This Sounds A Lot Like One Presidential Contender I Know….

I was enjoying my breakfast yesterday and reading the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and this editorial caught my attention. Guest columnist Jared Bernstein and Mark Greenberg discussed the initiative by Great Britain to eliminate childhood poverty by 2020. The article can be found here.

Two of the ways that the British have worked towards their goal is to increase both the minimum wage and the earned income tax credit. This along with providing health care for the children and their parents has allowed the British government to drop the childhood poverty rate 17%. During the same period, 12 to 13 million American children have been fallen or been born into poverty in the United States.

Granted, the British government did not meet its goal of reducing the poverty rate by 25% by 2005. Instead of crying foul that the goal was too high or unreasonable, government officials applauded the effort.

We asked what would happen if they did not end child poverty by the targeted date of 2020. The question didn't really interest them. The target, they argued, focused the minds of politicians, agencies and the public. Without it, they never would have gotten as far as they have. In fact, upon release of the news about missing the target, John Hutton, a Blair cabinet secretary, promised to "redouble" the government's efforts to hit it.

Bernstein and Greenberg end the article with a question that sounds a lot like one Senator is trying to do.

Is it even conceivable that we could ad0pt such a target here? Absolutely. In fact, a spate of recent news stories has pointed out that a major national party whose name begins with D is in desperate need of a big, unifying idea.

What's wrong with this one?