Draft GPUS Platform Amendment Welfare
Section title: Welfare
Section subtitle: Our commitment to ending poverty
Our position: Every American has the right to food, housing, medical care, jobs that pay a living wage, education, and support in times of hardship.
Greens believe that support for families, children, the poor and the disabled must not be given grudgingly; it is the right of those presently in need and an investment in our future. We must take an uncompromising position that the care and nurture of children, elders and the disabled are essential to a healthy, peaceful, and sustainable society. We should recognize that the work of their caregivers is of social and economic value, and reward it accordingly. Ensuring that children and their caregivers have access to an adequate, secure standard of living should form the cornerstone of our economic priorities. Only then can we hope to build our future on a foundation of healthy, educated children who are raised in an atmosphere of love and security.
Green Solutions
1. Restoration of a federally-funded entitlement program to support children, families, the unemployed, elderly and disabled, with no time limit on benefits.
2. A graduated supplemental income, or negative income tax, that would maintain all individual adult incomes above the poverty level, regardless of employment or marital status.
3. Massive investments in living-wage job development and work training programs. Publicly-funded work training and education programs should have a goal of increasing employment options at finding living-wage jobs.
4. Public funding for the development of living-wage jobs in community and environmental service. For example, environmental clean-up, recycling, sustainable agriculture and food production, sustainable forest management, repair and maintenance of public facilities, neighborhood-based public safety, aides in schools, libraries and childcare centers, and construction and renovation of energy-efficient housing. We oppose enterprise zone give-aways which benefit corporations more than inner-city communities.
5. Tax policies to encourage businesses to adopt fair employee wage distribution standards.
6. Stop forcing welfare recipients to accept jobs that pay less than a living wage. Workfare is a form of indentured servitude.
7. Require corporations receiving public subsidies to provide jobs that pay a living wage, observe basic workers’ rights, and agree to affirmative action policies.
