean, referring to the 1979 movie about a young textile worker who leads a union-organizing campaign. The movie was based on the story of Crystal Lee Jordan, a 33-year-old mother of three who was making $2.65 an hour folding towels at a North Carolina mill in 1973 when she began an organizing push.

“But if Norma Rae wants to sit at a computer terminal and program the robot, that’s different. It’s a very different world,” he said.

Another change in the industry is the growth of nonwovens, which are fiber-based products made of fabric that’s compressed, heated or tangled, like felt. Diapers and facial wipes, mops, medical scrubs and all kinds of filters are nonwovens. In the last decade, North Carolina has gained 1,945 jobs making nonwoven products and $719 million in nonwoven factory investment.

“It’s not your grandmother’s textile mill,” said economist Ted Abernathy, whose four grandparents worked in textile mills while he was growing up in North Carolina. The long-time executive director of the Southern Growth Policies Board until it merged last fall with the Southern Governors’ Association, Abernathy now is a consultant to the governors’ group.

“The good news for the South is that the lowest-end jobs are not coming back,” Abernathy said. “New jobs are in the $35,000 to $45,000 a year range.”

Top 10 States in Textile Manufacturing
State	# Jobs in 2012	% Decline Since 2002
GA	45,154	-46%
NC	34,786	-64%
SC	18,701	-67%
CA	17,009	-47%
AL	10,195	-63%
TX	8,584	-27%
PA	7,733	-57%
NY	7,633	-49%
VA	7,560	-62%
TN	6,016	-50%
These 10 states account for 70 percent of the textile manufacturing jobs in the U.S.
Source: Congressional Research Service

States Jockey for Jobs

As states compete for jobs, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican, touts his state’s top national ranking for business climate bySite Selection magazine, a trade publication. Deal recently signed a law exempting energy used in manufacturing from sales and use taxes, which helps existing and future manufacturing facilities.

Tom Croteau, Georgia’s deputy commissioner for global commerce, said the state’s long history of carpet manufacturing has been essential to growing its textile industry. In 2013, five floor-covering manufacturing companies announced expansions that will add 3,550 jobs to the 22,382 existing carpet- and rug-manufacturing jobs and a $815 million in investment in Georgia.

“A primary building block of Georgia’s business climate is our highly skilled workforce,” Croteau said. Helping train those workers is Georgia’s Quick Start program, which began as a modest training program in1967 and has since provided customized training to more than 325,000 workers in more than 3,100 businesses and industries.

In October, Shrivallabh Pittie Group, a leading textile manufacturer in India, chose Georgia as the site of company’s first U.S.-based manufacturing facility, a $70 million cotton yarn plant in Screven County that will hire 250 people. The firm will locate on an industrial site developed by the state and its workers will  receive Quick Start training.

Textile Manufacturing Culture

In North Carolina, nine textile firms announced plans in 2013 to build or expand plants in the state, creating 993 jobs and investing $381 million. Sharon Decker, the state secretary of commerce, cited three factors that helped her state win the new factories:  culture, education and a competitive business climate.

“North Carolina has a historically strong manufacturing base, in textiles especially,” Decker said. “The notion of a culture of textile manufacturing – people know it’s still there.”

The state offered grants totaling $4.4 million to the nine textile companies to create jobs. The largest in the group is Gildan Activewear, a Canadian firm that has committed to invest $250 million and hire 500 workers. Gildan received a $3.5 million state Job Development Investment Grant, a cash grant based on actual job creation. 

The North Carolina legislature boosted its business climate in 2013 by lowering personal income tax and corporate income tax rates. The corporate income tax will drop from 6.9 percent to 6 percent in 2014 to 5 percent in 2016, a 28 percent rate cut. Rates could drop further if economic growth yields more revenue.

Meanwhile, the state university’s textiles school works with the business sector to help prepare workers for the new jobs, Decker said.

One challenge these days is getting young people interested in textile factory work, she said. One mill owner has started bringing middle school students in for tours to show them how technologically advanced the facilities are.

Filling a Crater

In Lancaster County, S.C., textile mills owned by the Springs family were dominant employers for 120 years, with about 11,000 workers in the 1970s and 1980s. The family sold the company to a Brazilian company in 2005, and the last mill in South Carolina closed in 2007, taking the remaining 3,500 jobs to Brazil.

“It left a crater,” said Keith Tunnell, president of the Lancaster County Economic Development Corporation. “Then the recession came – a double hit.” Unemployment soared to 18.6 percent in June 2009.

About 21 months ago, the South Carolina Department of Commerce told Tunnell that a cotton spinning company was looking for a U.S. manufacturing site. “I was stunned,” he said. Even more surprising: The company is Chinese.

Competition for the plant among the states ended in December when Keer Group announced it will invest $218 million to build a 230,000-square-foot yarn factory and create 501 jobs within five years in Lancaster County.

