Dems Urge Fight on U.S. Poverty After Shocking Report
WASHINGTON (Guardian) -- Bernie Sanders and a group of top Democrats are calling on the Trump administration to present a plan to Congress to combat "massive levels of deprivation and the immense suffering this deprivation causes”, following an excoriating United Nations report into extreme poverty in America.
In a congressional letter delivered to Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, the group said the UN report was "a call to action that we must heed”. They stand ready, the signatories say, to work with the Trump administration "to address appalling rates of child poverty, destructive economic policies that benefit the wealthy over the working poor … and lack of access to basic necessities in rural and underserved communities”.
The group specifically urges Trump to put the convention on the rights of the child before the Senate for ratification. The U.S. is the only country in the world that has failed to ratify the treaty and the letter writers say "it is shameful that more than 13 million children live in poverty in this country and that, on any given night, more than one in five homeless individuals are children”.
The congressional intervention comes in response to the official report of the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty, Philip Alston, who acts as global watchdog on the human rights implications of deprivation. Following a two-week tour of the U.S. in December that took him to several of the most poverty-stricken parts of the country, he issued a scathing critique of the fact that 40 million Americans live in poverty and more than five million experience levels of absolute deprivation associated with the developing world.
Alston will present his findings to the UN human rights council in Geneva on 21 June.
So far the White House and federal government departments have remained studiously silent over his findings, though Sanders and his fellow signatories express the hope that Haley will relay the key conclusions to Trump.
The UN report exposed the extent to which millions of Americans remain locked in penury exacerbated by the growing gulf between rich and poor. Sanders and his colleagues say the existence of such suffering in a rich country like the U.S. is "an affront to any notion of the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Given the breadth of poverty outlined in the report, these rights are simply illusory for millions in this country.”
In a congressional letter delivered to Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, the group said the UN report was "a call to action that we must heed”. They stand ready, the signatories say, to work with the Trump administration "to address appalling rates of child poverty, destructive economic policies that benefit the wealthy over the working poor … and lack of access to basic necessities in rural and underserved communities”.
The group specifically urges Trump to put the convention on the rights of the child before the Senate for ratification. The U.S. is the only country in the world that has failed to ratify the treaty and the letter writers say "it is shameful that more than 13 million children live in poverty in this country and that, on any given night, more than one in five homeless individuals are children”.
The congressional intervention comes in response to the official report of the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty, Philip Alston, who acts as global watchdog on the human rights implications of deprivation. Following a two-week tour of the U.S. in December that took him to several of the most poverty-stricken parts of the country, he issued a scathing critique of the fact that 40 million Americans live in poverty and more than five million experience levels of absolute deprivation associated with the developing world.
Alston will present his findings to the UN human rights council in Geneva on 21 June.
So far the White House and federal government departments have remained studiously silent over his findings, though Sanders and his fellow signatories express the hope that Haley will relay the key conclusions to Trump.
The UN report exposed the extent to which millions of Americans remain locked in penury exacerbated by the growing gulf between rich and poor. Sanders and his colleagues say the existence of such suffering in a rich country like the U.S. is "an affront to any notion of the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Given the breadth of poverty outlined in the report, these rights are simply illusory for millions in this country.”