TIME: Almanac 1995

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ TIME: Almanac 1995 / TIME Almanac 1995.iso / time / 081693 / 0816unk.000 < prev

Wrap

Text File | 1994-03-25 | 5.4 KB | 117 lines

<text id=93TT0203> <title> Aug. 16, 1993: The Political Interest </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993 Aug. 16, 1993 Overturning The Reagan Era </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> The Political Interest, Page 28 Helping the Poor Where They Live </hdr> <body> Michael Kramer Say you've got a wife, two kids, an annual income of about $18,000 and, miraculously, two grand stashed in a savings account. At prevailing interest rates, it would take about 10 years to double that stake, but once the Clinton budget takes effect you could ask the government to match your bundle dollar for dollar. That's a 100% interest rate over one year, a $2,000 reward for saving. Not everyone is eligible, of course; the feds aren't completely out to lunch. To reap the windfall, you have to earn less than 200% of the poverty-line income (currently $14,343 for a family of four) and live in one of 104 depressed "empowerment zones" or "enterprise communities." On top of that, you can spend the money for only a few specific worthy purposes, like paying for a college education or helping finance a first home. It's these conditions that render the idea intelligent and refute the notion that all politicians are brain dead. It also aids Bill Clinton politically because it indirectly redeems one of his quadrillion campaign promises. Candidate Clinton was passionate about the obvious: "While America's great cities fall into disrepair, Washington continues to ignore their fate...We will reverse that neglect." President Clinton actually proposed little that would. As it has finally shaken out, the centerpiece of Clinton's urban agenda is a package of tax incentives worth $2.5 billion for businesses willing to locate in the 104 poor areas. That sum is less than half the Administration's original request, yet it is the first-ever serious funding of the "enterprise zone" concept advanced years ago by conservative Republicans. What's truly new, however, is half a dozen innovative ideas authored by Senator Bill Bradley and an extra $1 billion to experiment with them--a pittance, given the decay and poverty that consumes so much of America, but an important start. Bradley begins with a bleak vision, a trend toward confinement: "The poor in cities will live there probably forever as the better-off flee to the suburbs, thus guaranteeing that the cities become poorer still." Accepting that reality, Bradley's proposals include the following besides his "match-your-savings" plan: -- To fix the infrastructure from within, training programs will employ disadvantaged youth to repair parks, schools and other facilities they and their families use in their daily lives. -- Since many inner-city residents hold minimum-wage, dead-end jobs (if they're lucky enough to have one at all), grants will permit community organizations to train "zoners" in business skills. -- Kids and streets can be a combustible combination: Schools will be given money to keep them open after hours for mentoring programs--or simply to provide safe havens while parents work. -- If you can't bring enough jobs in, help prospective workers get out: Counselors will offer advice on the work available in the surrounding suburbs, along with the money needed to get there. -- Reaching a child in his first year of life can make all the difference in future development: Residential intervention programs for mothers and infants will focus on substance-abuse counseling and primary and preventive health care. "If we don't pay now, we'll pay much more later as society contends with increased crime and other social ills," says Bradley. This particular proposal seeks to replicate the success of La Casita (The Little House), an oasis of hope in the midst of New York City's blighted South Bronx where addicted homeless mothers work to get clean and develop marketable skills. What's different there is the kids. Almost every other residential treatment program insists that the children of addicts be parked with relatives or foster parents. Having their children with them adds to the mothers' incentive to get well and fights family disintegration, the growing problem Clinton has called "America's greatest plague." Bradley knows that many of Washington's mandates ignore "the facts on the ground" and thus rarely alleviate the pain they're aimed at. His legislation incorporates the experience of demonstration projects and leaves the exact distribution of dollars to the communities themselves, once they have won their grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. "The wrong way to help cities is to set up a pot of money without any direction from the areas that need help," Bradley says. By ensuring community input, he hopes to learn "what's effective, so when we go back for more funds we have a track record to point to." At a time when Clinton has pledged further spending cuts this fall, Bradley graciously credits the Administration for supporting his plan, but the fact is that what passes for the creative urban strategy Clinton preached so eloquently during the campaign isn't really the President's at all. Yet who gets the credit doesn't matter. Something new is coming, and it may work. </body> </article> </text>