Progress Illinois

This past week, ordinary Americans -- many having tapped out their own home equity lines of credit -- watched in dismay as the federal government propped up American International Group (AIG) with $85 billion in taxpayer-funded loans.  The company used the bundled equity in our homes to make investments even it didn't understand.   So while we're all helping to restore AIG's value as it waits to sell assets, what is AIG going to do for us?

I have two ideas.

First, among its various insurance products, AIG provides health care policies.  Undoubtedly, the company, like all insurers, has turned down tens of thousands of people because of their pre-existing conditions.

Now that we are each stakeholders in AIG, we should insist it review those rejections and insure some number of people in each state who are without insurance.   Better yet, why not force AIG to open up a month-long window in which people who have been turned down by other health insurers can re-apply to its agents?

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In Springfield, we have many legislators committed to ending poverty, and each year many bills are introduced to tackle it.  Everyone has their heart in the right place.  This year we finally got our heads in the right place when we created a commission to target the reduction of poverty.

Our failure to move this issue forward was due in part to the lack of a unified effort. That is why I sponsored House Bill 4369, to create the Commission on the Elimination of Poverty -- the first step towards the primary goal of a 50 percent reduction of poverty in Illinois by 2015. The commission will provide recommendations on how the state legislature can address access to safe and affordable housing, food and nutrition, affordable health care, quality education and training, and dependable transportation. The recently signed bill is the result of several statewide forums on poverty organized by the Mid-America Institute on Poverty at the Heartland Alliance.

In Illinois, it is estimated that 1.4 million people fall below the poverty line and 700,000 live in extreme poverty. While anyone can find themselves in such dire circumstances, some are at greater risk than others.  For instance, senior women are 61 percent more likely to live in extreme poverty than senior men, and individuals without a high school diploma are three times more likely than those with a college degree. These are just a few of the findings contained in the Heartland Alliance's recent report "Realizing Human Rights in Illinois."

In a changing economy, it is difficult to define poverty in dollar amounts.  Indeed, it is easier to do so by pointing out what an individual lacks.

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Community benefits for community residents – a straightforward concept, right?  It’s the idea that large-scale development projects must actually meet the needs of local communities.  Vancouver Winter Olympics planners understand this, and have been negotiating with community stakeholders to protect local residents’ needs in advance of the 2010 games.  In the U.S., however, no Olympic host city has ever entered into a legally-binding agreement with community members aimed at negating the detrimental impact of the event.  

The result of that neglect is clear.  In 1996, the homeless got one-way bus tickets out of Atlanta.  In 1984, jobs in Los Angeles communities consisted of two-week gigs as street sweepers.  Folks in Chicago know that if we do end up hosting the summer games eight years from now, there must be a community-driven effort to ensure that low-income areas and residents of color gain real benefits from this monumental event.

Communities for an Equitable Olympics 2016 (CEO 2016) is a newly-formed coalition of community and labor organizations, working together to win enforceable community benefits in conjunction with Chicago’s Olympics  bid.  The Grassroots Collaborative, a coalition of organizations dedicated to issues of economic and racial justice, has joined with organizations such as the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), Centers for New Horizons, and MAGIC, to form a broad and deep coalition of South Side and city-wide groups organizing for justice.

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In 1932, at the rock bottom of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt swept into office with the promise of bold reforms to jump-start the American economy. Although conservative critics of the day cast his ideas as too radical, policies implemented in The New Deal stabilized the banking system within one month, cut skyrocketing unemployment in half and increased our gross domestic product by 50 percent.

Over the past three decades, the pendulum has swung from this New Deal ideology to conservatism. Tax cuts for the rich were supposed to “trickle down” to the masses, spurring job creation and an economic boom. The current economic crisis we are experiencing has shown us that conservatism – upper-tier tax cuts and big business bailouts – has failed. Tax cuts for the wealthy have only made the rich richer, the poor poorer… and the middle class isn’t doing all that well either. Instead of the promised job creation, we find more and more of our jobs being shipped overseas while unemployment has skyrocketed to the highest level in a decade.

The recession is here and it’s real. Many are losing their jobs, homes and health care. Others are maxing out their credit cards just to keep their heads above water. While some politicians call for piecemeal solutions and others declare that our problems are all in our heads, more and more Americans believe that things are only getting worse. As the bad news continues to pour in, people are looking to the government for leadership and answers.

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