Activists urge Clinton onward: health, housing, jobs have a ways to go - Panel Discussion

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 22, 1993 by Arthur Jones, Dorothy Vidulich

Health, housing, jobs have a ways to go

Economic reform

RILEY: The Clinton budget should be called the Clinton congressional budget because so much damage was done to the original. Clinton has tried to face the structurall deficits/debt problem; has reinstated th progressive tax code -- a very, very important move -- and, facing mthe fact that we have so many working people still below the poverty line, has increased the Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor. He increased food stamp allocations and in so doing began to address the hunger issue.

But (the North American Free Trade Agreement) is something I do not understand within the Clinton agenda. NAFTA contradicts almost everything Clinton says he has been trying to do.

To be anti-NAFTA is not to be anti the economic integration of North America, not antitrade. It is to be anti this practicular trade agreement.

NAFTA is essentially a corporate bill of rights, based on a trickle-down theory of development, on a growth model that raises huge sustainability questions and presumes the free market is going to answer all our questions.

Workers adversely affected will primarily be the women and minorities, workers already disadvantaged by low pay and no benefits. Whether in the United States or the Mexican maquiladora belt, the corporate policy of "leaner, meaner and more competitive" is premised on using women's vulnerability.

CASEBOLT: Economic thinking has relied on the Cold War to be the engine for economic development for 45 years. Free trade is the only other option. What I miss from those who are against NAFTA is another option.

RILEY: THe Alliance for Responsible Trade, a collaboration with Mexican and Canadian counterparts, will soon be disseminating, "If Not NAFTA, What?" to friendly ears.

Housing

KANE: The real depth of the housing crisis is invisible: people who are doubled up, or living in substandard housing, or drowning in their housing costs.

Meanwhile, (Housing and Urban Development) money, cut 80 percent since 1980, is facing a 15-20 percent 1995 cut. The S&L industry was created to house our country. Once the restrictions from S&Ls were removed (deregulation), so they could go into commercial development, the dollars stopped in a very real way.

The clinton administration is acknowledging the role of the nonprofit housing system. Among initiatives that are fresh, the women's religious communities are making it happen with early seed money, the risk dollars.

The Clinton administration has said it will try to enforce community reinvestment. The Community Reinvestment Act requires financial institutions to target some of their dollars into local development. There is legislation that acknowledges an alternate system after deregulation --local community development financial institutions, revolving loan funds, like the McAuley Institute or the South Shore Bank (Chicago), or community credit and development unions. Women suffer disproportionately on housing needs. Over 60 percent of women-maintained households are rentes.

DEAR: At the drop-in center where I work, the homeless see no change under the Clinton administration, whose priority should have been to ensure a home for each American. HUD's $20 million for Washington, D.C., homeless is a good first step, but it raises serious questions. It is not enough. It needs $100 million, and it needs to happen in every major city. It emphasizes the need for police rounding up the homeless, instead of outreach workers for those contacts. It does not learn from the small community-based organizations working with homeless for years.

Washington has 2,000 vacant public housing units -- typical of major cities throughout the nation. This is the big HUD program and they did not address it.

The Trident -- that submarine's costs could have provided $100 million to house the homeless in 22 cities.

D'ANTONIO: One problem. If we took the money from Trident right now we'd have 20,000 homeless in Groton, Conn. The problems are intertwined. Unless you have something for them, you simply change the location.

FRIEDMAN: I'm not necessarily in favor of knocking out the middle class' home mortgage load deduction -- but it is 61 percent of all the money the federal government spends on housing. If you look at this benefit to the wealthy, it is incredible. We need to educate people on some of these statistics. We suggest a shift in those funds. We need to sensitize constituents who will then inform Congress and make the administration's work a little more doable.

KANE: Look at the building blocks. If we don't have t place to go back home to at night, the health care issues are going to continue to roll back over us.

CASEBOLT: The administration knows health care is linked to housing, to employment. They know everything is linked. Those in the social justice movement are going to have to think of building broader coalitions of interest to accomplish goals -- and to claim the peace dividend. We need to be constructing coalitions of conscience.