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August 9, 2013
We’re proud to collaborate with The Nation in sharing insightful journalism related to income inequality in America. The following post appeared first in Nation contributor Greg Kaufmann’s “This Week in Poverty” blog.
Congressman Paul Ryan recently said that Republicans “don’t have a full-fledged” plan to fight poverty “because we need to do more listening to people who are in the trenches fighting poverty.”
He had the perfect opportunity to do just that at a recent House Budget Committee hearing, “War on Poverty: A Progress Report,” which he chaired. California Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee requested that Chairman Ryan allow Tianna Gaines-Turner — a mother and anti-poverty activist who has struggled with poverty and homelessness — to testify.
Tianna Gaines-Turner (Photo: Center for Hunger-Free Communities)
“Ranking Member Van Hollen previously selected a witness to testify, and I won’t be able to make further additions to the witness list,” he wrote in a letter to Congresswoman Lee.
But the Chairman could have made additions to the witness list had he truly wanted to, he simply chose not to. He did, however, permit Gaines-Turner to submit written testimony.
The only problem with that is that written testimony normally sees about as much light of day as that old t-shirt with all of the holes that you keep in the back of your bottom drawer — the one you might take out again some day to workout in provided that no one you know is within ten miles of you.
Had the Chairman included Gaines-Turner at the hearing, this is what the American people would have learned:
Gaines-Turner and her husband both work and have three children — a nine-year-old son on the honor roll in 4th grade, and five-year-old twins who are entering kindergarten. All three of her children suffer from epilepsy and moderate to severe asthma.
She earns $10 an hour working part-time for a childcare provider, and her husband earns $8 an hour working the deli counter at a grocery store. They aren’t offered health insurance through work, and earn too much to qualify for medical assistance. She, too, suffers from asthma and writes that she “currently can’t afford to get an inhaler.”
Their children are covered through the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and “take life-saving medication every day.”
“I worry about a day that might come where my children won’t be able to see a specialist because I can’t afford the co-pay.… Just like you want the best for your children I want the best for my children.”She describes a time when their oldest son was hospitalized with seizures. She took off work to be with him while her husband took off to care for the twins.
“We were both unable to work, so we lost money that month, and ultimately had to make a choice — do we pay the rent or do we pay the light bill? Not to mention, how do we buy food…? Poverty is not just one issue that can be solved at one time. It’s not just an issue of jobs, or food, or housing, or utility assistance, and safety. It’s a people issue. And you can’t slice people up into issues. We are whole human beings.”Gaines-Turner discusses a familiar story — low-income families working “two-to-three jobs to make ends meet,” with “wages so low and expenses so high” that sometimes work “may not be enough to even pay for the expense of child care.” She also describes what some call the “cliff effect” — when government assistance (such as child care) is taken away at the very moment someone begins to get ahead.
“Just when someone is moving forward, the rug is ripped out from under them. This cycle pushes people deeper into poverty than they were before they took the job. This system needs to change in order for people like myself to forge a better future for myself and my children, one where I will never need to turn to public assistance again.”Like many of the Witnesses to Hunger I’ve had the opportunity to speak with, Gaines-Turner has particular expertise when it comes to food and nutrition issues. Witnesses to Hunger has chapters in four cities, including Gaines-Turner’s Philadelphia, where members use photography to document their experiences in poverty and learn to advocate for change on the local, state, and federal levels.
She describes families who “put their children to bed before dinner because there was nothing to eat,” and “others who look at food menus delivered to their door so they canimagine ordering dinner and trick themselves into thinking that they’ve eaten, when actually they haven’t eaten in days.” She says that most nights she and her husband “make our dinners on what is left over on our children’s plates — we call it ‘kids plate surfing.’ We are able to get by thanks to SNAP (food stamps) but we are not eating well.” Gaines-Turner argues against proposals to cut SNAP and offers data and her own every day experiences to make her case:
Read More Here
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Paul Ryan's Poverty Hearing Slammed by Testimony From Woman in Poverty
August 5, 2013
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) questions witnesses
during a hearing on the Affordable Care Act in the Longworth House
Office Building, Aug. 1, 2013.
The House Budget Committee's major hearing on poverty last week failed to include any person actually living in poverty, a move that upset lawmakers and advocacy groups alike. Instead, Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., encouraged victims of poverty to submit written testimony to the committee.
Now, Tianna Gaines-Turner, a woman living in poverty in Philadelphia, has submitted that testimony, and it's a searing indictment of Republican policies and positions taken by Ryan in relation to the federal food stamp program, or SNAP.
"Chairman Ryan recently said that people need to get involved in their communities and help each other out, because getting together to help each other out is much better than government benefits," she writes. "But, if you actually came into our communities, actually invited us to talk with you about what it's like to be on government benefits, you would learn that government benefits are actually helping us stay healthy."
Gaines-Turner, who is a member of the Witnesses to Hunger program, a program of the Center for Hunger-Free Communities at Drexel University that encourages parents in poverty to speak out about their experiences, describes working to support six children on her and her husband's low-wage, part-time jobs, as they've been unable to get full-time employment. The federal food stamps program, she says, is what keeps her and her family from starving.
Read More Here
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