a simply a conservative who's winning an argument. pbs talk show host tavis smiley moderated this forum at new york university examining women, children and poverty in america. speakers included cnbc's suze other man. hilda solis and sheryl wudun and cecilia fire thunder thch is two hours.is two hours.is two hours..is two hours.is two hourtis two hours . . [ applause ] good evening from nyu center for the performing arts here in new york city. i'm honored to be joined by an all-star panel for a conversation about women, children and poverty in america. i want to start t by asking you in advance of the conversation

to thank this guest panel for giving up their time for this conversation. thank you for joining us. [ applause ] i want to mention also at the top of the conversation that the conversation is being heard live around the country thanks to pacific radio network and specifically in the great city of new york on wbai. so please thank wbai for carrying this conversation live. [ applause ] and specifically it is good to have our public radio family join us for these conversation. i want to jump to the conversation and introduce the panelists as i get to them. i want to jump as quickly as i can in to what i know will be a good conversation. for those just tuning in we will do this for three nights on pbs and we are delighted to be on the campus of nyu. let me ask you to ask you to

thank nyu for having us here at the skirball center of the performing arts. i want to start by i said i was so slighted you are going to be here. you can't have a conversation about women and children and poverty in america without the numbers. i know a lot of us don't like numbers or talking about numbers but we are here for a simple reason. women and children, as you well know, madam secretary are falling faster in to poverty than any other group of americans. it is also the case the younger you are in this country, it is hard for me to get this out but the younger you are in this country the more likely you are to be poor. something so seems to be wrong with a nation that allows women and children,' fen times the

week aern are weak and vulnerable to nal to poverty faster than anyone else. why is that the case. why are women and children falling in to poverty faster than anyone else. please welcome our labor secretary sill hil da solis. >> i'd like to begin by saying one of the things that the president did, president obama did as soon as he got in to office is to provide funding to provide a safety net for vulnerable populations specifically women of chore, women and children. and it was to provide a network of services, department of labor for training. education and training is the key. it is about jobs, let's help people get a job and young people have opportunities. in this recovery, what we have seen is more participation on the part of women because they have fallen out of the work force. they have been stagnant in terms

of their wages. there's the gap. we have the 80 cents on the dollar per male and it is harder when it is minority or african-american women. it is like 70 cents on the dollar for latina and i would say our efforts have been to put more people in to new kinds of jobs, renewable energy, i.t. and stretching our imagination to put funding in to programs that didn't exist in the last decade. i have to give credit to those folks that helped to support the funding for these programs, but now, in my opinion, is not the time to take away the safety net. there are folks in washington that would like to see us go back because they want the deficit to be the issue opposed to helping vulnerable population. and now at a time more than ever, 15 million people women have taking advantage of our work force investment training programs and that tells me have we have a long way to go and need to incentivize tax breaks

and create job and allow for individuals to stand up on their own and also look for their own jobs and create their own jobs. we are looking at using the ui benefits in a different format by allowing people to do work sharing, stay on the job and get paid a subsidized salary and start your own business and i think that is exciting for women. especially many of us are the sole bread everyoners in the house. you are seeing minority kids dropping out of school. at the same token some of our programs are serving the hardest to serve population. the job corps and youth program and right now we need the programs expanded. >> since you referenced the deficit, i think it is incredulous that people in washington -- poverty hasn't been a conversation but they want to change the conversation to deficit reduction but there are voices in washington who are calling for austerity.

how is it possible that anyone in his or her right mind in washington could think that austerity is the answer? >> part of the -- i think miscalculation on the part of folks that don't understand what is happening. you can't do both at the same time. you ease in it to. look where there is excessive spending that won't hurt vulnerable populations. and that's the priority for this administration. even in the budget debate for 2013, there's also that very -- how could i say -- very much prioritized effort to expand our job training programs. i'm happy the president is doing that for the first time for dislocated communities and workers and hard-to-hit neighborhoods. he's making a concerted effort to do. that we have done some of these programs through demonstration projects and funded our community colleges, working hand in hand with entrepreneurs. if you don't get it right, you

will fund things that may not show a good product or end result. we are forcing the way we do curriculum, the way we are talking to businesses to be part of that partnership and make sure there's a lock on it. and that we are looking at jobs that will be real, secure jobs that pay well. not just minimum wage and bring up professionalism in areas like in-home health care. initiative that will help 2 million people. 90% of them are women. in many days that's don't get minimum wage or overtime. we are pushing out rules to allow that and setting up applications on the internet, what we call apps so women can look at each other's wages across the board with different corporations so they can start to make assessments and hopefully negotiating for higher salaries. we shouldn't have to wait for major legislation that just recently got passed when the president got in, but we were talking about pay equity here. nobody should have to be

