End This Toxic Dance

When it Comes to Ensuring Basic Needs, the U.S. Takes One Step Forward and Two Steps Back. We Can Fix That.

We have been here before.

Last week, Republicans in Congress and President Trump passed devastating legislation that will increase hunger and take healthcare away from millions.

Recent history tells us that, someday, political power will shift and we will likely restore some if not all of the program cuts. Those gains will set the stage for the programs to be cut again some years later. It is a toxic dance.

Lifesaving New Deal social programs were slashed during the Reagan era of the early 1980’s and then again by the Clinton “end welfare as we know it” legislation. After that, there were steps of progress: we have written here before about the historic success the U.S. had in expanding social programs and reducing poverty during the first years of the Covid pandemic.

Yet when Congress and a President simply take away food and healthcare and housing assistance relied on by millions, like they did last week, there is no substantial legal barrier protecting the poor. Because, in the United States, alone among all other similarly wealthy nations, we currently have no clear legally enforceable right to housing, healthcare, or even the food that is necessary to survive.

There is a way to fix that. We can join with virtually every other nation in the world by ratifying the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights aka ICESCR. Once we ratify the ICESCR, the questions of hunger, healthcare, and housing that last week were framed as discretionary budget items become something much more substantial: enforceable human rights.

I have written about the need to ratify ICESCR before here, and I’m in the midst of writing quite a bit more about it. Stay tuned for more. But suffice it to say here that the U.S. has come very close in the past to enshrining economic rights in our constitution and/or treaty obligations. There is every reason to believe we can finish the job in the future.

The horrifyingly callous political winds of the day will shift, hopefully soon. When they do, we need to make it a priority to ratify the ICESCR. If we succeed, there will be a legal foundation from which to push back the next time basic healthcare and food and shelter are under political attack.

We can stop this toxic one-step forward, two-steps backward cycle, once and for all. More to come about this.