It was an overcast day in Sacramento for yesterday's 2010 California Working Families Policy Summit. A sellout crowd of nearly five hundred attendees from across the state gathered at the convention center downtown to reunite, share common dismay at the state of California's budget and political challenges, and try to forge a vision for the future.
Things started off with the California Budget Project's Jean Ross telling us that this is no Chicken Little scenario, but rather the year critical services are actually at the breaking point. So it was hard to feel hopeful. The conversation on tax and budget reform led to the musing that ultimately, asset policy (and health policy, and education policy...) depends on larger political reforms.
As my colleague Olivia Calderon stated in her remarks, thirty percent of Californians don’t have enough savings to get by for three months if they were to lose their jobs—they are asset poor. But California legislators don’t even have the structural resources to get through three months of budget negotiations without people (in 2009, the Republican leaders of both houses) losing their leadership posts as part of the deal.
As many of the panelists echoed, "California is broke, and it is broken." The connection between financial security and political reform is encapsulated within that statement. California has no money, its bills are looming, the most vulnerable hang in the balance. Who is it, then, that needs the asset building perspective? Broadening the middle ground of the political spectrum may be the most important part of the asset builder’s fight to broaden the middle class. Meaning, to forward policies that help the working class, overarching political reform seems increasingly essential. Advocates and legislators are making the connections- Senator Denise Ducheny, chair of the Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, said "budgets are not about numbers. They're about people." Tax reformer Lenny Goldberg spoke about bringing back the local perspective, involving communities in conversations about tax reform, reinstating the connection between what you pay and what you see your community getting as a result (a connection largely shattered by Prop. 13).
The Asset Building Program holds many forums educating legislators and their staff about what works for working families trying to get ahead. But maybe we should be educating policymakers on what could help California get ahead. Because the fact is, we advocate policies to help working people plan and build assets to an institution that is currently unable to do so itself. If poor families can’t spend their way out of poverty, but rather must save their way out, the same must be true for the state. California must invest its way out of its fiscal crisis. If struggling from paycheck to paycheck is no way to build a stake in the economy, than neither is struggling from budget fight to budget fight.
Ultimately, the brightest vision at yesterday's summit was the gathering itself- California's own Hilda Solis, confirmed one year ago as President Obama's Secretary of Labor, not least among the tireless advocates on the panel and in the room. The most reassuring vision we have is that of a diverse range of advocates leading the way with concrete policy proposals, and of a passionate workforce of people who care about families, and who can now clearly see how important it is to fight for them.