“We chose to locate our first U.S. facility in South Carolina for a number of reasons, which include the state’s workforce, proximity to cotton producers and access to the port” in Charleston, said Keer chairman Zhu Shanqing, according to news reports.

South Carolina gave Keer a $4 million Rural Infrastructure Grant, and the county development corporation offered an additional $7.7 million bond to attract the company.  Keer agreed to pay workers at least $13.25 an hour, the average manufacturing wage rate in Lancaster County.

The Keer jobs are nowhere nearly enough to replace the old textile jobs, but are welcome news in a county of 79,000 where the unemployment rate is 8.1 percent.

Tunnell hopes to attract more Chinese companies. What can he share with other state and local officials?  

“If any community that was hit as hard as we were is looking to Washington, D.C., to fix your problems, you’re wasting your time. Tip O’Neill said all politics is local,” Tunnell said, referring to the late speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts. “I say all economic development is local.”

Issues:

Michelle Obama: rescuer-in-chief? -- Jan. 30, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Barack Obama says that from now on he’ll do the chief executive thing his way -- with Congress if possible, without Congress when necessary.

And what about Michelle Obama? Scorned as a “feminist nightmare” by Politico last November because she has focused on fitness, health and gardening instead of elbowing her way into policy fights, what’s her next step?  

This just might be the year the first lady rescues her husband from terminal lame duck status by showing him how to work around Congress and, more importantly, by helping Democrats get elected in November’s congressional midterm elections.

In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Obama praised his wife’s Let’s Move project as a model for how he now intends to get things done without congressional support.  

“As usual, our first lady sets a good example,” he said. “Michelle’s Let’s Move partnership with schools, businesses and local leaders has helped bring down childhood obesity rates for the first time in 30 years – an achievement that will improve lives and reduce health care costs for decades to come.” 

It was a canny comparison not only because the first lady is more popular than the president but because Let’s Move is effective without being threatening. Obama was telegraphing the folks at home that his plan to act unilaterally by executive order is nothing to be afraid of – despite what his critics say. 

    

Michelle Obama may be the fourth most powerful woman in the world, according to Forbes magazine, but she still seems more mom-in-chief than power player. There’s no Michellecare the way health care reform was Hillarycare in the Clinton years. Forbes ranks Obama behind Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany; Dilma Rousseft, president of Brazil, and Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Hillary Clinton is fifth on the list.

Michelle Obama often gets more news coverage for her hair and clothes than for her views and actions. Fashion writers loved the dark green dress and jacket she chose for the State of the Union. In wearing the ensemble by Azzedine Alaia, she was giving the Tunisian-born, Paris-based designer a business boost. New York University finance professor David Yermack calculated in a 2010 study that when Mrs. Obama wears an outfit, she creates $14 million in added value for the lucky designer.

I’d like to see her wear American designers – especially on a night when her husband is touting Made in America products. A least the ensemble wasn’t brand new: She’d worn it for a "Nightline” interview and White House tour with Barbara Walters in December 2012.

After the State of the Union, the Obamas hit the road in opposite directions. He set out for Maryland, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Tennessee to build support for his policies. She went on a three-day trip, prospecting for campaign gold in California.  

In the Los Angeles home of Phil Rosenthal, creator of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” Mrs. Obama warned that her husband wouldn’t be able to achieve his goals if both houses of Congress go to Republican control in November.

“Let’s be clear: Barack cannot do this alone sitting by himself in the Oval Office,” she said, according to news reports. “So make no mistake about it, it matters who is elected to represent us in Washington. It matters.”

She urged about a crowd of about 200 to “write a big, fat check.” The guests, who included Barbra Streisand and her husband James Brolin, paid as much as $32,400 each to attend the fundraiser benefiting the Democratic National Committee.

Most analysts say the House is likely to remain in Republican hands and the Senate – where six seats could shift the balance -- could go either way. Michelle Obama warned that the health law would be repealed and same-sex marriage threatened if Republicans were in charge on Capitol Hill.

“You can write a check, do you hear me?” she told the crowd, the Los Angeles Times reported. “That’s what you need to do; I’m serious. Write a big, fat check. Write the biggest check you can possibly write.”

That’s one way to fight economic inequality and redistribute wealth. The night’s event reportedly brought in nearly $700,000 for the Democratic Party.

© 2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Can Obama hit reset with State of the Union address? -- Jan. 23, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Here’s something you will NOT hear from President Barack Obama Tuesday night: “I must say to you that that the state of the union is not good.”

That was the dour assessment of President Gerald Ford in his 1975 State of the Union address, five months after Richard Nixon resigned and Ford moved into the Oval Office.

“Millions of Americans are out of work. Recession and inflation are eroding the money of millions more. Prices are too high, and sales are too low,” Ford said.

