AMERICANS COULD STOP U.S. POVERTY.

Byline: Al Sheahen Local View

THE rich and middle-class families were able to escape Hurricane Katrina in planes and cars. But many poor and homeless families, with no cars and little money, were stuck. And so they died.

The latest government figures show that poverty rose by 1.1 million people in 2004. Some 37 million Americans now live below the official poverty line. That's 12.7 percent, versus 11.3 percent in 2000.

One child in six lives in poverty in California, compared with one in 12 in France and one in 38 in Sweden.

The number of people without health insurance also rose from 43 million in 2003 to 45.8 million in 2004. Poverty and lack of health insurance have been growing worse since 2000.

Yet Congress is planning on making it worse. This week, it will take up proposals to cut basic programs that could take billions of dollars from Medicaid and food stamps.

Congress will also debate the repeal of the estate tax, which would benefit the top 1 percent of the population at the expense of the rest of us.

More than 90,000 people are homeless in Los Angeles County. Local food banks and homeless shelters are serving more people now than a year ago.

The problem is that all the private charities in America can't end hunger and poverty. Ending poverty demands government programs, such as Social Security, unemployment compensation, Medicare, welfare, food stamps, Head Start, child care and more.

The 1996 Welfare Reform Act was sold to us as a way to get people off welfare, and it did. Welfare rolls in the United Sates are down 53 percent. But it didn't reduce poverty.

That's because welfare reform dumped many recipients into low-paying jobs - with no benefits or ability to move up. Poverty rates in 2004 are the highest since the 1970s.

So what can we do?

We can shrug, say the poor will always be with us and forget about it - or we can take some action.

We should contact our representatives and ask them to increase, not decrease, funding for Medicare, food stamps, Head Start and other social programs. They must also make the overall goal of welfare reform to end poverty, not just reduce caseloads.

But in the long term, the most practical way to end hunger and poverty in America is to adopt the recommendation of a 1969 presidential commission.

On that commission, the chairmen of IBM, Westinghouse and Rand, former California Gov. Edmund G. ``Pat'' Brown and 17 others unanimously agreed with conservative economist Milton Friedman that: ``We should replace the ragbag of welfare programs with a single, comprehensive program of income supplements in cash - a negative income tax. It would provide an assured minimum to all persons in need, regardless of the reasons for their need.''

Most Americans are six months from poverty. Middle-class people who worked all their lives, then lost their jobs and saw their unemployment benefits expire, are now sleeping in parks and under bridges.

America hasn't seen full employment in decades. Even a full-time job at the state minimum wage can't lift a family of three from poverty. Millions of Americans - children, the aged, the disabled - are unable to work.

A basic income guarantee or BIG program would be like an insurance policy for everyone. It could replace welfare, unemployment insurance and Social Security, and it could give each of us the assurance that, no matter what happened, we and our families wouldn't starve.

A 10-year, 8,700-family government test of a BIG found that a national program to end poverty is affordable and that most people will continue to work, even when their incomes are guaranteed.