Just as presidential candidates are about to start parading through Ohio, a former winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom has some suggestions. Marian Wright Edelman, the founder of the Children’s Defense fund, told a Cleveland audience today (Fri) that America need to focus more on family values. 90.3’s Mark Urycki reports
Before Hillary Rodham married Bill Clinton, she worked with Marian Wright Edelman. Edelman started the Children’s Defense Fund more than 40 years year ago to advocate for poor children. She told the Cleveland City Club that the U-S has over 14 million children living in poverty, a percentage rate that puts it second to last among 35 industrial countries. She calls it a moral choice.
“It’s about values and it’s about political will, its about us making a ruckus and lot of noise and not going away until they do what we have to do to save our children which is going to be about saving our country.”
Edelman quotes a new Urban Institute study that finds 60% of childhood poverty could be cut by spending more on a handful of federal programs already in use. She says it would cost $77 billion dollars a year but save six times that much in other costs, like incarceration.
“Not only does child poverty cost far more than eliminating it. We have so many choices that reflect better values , more just values, as well as economic savings.”
The study suggests an increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit, a jobs program for poor families, and an increase in housing subsidies. Edelman says the United Kingdom used such housing subsidies to cut its poverty rate in half in just 10 years.