The bad news kept coming. He lamented a rising federal deficit and debt and our dependence on foreign energy.  And, he said, “Some people question their government’s ability to make hard decisions and stick with them; they expect Washington politics as usual.”

A year later, in 1976, Ford tried again. “The state of our union is better…but still not good enough,” he said. So much for presidential candor.  Voters turned him out for a political outsider named Jimmy Carter that fall.

Obama’s 2014 State of the Union address comes as polls show many Americans think the country is on the wrong track.  Only 45 percent approve of the way Obama is handling his job, and 53 percent disapprove, the latest Associated Press-GfK poll reported Thursday.

“Nice guy, so-so president,” the AP concluded.

Obama is expected to try to use his one-man show Tuesday to hit reset.  He can recite some good news : Unemployment is down; Congress has passed a two-year budget deal and $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill, and about 2.1 million people have enrolled in health insurance plans on the new exchanges.

He’ll stand before a joint session of Congress, but his real audience is middle class voters, who hold the key to whether he can turn around his dismal job approval ratings before they chill Senate Democrats’ prospects in the midterm elections.

“The State of the Union is not just a conversation with Congress but a conversation with you, the American people,” Denis McDonough, Obama’s chief of staff, says in a video on the White House website, which invites viewers to “watch, then say you’re in.”

The Constitution requires that the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress information on the state of the union,” but it doesn’t require a high-profile speech. Presidents basically mailed in a written annual message until Woodrow Wilson delivered his 1913 message in person.  

Other 20^th century presidents embraced new technology to connect. “Silent” Calvin Coolidge’s 1923 speech was the first broadcast on the radio. Harry Truman’s 1947 address was the first televised, and George W. Bush’s in 2002 was the first broadcast live on the Internet.

To reach its target audience, the Obama White House promises more digital bells and whistles than ever.

There will be an “enhanced version” of the address with graphics, data and charts that can be viewed on any device. Viewers may comment on social media during the speech and ask questions of administration experts afterwards. Obama will take questions in a Google+ Hangout Jan. 31.

Almost none of Obama’s 2013 State of the Union proposals got through Congress. He’ll renew his call for immigration reform and a hike in the minimum wage. He’ll also urge Congress to extend jobless benefits and expand workforce training. He calls 2014 a “Year of Action” and vows to use executive actions to help the middle class if Congress balks.   

Naturally, Republicans in their responses to Obama’s address will dramatize their opposition and their contention that he and Democrats have been an abject failure. Fox News host Sean Hannity reportedly will attend the address as the guest of Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tex.

Some Democratic House members are inviting jobless Americans as guests. First lady Michelle Obama has invited about two dozen guests, several of whom can expect to be mentioned by the president to illustrate his points.

A year ago, Obama declared, “We can say with renewed confidence that the state of our union is stronger.”

Expect no less Tuesday.  But it may take specific proposals and concrete action --not just an upbeat tone and tweets -- for Obama to convince Americans that he can make it even stronger.    

© 2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

LBJ's war on poverty -- and ours -- Jan. 15, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Ronald Reagan liked to say America fought a war on poverty and poverty won.

Latter-day Reaganites have been quoting their hero a lot on the 50^th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s declaration of unconditional war on poverty.

Like most glib remarks, though, Reagan’s famous line isn’t entirely accurate. The war on poverty certainly hasn’t ended poverty, but the programs and benefits its critics malign have helped reduce the pain of poverty for millions.  

“Poverty has declined by more than a third since 1967,” President Barack Obama’s Council on Economic Advisers reported in its assessment of the War on Poverty at 50. When tax credits, food stamps, housing assistance and other benefits are taken into account, 16 percent of the population was living in poverty in 2012, down from 25.8 percent in 1967, the council said.

Don’t get me wrong: These statistics are nothing to celebrate. It’s deplorable that nearly 50 million Americans – one in six of us -- struggle with economic deprivation. Even more disturbing is that many are stuck at the bottom of the ladder. Social mobility is greater in Canada than in our land of opportunity.   

The sad fact is that many Americans still live “on the outskirts of hope,” as Johnson said in his 1964 State of the Union address. But the solution is not to abandon the fight or yank the safety net.

“Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity,” Johnson said half a century ago, and it should be ours as well. By “our task,” LBJ did not mean only members of Congress. He urged all Americans to join in the effort.

Most Americans didn’t join -- beyond paying their taxes and perhaps giving to charity. The work of helping the poor falls heavily on churches and community organizations, but they can do only so much.

It needs to be said that some commentators and politicians, Reagan among them, made political hay by focusing on abuses of the welfare system, which fed the public’s cynicism. When he ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976, Reagan talked about a “welfare queen” who supposedly cheated the system by claiming benefits under dozens of false names.

