Big Government the Hand that Hurts the Poor

WASHINGTON - Jack Kemp was a deeply conservative Republican who dove into the inner-city in the 1980s and 1990s. He showed conservative ideas and programs could actually help end poverty, not just pay trillions in welfare that maintains the status quo.

Some say Republicans need to champion these programs again, both to help the poor and maybe themselves.

As it is, conservative ideas and values are conquering inner-city poverty, crime, and addictions at places like the House of Help/City of Hope project in Anacostia, one of D.C.'s poorest areas.

In the apartment buildings that make up the House of Help/City of God, women and kids who were beaten and abused are healing, criminals are reforming, addicts are getting free.

It's all without the bloated bureaucratic programs many see as hindering more than helping folks break out of poverty.

Hurt by the System

The problem with many of these big government programs meant to help the poor is that much of the money actually doesn't go to the poor.

That's what Bob Woodson, with the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, told CBN News. The center backs conservative solutions rather than ineffective, wasteful welfare.

"We've spent about $20 trillion on programs that aid the poor," he said of the vast government bureaucracies. "Seventy cents of every one of those dollars goes not to the poor, but those who serve poor people."

It's created a massive self-perpetuating bureaucracy some call the poverty industrial complex. It's only way to survive is maintaining a huge poor population dependent on government.

"So poor people are being injured by the helping hand of government,"Woodson stated.

House of Help/City of Hope's Bishop Shirley Holloway has spent decades one-by-one arming some of society's most hopeless people to become successful and productive. She said what they need is up-close love and relationship.

"Big government uses systems. Systems don't work for people," Holloway insisted. "Relationship does. And that's what we believe in: relationship. One with God, one with yourself, and then one with others."

Healed through Relationship

Such relationship turned around Donna Moore, who for years sold herself in the back of a van so she could buy drugs. She would then take the drugs in the same van.

"I was living in abandoned buildings and abandoned vehicles," Moore told CBN News. "I was a prostitute, eating out of trashcans. My life was shipwrecked."

Government programs didn't help her transform.

"I couldn't get what I needed to stay sober," she said.

But Holloway's ministry gave her tools to beat her addictions.

"And not only was I given the tools.  I was loved," she stated.

Holloway's love, discipline, and teaching helped Georgia Williams escape years of selling and doing drugs while she was working right inside a federal government agency. She had become suicidal.

"If it wasn't for Bishop and this place, I would be dead today," Wilson stated emphatically.

Deadend Democrats

Holloway said many of the poor dislike Republicans but also realize what Democrats offer is an eventual deadend.

"People are tired of the Democrats. You can't give away the whole house," she said.

And they're hungry - like she is -- for work and effort to be rewarded.

"I believe if you work hard, you should be successful. I believe if you're lazy and you don't want to do nothing, you should still eat, but you should not reap the fruit of the land," Holloway said.

"Right now we're giving stuff away, and so people think 'I can just stay at home, make babies or stay at home and do nothing and they'll take care of me,'" she continued.

Restoring Dignity

Arthur Brooks celebrates in his book The Conservative Heart real and lasting solutions to poverty that have already proved wildly successful around the world.

"Since 1970, the percentage of the world's population living on a dollar a day or less -- starvation-level - has decreased by 80 percent," Brooks shared.

He insisted the GOP needs to back whatever will give poor people the dignity of work and self-sufficiency.
 
"And we have to design policies that don't maintain people in poverty, and keep them at the edge basically of subsistence, but gives them an authentic opportunity to build their lives through work," he argued.

"We've done it before with welfare reform," he continued. "We've weakened those reforms during the Obama administration. It's time to bring them back and it's time for Republican politicians to be the true warriors for the poor that the poor deserve and that our hearts demand."

What these advocates all shared is that if you give people a real hand-up out of poverty and give them their freedom and their dignity, what you may get is their vote.