discriminated doing the same job a man is doing and not receiving wage increase or benefit package as well. that poor woman an many like her have lost out in my opinion, up to $360,000 worth of earning power because that money was not put in her paycheck when she was working 20, 30 years on the job. [ applause ] >> as iz i expected the labor secretary would give me all the room to run with and i'm going to run with it. >> the author of surviving and thriving 365 facts in black economic history. please welcome doctor julian malveaux. i'm glad you are here. i want you here because you are one of the nation's most brilliant and ernest and

truth-telling economists. i want to ask you by putting you on the spot, whether you believe the numbers that we are being given? all kinds of numbers coming out of our government. i ask that because we are told, for example, there are 50 million of us living in poverty. we're told you if you combine those living in poverty and near poverty it is $150 million people. that means one in two americans is in or near poverty and then the specifics of the hispanic and african-american unemployment rate, et cetera, et cetera. let me start by asking you whether or not you, as an economist, believe the numbers that we are told, or is it worse? >> with the unemployment rates it is certainly worse. i think the secretary would concede monthly something published called employment and earnings. it details the rates. in the publication, buried in the publication is alternate measures of unemployment. if it is 8.3% theoretically, the

worse is 14.3%. for african-americans it is almost 25%. that is one in four. one, two, three, you. i think that's really important. we haven't talked about the people that dropped out of the labor market, them people that have part-time job and want full-time jobs and we haven't talked about what it costs to look for work. looking for work is an expensive proposition. you have to get your hair done and clothes cleaned. i'm not trying to be trivial but i think there's a number in the fact sheet that i shared with folks. in 1990, the average member of congress had a net worth of $258,000 excluding their home. by 2010 it was $750,000 excluding their home. what happened to congress that they could triple their wealth in a 20-year period.

meanwhile, for the rest of us the average personed a income of $20,000. both in 1990 and in 2010. everybody else stayed level but these members of congress find way tone rich themselves. i'm not t hating on members of congress or wealth. here's what i'm saying. people who have that kind of wealth don't understand somebody who needs extra $40 in their bi-weekly check to take the bus. [ applause ] s. >> when off presidential candidate mitt romney betting $10,000. how many months do you have to work for 10,000. the average white house hold has an income of $49,000 and the average african-american $39,000. so this man is betting a third of the african-american pay like

a casino. we need to understand that poverty is at a level that has not been since 1993. overall our poverty rate rose between 2009, 2010, to 15.2%. again, that is almost one in six americans. for african-americans the number 24.4%. -- no, 27.4%. so more than -- less than one in four. for latinos it is 25.8%. for asian-americans the numbers are lower and interestingly, the numbers of native american people are not published. theoretically the sample size is too small. how do we have people in the population and their sample size is too small. i know why. but rhetorically speaking. >> tell us why. >> well, you know, under a president that will go unnamed but he was president in 1918,

they actually wanted to stop collecting racial and ethnic statistics. we are all one america. this is this post-racial notion. i have a post-racial unemployment rate we can be. when white black folks have the same unemployment rates as everyone else. the native american population is one of the smallest populations but it seems we ought to invest resources in finding out what is going on with this population in our society. ta vis, you talked about the deficit and this come canning conversation. you said what's wrong with congress? i don't want to answer that. . because you can only be flipped in answering that. my knave sister and i rode over together and to borrow your phrase somebody dropped somebody on the head.

we have young sisters and brothers who want to go to college but the dollars are not there. the pell grant is $5500. tuition, room and board at bennett is $25,000. where's a sister going to get the other $19,000 from? loans. if you take out a loan for anything, you should take it out to invest in your education. i don't understand why -- and suze might disagree with me. suze, i'm a college president. i need those students enrolled in my college. but the thing is, we're cutting education. in the state of north carolina, they kicked the private colleges like bennett. they kicked us out of the state lottery fund. that means it is $1800 that students were getting. that's gone now. to cut education while the president has said he wants us to lead the world in the number of people with aa and ba degrees it is fool hearted.

