Helping the Americans Left Behind

With the economy booming and millions of Americans off the welfare rolls and into paying jobs since the last election, the next president will face the still-challenging issue of how low-paid workers can be helped to escape poverty.

Representatives of the Bush and Gore campaigns, along with a panel of experts, will discuss these issues, including new measures of poverty; faith-based approaches to solving social problems; raising the minimum wage; welfare reform; and tax policies, child care programs, and health care targeted to help the poor.

This forum is the third of eight election-year issues Brookings will examine in depth as part of its P2K, Priorities 2000, project, the purpose of which is to encourage a serious and informed discussion of the most pressing issues facing the next president.

Speakers include:

Moderator:

BONNIE ERBE
Host of the PBS show To the Contrary

DOUGLAS J. BESHAROV
Resident Scholar, The American Enterprise Institute;
Professor, University of Maryland School of Public Affairs;
Editor of America’s Disconnected Youth: Toward a Preventive Strategy

WILLIAM T. DICKENS
Senior Fellow, Economic Studies, The Brookings Institution;
Co-author of Urban Problems and Community Development

RON HASKINS
Staff Director, Subcommittee on Human Resources, United States House of Representatives

ISABEL V. SAWHILL
Senior Fellow, Economic Studies, The Brookings Institution;
Co-author of Updating the Social Contract: Growth and Opportunity in the New Century
and Getting Ahead: Economic and Social Mobility in America