I attended an event yesterday that was more than 30 years in the making.

As I looked around the White House Office of Urban Affairs listening tour meeting at a packed Philadelphia warehouse space and saw low-income residents and local leaders mingling with some of our nation's most...

The most vulnerable communities are not yet getting the stimulus help they need. Sadly, we predicted this:

First, we need to invest [the federal stimulus] where people live. More than two-thirds of Americans -- including the vast majority of the nation's poor -- live in the top 100 metro...

In a letter in the New York Times today, I argue that the stimulus package needs more to help the poor than just a boost in social services like food stamps and unemployment benefits (laudable though those investments may be). We need to make real investments in the infrastructure...

Will we miss earmarks? The much-maligned political tags on federal spending have been denigrated in every media outlet in America in recent years. But if the drafts of the stimulus bill are any indication, a world without earmarks also may be a world without accountability and transparency.

Rather than politicians...

America is in a hole.

In the gravest threat to our economy since the Great Depression, we are facing rising unemployment; soaring food, energy, and health care costs; growing debts; a shrinking middle class; and widening inequality. To help us climb out, President-elect Barack Obama plans to craft a...

Grim, yet hopeful. Constrained, yet honest. President-elect Obama's gripping recovery press conference today promised, in his words, a "clean break from a troubled past."

Let's hope so. Central to a clean break must be an emphasis on recovery for all Americans, not the just usual beneficiaries. This means a...

In a nice nod to the whistle-stop political barnstorming of old, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are going to ride the rails from Philadelphia to Wilmington (Del.) to Baltimore and on to DC for their inauguration next month.

The journey will no doubt create a bunch of great...