it's like a farmer that decides they are doing to eat the seed corn opposed to planting it. we should not cut education and essential services we need for poor women and children. as you said, there's not a poverty conversation. vice president biden has a middle-class tax force. i want to know where's the poor people's task force? literally, we have seen poverty rise -- the population that concerns me most is a group of people called extremely poor. we have a poverty line. it's about $11,000 for one person, about 16,000 for a family of four. some people make half of the poverty line. half. can you imagine having earnings of $5500? how do you even begin to survive? while you have these task forces looking at the middle class, which we do care about, let's also look at poverty. >> we will talk about this middle class and education. randy wine garten is here in a second. let t me ask you, if this is a

short answer to this give me a short answer but i want to be forth wright about this and knowing him as i do since we are in new york when he hears me answer this question, he will probably run down here. so don't be surprised if bill clinton walks in the door in ten minutes. let me ask you forth rightly and directly. specifically with regard to women, children and poverty. how much of this is bill clinton's fault? and you know what i mean by that. 15 years ago it was our friend bill clinton who pushed through the welfare reform bill and peter edelman the husband of our dear sister mary edelman who is the most courageous ambassador. and how much are the chickens coming home to roost? how much of this mess is bill clinton's responsibility? >> you call it welfare reform, i call it welfare deform. you took a system that may have worked imperfectly and made it

worse. off lifetime cap on how long you can stay on public assistance of five years. that makes no sense. bill clinton was pandering, frankly, to the right. we love bill clinton but he was pandering to the right. he was exscoruated op the floor of congress. be clear right now, i don't think that anyone has an appetite. this particular congress is one of the worst we have seen in a long time, especially around issues for women and children. they don't mind cutting anything. they are running around the country, basically talking about austerity, at the same time that we are seeing people falling in to poverty. so, clinton may have started it, but it continued. mr. bush instituted a tax cut for the wealthy. if we could restore, get rid of that bush tax cut that would be millions, billions of dollars that could be used for social services, education and other

things. mr. bush had facilitated the financial crisis that we experienced in 2008 because he never met a regulation he liked. so literally you have these banks robbing people. i mean the best way to put it is robbing people. and now we have -- [ applause ] there's something like one in three people that have underwater mortgages where their mortgage is worth more than their house is. so, almost a third of the african-americans who had sub-prime loans qualified for real loans, for less pricey loans. so we can call clinton but let's just call the roll. there's been a hostility to poverty since the war on poverty. lindhen johnson was the best president that looked at poverty issues and spent money on it and talked about social service programs. lindhen johnson. let's follow that by -- i hate to say this but richard nix

season the father of minority business development and inside of his minority business -- established the small business administration, minority business administration agency and used the term economic justice. richard nixon, economic justice. >> who knew? >> who knew that we'd have to praise nixon but you look at reagan whoever time he opened his mouth he talked about the woman with 13 kids. there was no woman with 13 kids. i told someone call 1-800-13-kids and see who answers. no one has been sympathetic to poverty. we changed poverty from a social problem to a personal problem. >> got it. sure. [ applause ] >> i have known fay for years and we put together this conversation i knew i wanted her on this panel. i had no idea the timing of this conversation would be so

propitious giving this all out war that is being waged against women on so many fronts but i'm honested to have the first african-american woman to be the national president of planned parenthood. please welcome fay waddleton. so dr. malveaux says this is the worst congress in recent memory with regard to the rights of women. i want you to connect the war on women, specifically now waged in washington, this assault with poor women and their babies specifically. >> well, there's also ban war against the poor. this is not a country that has had a tremendous sympathy for poor people. i think the noen notion that somehow we slipped in to an era where "people" don't matter is not quite the way our history would define it. we don't really care much about poor people. it's true that johnson

administration sought to change that at a time when the country was going through an enormous change out of the civil rights movement, the women's movements movement. this was a tremendous upward mobility and aspiration for this country to be a different country. unfortunately, just as reconstruction was cut short in its bed, the war on poverty and taking our country to a different place that we really cared about all of its citizens was cut short by the right wing, political movement that took, took wing and took its force in the early '80s. so when we think about what is happening today against women in public life and in political life, it really isn't something that is new to our particular society and to the political landscape. it's been going on for more than 30 years. americans really -- these are not acts of god. they are -- no one came down from the mountain and struck lightning and said, you shall