Investigative reporters were unable to find the woman, but the damage was done. Americans are generous by nature but we hate squandering our tax dollars.  

Republicans and Democrats mostly have attacked each other instead of poverty. Today, there’s a growing consensus that education and jobs must be part of the solution. Two potential GOP presidential candidates -- Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., – have begun staking out positions that might actually amount to something.     

Ryan, the House Budget chairman, believes current welfare programs isolate the poor, who need to be “reintegrated” into society, although he hasn’t provided details. He favors vouchers for housing and schools, as he does for Medicare. Rubio wants to consolidate all federal anti-poverty funding into one agency that would send the money to the states to run their own poverty programs.

These ideas have been floated for years as ways to dismantle the welfare state. Reagan railed against the government’s fostering dependency just as tea party enthusiasts do now.

Obama believes that government has an important role in preventing poverty, especially with early childhood education. But the former community organizer also knows that improving people’s chances in life requires more than proclamations from Washington.

“It’s important that our faith institutions and our businesses and the parents and the communities themselves are involved in designing and thinking through how do we move forward,” the president said, adding that it’s crucial that poverty programs actually work.

“If they don’t work we should try something else,” he said, acknowledging that supporters often resist giving up on failed programs.

We know that doing three simple things practically guarantees that someone won’t live in poverty: finish high school, get a job and marry before starting a family. And yet generations of Americans have missed the message.    

No one can be satisfied with the status quo. It is time to consider new approaches to break the still-obstinate cycle of poverty.

Our task, as LBJ said five decades ago, is to work together to replace despair with opportunity.  

©2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Saving MLK Day from crass commercialism -- Jan. 9, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The federal holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. got off to a rocky start, to put it mildly.

In 1986, its first year, only about half the states observed the holiday. In King’s hometown of Atlanta, boxing promoter Don King celebrated the new holiday and the civil rights leader who dedicated his life to nonviolence with, you guessed it, a fight night.

The seven-hour evening, supposedly a tribute, was a “grotesque farce,” author Jack Newfield wrote in “The Life and Crimes of Don King: The Same of Boxing in America.”

Don King “put on seven fights with out-of-shape heavyweights who weighed an aggregate of 3,212 pounds. Every fight stank,” Newfield wrote. In the main event between Tim Witherspoon and Tony Tubbs, Tubbs “acted like he was trying to honor Dr. King by winning the Nobel Peace Prize in the ring.”

After such an unpromising start, it’s remarkable that the King holiday has mostly risen above the crass commercialism that plagues our other holidays.

Retailers seem far more willing to use Presidents Day – originally commemorating the February birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln -- to sell us cars, mattresses and TVs. In contrast, the King holiday summons us to reflect and to give our time making our communities better.

On Jan. 20, bells will toll, churches will hold services and hundreds of thousands of Americans will spend at least part of the King holiday volunteering on community service projects.  

King’s statement that “Everybody can be great because everybody can serve” animates the day.  People young and old will clean up streams, deliver meals, spruce up schools and community centers, collect food and clothing and sign up mentors, among other things. 

But just as it took years to create the holiday, it took years for the holiday officially to become a day of national service.

Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, first introduced legislation to establish a holiday honoring King four days after he was assassinated in Memphis in 1968. In 1983, Congress approved the holiday, after ugly opposition in the Senate from Jesse Helms.

The North Carolina Republican filibustered, charging that King was a Marxist who had Communist connections. Helms distributed 300 pages of documents, which Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York famously threw to the Senate floor, stomped on and called “a packet of filth.”

On Nov. 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed the bill making the third Monday in January the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday, starting in 1986. Not until 1999, though, did all 50 states observe it.

Even today, states observe the holiday in different ways. For years, Virginia celebrated  King and Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson on the same day. In 2000, the state legislature separated the holidays, and Virginia state offices now are closed for King on the third Monday in January and Lee and Jackson on the preceding Friday. 

Alabama celebrates Lee and King together, then Confederate Memorial Day in April and the birthday of Jefferson Davis in June.

As for the day of service, a couple of weeks after the first federal King holiday in 1986, sociologist Marion J. Levy Jr. of Princeton University wrote a letter to The New York Times.

“I propose we declare the holiday a ‘day on,’ rather than a ‘day off,’” the professor wrote. His idea was that everyone would work on the holiday and those above the poverty line would send their day’s pay to a special fund benefiting housing, education and other projects.

Levy was rowing against the tide when he suggested that people give up not only their day off but also their wages – but his idea of the holiday as a “`day on, rather than a ‘day off’” stuck. The phrase appears frequently in connection with the day of service.

In 1994, Congress passed the King Holiday and Service Act, creating the national day of service, and President Bill Clinton signed it.   

It’s a day when we all can be great because we can serve.  And that’s a real tribute to the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. 

© 2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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