By Dr. Julianne Malveaux
An election can change who holds power, but days after the voting and before the newly elected take office, the rent is still due.
Groceries and prescriptions cost too much, and the worker piecing together two jobs still needs both. The grandmother raising grandchildren still has more responsibilities than resources.
These realities do not diminish the importance of voting; they define the responsibility that comes with winning.
There is room to celebrate and thank the organizers who knocked on doors, registered voters and persuaded discouraged neighbors to try again. Political participation requires labor, much of it unpaid and taken for granted. Black women know something about that labor.
After the applause, we need an agenda that names the people responsible for economic insecurity and the decisions that keep it in place. Too many elected officials describe hardship as though nobody voted for the budgets, blocked the legislation or decided whose needs could wait.
I have heard politicians describe an economy many families do not recognize, citing growth and stock prices. Those measures matter, but so does the distance between an encouraging economic report and an empty refrigerator.
Economic growth does not automatically produce economic security. A family can earn more and still fall behind because necessary expenses have risen faster, while a retiree can own a home and struggle to keep it.
When people say the economy is not working for them, their household budgets deserve at least as much attention as a campaign consultant’s explanation of what voters misunderstand.
Those elected this week must answer: What will you do with voters’ power?
Congress has left the federal minimum wage at $7.25 an hour since July 2009. On March 5, 2021, every Republican senator and eight members of the Democratic caucus voted against a procedural motion to advance a minimum-wage increase. Democrats Chris Coons (Delaware), Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire) and Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), along with independent Angus King (Maine), remain in the Senate and owe working people an explanation. Workers cannot pay today’s rent with a wage floor Congress abandoned seventeen years ago.
Democrats do not get a pass because Republicans are worse. In 2021, Democrats enacted an expanded Child Tax Credit that reached families through monthly payments, then failed to secure its continuation beyond that year. Families needed lasting support; Washington delivered an expiration date. Republicans opposed the rescue plan that created the expansion, while Democrats could not hold their own coalition together to preserve it.
We have earned the right to demand a return on our political labor.
In Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp and Republican legislative leaders chose a limited Medicaid program with qualifying-activity requirements over full Affordable Care Act expansion. Their Pathways program began in 2023, years after states could first expand coverage in 2014. Access to a doctor should never depend on how successfully a sick person navigates a politician’s paperwork.
Housing and care work demand the same accounting. When local officials approve development, who can afford the homes being built? When lawmakers refuse to fund care, which women leave paid employment to provide it? A budget records whose work government values and whose sacrifice it assumes it can get for free.
Racial economic inequality will not disappear because an officeholder promises prosperity for everybody. Who gets the contracts, who owns the property, and who builds wealth? Black communities have supplied votes and organizing labor for generations. We are entitled to ask for more than a photograph and an invitation to the victory party.
Seeing Black people enter offices from which we were excluded is meaningful, and we should celebrate while demanding answers about policy, budgets and results. After the euphoria over Keisha Lance Bottoms’ amazing victory as the first Black woman elected governor in the United States, who will work shoulder to shoulder with her to address racial economic inequity in Georgia?
The obligations run in both directions: elected officials must deliver, and those of us who voted must remain engaged. That means attending budget hearings, supporting local organizations and following legislation closely enough to distinguish a defeated proposal from one our supposed allies never seriously fought for. When officials claim they lack authority, ask what they have done with the authority they possess.
Organizations that mobilized voters should now put demands, deadlines and responsible officials in writing. We need to know which legislation will be introduced, who will sponsor it and when a vote will occur. Political loyalty should not require an agreement to stop asking questions.
The measure of this election is whether people can afford their homes, care for their families, save and face an unexpected expense without catastrophe.
If elected officials want Black women to keep turning out the vote, they must fight just as hard for the wages, housing and care that make our lives possible. We have earned the right to demand a return on our political labor.
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Dr. Julianne Malveaux is a DC based economist and autor.
Dr. Julianne Malveaux is an economist, author and longtime contributor to The Sun-Reporter.
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