oppose women and you shall take back women's rights, and you shall invade women's vaginas in order to advance your political agenda. this has been a very long time coming. we have allowed it to happen. because women still do not have first-class citizenship in our society. all of us here have been working for that. it is a very long journey. let's make no mistake about it, what we see that's going on in congress now is a very long legacy. it's a long legacy in the composition of the supreme court. it's a long legacy in all that has taken place in states throughout the country. chip away, chip away has occurred over this last three decades. it's very interesting, however, that the chipping away always seems to focus only on sexual -- the sexual decisions of women and our reproductive decisions. so i think we have to ask

yourselves why are there more children in poverty? why are families in disruption? because a lot of what has taken place is that women are primarily the heads of households now and we are not perceived as real first-class citizens and there's an effort been taken to take us back for real toll the traditional role we have played in society which is mother and caretaker, opposed to women in our own right that deserve the dignity of our humanity as women, whether we are mothers, wives, sisters or brothers. we are women and deserve the right of that dignity. the war on women's reproductive lives is really pretty stunning at the beginning of the 21st century. that we are engaged in a conversation, a really serious and political life with all that is before us. with all of the challenges of our society, with all of the desire for peace in the world and movements taking place all

over the world, that have used us n many ways as the example and the template for the aspirations of peace that our conversation has deinvolved in to a conversation about what birth control pill you will use. it is simply unacceptable. it is undignified and unbecoming of a nation such as ours that we are engaged in those kinds of conversations. >> help me understand. [ applause ] i want to ask faye a followup. before i do that, it occurs that i want to acknowledge this conversation is being recorded for cspan because i want you ask you about women specific in washington. thank c-span for carrying the conversation. [ applause ] i want to thank c-span for caring this. they follow us around the country and i want to thank them for being so kind and generous

to let the american people be part of the conversation about poverty in america. i'm listening to everything you said and there's nothing i disagree. in the black church i just say amen. since we are recording this on a sunday. i didn't get to church this morning. sorry, mom. my mom's in the front row. 1992 was you recall the year of the woman. because there was so many women running for national office, running for high office. many of them even winning of course i will. so in 1992, just 20 years ago we are celebrating the year of the woman. 20 years later, there is a war on women. how did that happen, fay? i hear your point, poverty has always been real. we were celebrating in 92. what role do women have to play to reverse that trend.

>> the fact we were celebrating one year as the year of the woman women is ill louis strative, the status of women that we are celebrating one year as the year of the woman and that is supposed to be the make of it. we have to be careful about our friends. sometimes our friends mask the war that continues. so after '92, there was a tremendous amount of complacency. there was a notion that somehow we have a president in the white house -- and why should women's rights ever be based and pivoted on who's in the white house? we don't talk about press sen shoreship based on who is in the white house we don't talk about our fundamental rights. they are settled rights. they are not t rights that any -- there's always the fringe but generally that main stream

america grapples or struggles with. there's no question that women's reproduction is a difficult issue for a lot of people. not the least of which is the catholic church and the catholic hierarchy. but we have to be careful about falling in to complacency when we think our friends will take care of us. when, in fact, the only thing that has ever taken care of freedom in this country is ourselves that we have to work to protect our freedom and the vigilance of our own freedoms. there's really no substitute. there's no substitute for that battle and the recognition that it is a long-distance battle. i'm the grandchild of a slave-born grandmother and i knew her. i knew her. that's how very short our history is. this is a very long-distance journey. it's a journey that if we lose vigilance we fall back. we let those people who want to take us back occupy the public

space, the public dialogue. and we say, well, let's not have kroefrgs. let's be quiet about this. let's not get in to controversy and if we are quiet about it we won't have all of this conflict and difficulty. but when people are engaged in rhetoric that is designed to deny any citizen our fundamental rights and especially women, we have to speak out. if for no other reason that there is another voice that is heard. >> i want to move on. because i want to get the other panelists involved. >> the so-called year of the woman came on the heels of anita hill during the clars thomas nomination. it they ran in rehax, remember max seen water and the women walking down. the year of the woman was not about empowerment as much as reaction. >> right. i get that. i want to move on. let me ask you a quick follow up. the latter part of my question

we didn't get to which is how then do women get compelled to exercise their agency to run for high office, to be part of the body politic. whether we like it or not, that is the sphere. >> because women have to support women. sometimes we are our own worst enemies. the difficulty that women running for higher political office find is finding early support that does not say you are guaranteed to be a winner anymore than men are guaranteed to be a winner when they go to their donors and pros pecks to say support me. i have to do the kind of research that is necessary to put together a credible campaign. we simply don't -- women simply don't find