The new administration of President Barack Obama is apparently not very interested in sharing its plans for low-income people. Little has been announced publicly about what the administration will do for the poor in these hard economic times, and Residents’ Journal’s calls to the White House over a three-week period failed to get a comment by press time.

A lot of information is available on the White House web site, however. Here is a partial list: To tackle concentrated poverty, the Obama administration promises to create and establish 20 “Promise Neighborhoods in areas that have high levels of poverty and crime and low levels of student academic achievement in cities across the nation.” The program will be modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone, which provides an entire neighborhood with services for young people at every age, including early childhood education, youth violence prevention efforts and after-school activities, according to the White House.
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The Republicans and the Democrats are battling it out over Social Security. While everyone agrees Social Security must be reformed, Democrats deny there is a crisis, as alleged by President George W. Bush.

The President’s Pitch
President Bush has said that Social Security faces a $10 trillion unfunded obligation to beneficiaries. Trustees of the Social Security program have projected that by 2018 the program will owe more in annual benefits than the revenues generated by the payroll tax. They also say the program will be bankrupt by 2042.

In the 1950s, there were about sixteen workers paying for every Social Security beneficiary. Today there are about three, and eventually there will only be two workers per beneficiary, according to the President.
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