Trump has not said how he plans to spend the $54 billion military increase, leading some analysts to call it “a budget in search of a strategy.” How would costly weapons help in Yemen, facing famine because U.S.-armed Saudi Arabia is blockading its port?

Mr. Trump welcomes a nuclear arms race and says he wants to be “top of the pack.” In conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he rejected Putin’s proposal to extend the START Treaty capping U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals at 1,500 nuclear weapons. Those already represent levels of destructiveness that would devastate both nations and endanger life on Earth. Russia might put its forces on launch-on-warning, increasing the risk of nuclear war by accident or miscalculation.

Trump’s proposal is as dangerous as it is cruel. Congress should reject it.

If Senator Coats is concerned about the poor, he should support extension of unemployment benefits and an increase in the minimum wage.

Climate change will affect the poor even more severely than it affects everyone else. Who lives on marginal land, suffers most from rising food prices, lacks health care and is most subject to newly virulent epidemics? Who will lose their jobs when climate refugees from coastal regions around the world flood into our cities and towns?

The world seems virtually certain to reach a climate tipping point. Nations and regions which have avoided the energy transition will be left behind, just as Detroit automakers were after they refused for years to build fuel efficient cars.

The President is working through EPA regulations because Congress has failed to offer a credible alternative. Senator Coats should support a revenue-neutral carbon tax and dividend as the most efficient way to cut emissions and accelerate the shift to renewable energy. This shift offers tremendous economic opportunities. Green industries and smart conservation create far more jobs per dollar invested than do capital-intensive coal and nuclear plants.

Members of Congress need to remember the most underrepresented of all groups: the generations that follow us.

References

“Senator Blunt, Colleagues Call On President Obama To Stop Punishing Most Vulnerable Americans With Higher Utility Bills” (Roy Blunt)

“Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax” (Citizens Climate Lobby)

However, a closer look shows that the United States has made progress in fighting poverty and offers lessons about what should be done to do better.

Poverty itself has fallen substantially. According to a more comprehensive measure than the official one, 26 percent of Americans were poor in 1967. In 2012, 16 percent were.

The demographics of poverty have changed too. When Johnson sounded his battle-cry, elderly and retired people were more than twice as likely to be poor as those of working age. Today, their poverty-rates are about the same.

In 1966, over forty percent of African Americans were poor. By 2012, little more than one-quarter were. The poverty-rate among whites was less than half that among blacks, though slightly higher than in the Johnson years.

Less encouraging: Poverty among children has been rising and falling since the 1960’s. It now stands at about 20 percent, above the adult rate.

The percentage of Hispanics who are poor has also been rising. Since the early 1970’s, half the increase in poverty reflected the growth of the Hispanic population.

Proposals that do not address the status of the nation’s fastest-growing minority-group are unlikely to do much to help the poor. Nor will avoiding the difficult issue that has left so many children in poverty: The growth of female-headed families since the 1960’s.

By tackling these issues, we can continue to make progress in reducing poverty.

Sources

“Trends in Poverty with an Anchored Supplemental Poverty Measure”  (Chistopher Wimer)

“Who’s poor in America? 50 years into the ‘War on Poverty,’ a data portrait” (Pew Research Center)