WASHINGTON (NNPA) - Besides health care, the economy is at the forefront of the national discussion and with more and more families falling behind financially, the Congressional Black Caucus' 39th Annual Legislative Conference kicked off with a summit addressing poverty.

NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous said there are connections between poverty and incarceration. The biggest issue outside of jobs addressing the nation's ridiculous incarceration rates because of the devastating affect they have on families and on surrounding communities, he said.

“It makes no sense that the United States has 5 percent of the world's population but holds 25 percent of its prison population,” Mr. Jealous said. The amount of money that it takes to lock up people is astronomical, especially when compared to the cost of educating a person, which has proven to be a crime deterrent, he added.

“In California, for instance, families fight to try to get the state to pay more than $8,000 toward their child's public education and then you have to turn around and fight to get the state to pay less than $250,000 per child to keep a child in a California Youth Authority that leads to prison,” he said. “We are in the best place than we have ever been in the last 40 years to try and decrease incarceration rates due to progressive coattails around the country.”

Mr. Jealous sat on a panel that also included National Urban League CEO Marc Morial, Dr. Ronald Walters of the African American Leadership Center and Malaak Compton-Rock, wife of comedian Chris Rock, among others. The panel was moderated by Congressional Black Caucus chairwoman Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.).

The panel addressed issues that lead to underclass communities with a high concentration of hard to employ ex-felons and impoverished families. Issues such as unfair drug sentencing laws, employment barriers for formally incarcerated people and poverty in rural areas dominated the panel's conversation.

“Opportunities for All-Pathways Out of Poverty” opened with the entire Democratic congressional leadership welcoming conference attendees. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House of Representatives Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Rep. Lee and Congressional Black Caucus Foundation chairman Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.), chair of the CBC Foundation, were on stage as the conference welcoming committee.

The summit, held at the congressional auditorium in the Capitol Visitors Center, was the first official event scheduled during the legislative conference.

The four hour-plus summit included three panels that ranged from federal programs under the Obama administration that aim to aggressively tackle poverty to attacking factors that lead to poverty.

“We had a tough decade,” said Mr. Morial. “We need to refocus on public policy.”

Mr. Morial pointed out that poverty rates have risen as high as 25 percent for Blacks and Latinos while Whites have fared better at 11 percent.

Hilda Solis, the first Latina Labor Secretary, expounded on that point on an earlier panel.

She had sat on a panel with secretaries of other federal agencies including the Department of Commerce, the Department of Education, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to discuss anti-poverty programs the federal government is initiating.

“As people of color, we are bearing the brunt of this recession,” Sec. Solis said. “Thirteen percent of Latino and 15 percent of Blacks are unemployed, and so is 25 percent of our youth.”