Bottom-Up Bailout?

Today on Meet the Press, the political commentator Tavis Smiley had a very interesting perspective on the economic crisis. I found the transcript, so here is the quote verbatim:

"I think that government has to always be challenged to be responsible to its citizens who are disadvantaged and disenfranchised. And the truth of the matter is that this entire economic crisis has been a top-down conversation and not a bottom-up conversation. Detroit, the city, is the poorest city in the country. In some, in, in some economic areas and categories, the unemployment rate in Detroit is three times, triple the national average. And so everyday people, the working poor and the very poor, cannot be left out of this conversation. And so I don't think that poor people--although we had three presidential debates, let's be honest about it, where the word poverty never came up, where the working poor and the very poor were never discussed in three presidential debates. I don't think, Tom, that the working poor and the very poor in this country begrudge people who are better off. They understand, I think, that there are three million jobs tied into this auto industry. At the same time, where is the conversation about corporate mendacity? Where is the conversation about everyday people and how this government is responsible to those persons who are disadvantaged, disenfranchised? I've not seen enough of that conversation yet. We've been talking about bailing out industry, talking about bailing out Wall Street. Every now and then, some conversation about Main Street. But no conversation about the side street, and that's where too many Americans live these days."

This really got my attention. There's been so much focus in this political season on stimulating the economy, bailing out Wall Street, and helping the middle class, that we often forget the people who are affected the most by these difficult economic times are those below the poverty line. God only knows how bad this thing is going to get in the next several weeks, months, and years. But as a church, we have to be sure we don't just focus on the stock market, but also on the poor, homeless, and unemployed.

A few friends and I were talking this weekend about whether the government should bail out the auto industry to keep the big three companies from going bankrupt. We gave the pros and cons that we had heard and talked about how it would affect the overall economy, and it seemed like there was no perfect answer to the problem. But none of us had thought about the disaster this could wreak on the city of Detroit, which is already in an economic tailspin. I have some friends from Detroit, and they've talked about how the city of Detroit has built the highways so that they go completely over the slums, so that you can go completely from the suburbs to downtown Detroit without seeing the immense poverty that is affecting the lower class of the city. It's time we start looking at the neglected. It's time that we don't just give $700 billion to those on Wall Street, but also to the millions in hunger around the world. It's time we judge success based on the least of these, instead of the global corporations.

I know stimulating the overall economy is important. I know helping the middle class is important. But let's not forget those trapped in the slums, because they need a bail-out too.