For the thousands of ‘Christinas’

By Roberta Riley

I thought of Christina when I read the latest studies showing that an increasing number of older Americans, especially single women and women of color, are slipping into poverty. Christina died a couple years ago with $15 in her bank account.

My parents first met her in the kitchen of their church, where together they made sandwiches for the homeless. When the residents of Tent City asked to set up camp in the church parking lot after the earthquake of February 2001, an angry mob packed the public meeting. They shouted and screamed, for well over an hour, that the homeless would bring crime, drugs and filth to the neighborhood. Then this tiny, birdlike woman stepped up to the microphone, and told her story.

She was born in Serbia. The ravages of World War II destroyed her home, killing her husband and displacing her and their baby girl to a series of refugee camps. America welcomed mother and child when they emigrated in the 1950s. Soon she found work as a server at Manhattan's Waldorf Astoria hotel. "I love this country,” she said, "but the way we are acting tonight makes me feel ashamed. If this earthquake had destroyed your home, would you want the church to help?"

By the time she finished, you could hear a pin drop.

"It was the most amazing transformation I've ever witnessed," recalls Pastor Rich Lang. She completely changed the tone of the evening, nobody said another word against the homeless, and Tent City was allowed in.

Compassion triumphed over fear because Christina stood up for the less fortunate. She refused to let her own poverty impoverish her spirit. Her kind face, chin length gray hair, and Slavic accent seem to rise from the pages as I pore through Fixing Social Security: Adequate Benefits, Adequate Finances, by the National Academy of Social Insurance.

She was one of thousands of women in the “most vulnerable” category, whose years of paid work were interrupted because she also cared for others. Her altruism was penalized with minimal Social Security benefits. Yet Fixing Social Security and other studies demonstrate that we have plenty of good options to increase Social Security revenues, securely finance current benefits, and pay for benefit improvements for those most in need.

A related study, by Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW), establishes just how critical it is that we update the way we measure poverty in this country, which sets the baseline for Social Security benefits. The antiquated formula, which is based on the cost of food, little else, assumes one person living alone in 2008 could get by on $10,400. But at that level, Christina suffered. She couldn’t afford her medications and pay rent and utilities. The cupboards of her tiny apartment were bare by the third week of the month.

The new, updated measure developed by WOW takes health and other necessary expenses into account. It finds that an older American who lives alone and enjoys good health actually needs about $16,300 to make ends meet if she owns a home mortgage-free. A renter like Christina needs about $20,250, and a homeowner still paying off a mortgage needs approximately $24,000.

We could pay for the benefit increases WOW calls for simply by requiring higher income workers to pay Social Security taxes on ALL of their wages. There is no good reason to exempt income above $106,800 from the payroll tax. It is just another tax break for the wealthy.

As this article goes to press, we do not know the outcome of this month’s election, but the latest posturing and misinformation by enemies of Social Security signals that Republicans will soon claim we must raid the Social Security Trust Fund and impose “entitlement reform” to reduce the federal deficit.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Laureate economist, debunks such myths, penciling out the numbers to show that we can secure the existing program for generations to come by simply undoing President Bush's tax cuts for the rich. Fixing Social Security and WOW further demonstrate that we can, and should, not only secure Social Security, but improve it.

But in politics it’s never enough to have truth on one’s side. It will take an army, thousands of people just like Christina, braving the fear and vitriol and standing up for the less fortunate, to transform the debate.

(Roberta Riley is a PSARA member.)