It’s especially insincere, given the Trump administration’s proposal to gut existing workforce development programs. Its 2018 budget cut funding for the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act by 43 percent, which would cause 571,000 workers to lose job training and job search assistance. President Trump is also in the process of advancing an apprenticeship proposal that would lead to a proliferation of low-quality programs that don’t offer job-relevant skills or decent wages.

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For his part, Ryan seems to be confused about what workforce development actually entails. He told his caucus last night that it needs to “focus on closing the skills gap” by training unemployed workers to take currently open jobs. This incorrectly assumes that a lack of skills is the only thing that’s keeping workers out of the labor market—it’s possible that workers are struggling to find good jobs that pay decent wages. Indeed, 2017 saw the slowest job growth since 2010, and the weakest wage growth in 4 years. Trump and congressional Republicans have also fought to make work worse by advancing policies to weaken workplace protections, make it harder for workers to collectively bargain, make it easier for employers to steal wages from tipped employees, and make it easier for employers to discriminate against workers.

If Speaker Ryan and congressional Republicans truly cared about helping people transition into the labor market, they would support policies like raising the federal minimum wage, strengthening collective bargaining rights, and advancing policies like paid leave and universal child care, which actually help improve the quality of work.

Instead, participants at the GOP retreat where Ryan initially floated this idea reported that his proposal would impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients – of whom more than 7 in 10 are caregivers or in school. The move would put at least 6.3 million people at risk of losing their health care outright, and force others into low-quality, low-paying jobs that are more harmful than helpful.

Ultimately, this workforce development push, like welfare reform before it, is about kicking struggling workers while they’re down, and taking away essential benefits from families when they need them most. And while Ryan may have ditched the racially-coded welfare rhetoric for now, his policies are still ripped right from Trump’s divisive handbook.

I spoke with Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) to examine where conservatives are headed and what they really mean when they use buzzwords like “entitlement reform” and “welfare reform.”

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Rebecca Vallas: “Robin Hood in reverse” has always been the congressional GOP’s playbook, and their most recent budget proposals released earlier this year were basically a hit list of programs they want to slash. But is it surprising to hear them say it out loud while they’re trying to do “tax reform” that is actually tax cuts for billionaires and corporations?

Rep. Jim McGovern: I’m not surprised because congressional Republicans have never been enthusiastic about programs that feed people who are hungry or provide them health care or some sort of security. They’ve had this kind survival of the fittest approach to government—if you’re well off, great; if you’re not, too bad. But we have a group of Republicans in Congress that are determined to undo all government, and if they succeed with their agenda a lot of people are going to be hurt.

RV: I’ll have to confess, I was surprised to hear Congress dress their calls for cuts to these programs up in their same standard language about deficit reduction and unsustainable deficits. Was it surprising to you?

JM: I mean the tax plan adds over a trillion dollars to the deficit, and this is not a tax cut for the middle class. Basically this is a tax giveaway to big corporation, to those who are very well off and those who are very well connected. It will be a tax increase on middle class families, and it will be a tax increase on those struggling to get into the middle class.

RV: I want to focus on programs that people typically think about as anti-poverty programs. The U.S. Department of Agriculture sent a letter to state food stamp administrators who administer the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and some people have interpreted it as the Trump administration actually encouraging states to take steps to make it harder for struggling workers and families to access nutrition assistance when they need it.

JM: We’re going to have to wait and see what USDA is up to, but they haven’t been very forthcoming and I don’t have a good feeling about this. Conservatives have for years wanted to cut programs like SNAP. They have presented as fact a version of SNAP that is clearly not true—that the program helps people who are lazy, encourages dependency. But of the people on SNAP, the vast majority are not expected to work—they are kids, they’re senior citizens, they’re people who are disabled. The majority of people who can work, do, and they earn so little they still qualify for SNAP.

There are some things we can live without, but food isn’t one of them. The average SNAP benefit is about $1.40 per person per meal. You can’t even buy a cup of coffee with that. We should be talking about expanding the SNAP benefit so that people have the resources to buy not just food, but nutritious food for their families. And we ought to remind people that this program is incredibly successful. It is one of the most efficiently and effectively run programs by the federal government and has very low fraud and error rate. It also is a program that is an economic stimulus—it helps our farmers, our grocers, our economy overall.

To the extent that SNAP needs to be improved, it is that the benefit is inadequate. Most people on SNAP end up having to go to food banks at the end of the month.

RV: So there is a huge gap between what Congressional Republicans make it sound like these programs are about and the reality of who gets helped by them. The fact is that 70 percent of Americans will turn to at least one means-tested program at some point during their lives. But that seems to be the playbook—to flat out lie about what these programs are and who they help.

JM: Right, they promote this myth that somehow programs like SNAP promote dependency. The average time that households are on SNAP is 12 months or less. We do hill briefings with people who had been on SNAP and are now quite successful, and they remind Members of Congress how important that benefit was when they needed it. But this Congress has demonized poor people, belittled their struggle, and blamed them for all of our economic problems.

I wish there was more of an outcry about making sure that work pays in this country. If you work in this country you ought not to have to live in poverty. The fact that we haven’t addressed this issue the way we should is very, very costly. There are all these avoidable medical costs that are associated with food insecurity. Kids can’t learn if they go to school hungry. Workers aren’t productive if they go to work hungry. Senior citizens who have to make choices between prescription drugs or putting food on the table and they choose to take a prescription drug on an empty stomach end up in a hospital. Women who are pregnant don’t give birth to healthy babies unless they have adequate nutrition. And so we need to take this issue more seriously than we have, and we certainly shouldn’t be demonizing people who are struggling.

RV: The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for the past almost nine years because Republicans in Congress refuse to raise it. And yet their rhetoric is all about “self-sufficiency.”

JM: The fact of the matter is that the jobs that are out there keep people in poverty. And so when I hear Speaker Ryan or Republicans talk about self-sufficiency I respond by screaming that people are working out there. They’re working harder than ever and they are still stuck in poverty. So let us address the issue of wages. Let’s help lift people up.

[Instead] we have Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker moving forward with drug testing some food stamp recipients. I have an idea. Let’s go drug test Scott Walker—maybe people who have stupid ideas like that ought to be drug tested. Because that is insulting. We’re not saying drug test big heads of defense contractors who get billions of taxpayer dollars. We’re not talking about farmers who get crop insurance, we’re not talking about testing any other recipient of government money—just poor people. That is just offensive and insulting and that’s the kind of stuff that is coming out of this Congress.

Hunger is a political condition when all is said and done.

RV: Do you think that the public still buys Speaker Paul Ryan and President Trump as champions of the forgotten man and the forgotten woman, or do you think that the tax fight has laid bare what they’re really after?

JM: Well I think the tax fight has laid bare what they’re really after. I think their attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act and come up with a replacement that would throw 30 million off of health insurance has shown who they really are. I really believe that a lot of people who may have supported Paul Ryan or Donald Trump in the last go around are now seeing who they really are. These aren’t champions for the forgotten man or woman. And they are not champions for people struggling in poverty. They are the problem; they are the enemy of so many people in this country who are trying to make ends meet. And people need to stand up and fight back.

I’m proud to live in a country that has a program designed to make sure that people don’t go hungry. I’m proud to live in a country that has programs like Medicare that guarantee health care for our older population. I’m glad we have programs like Medicaid. I believe that everybody is important—that nobody should be invisible in this country and that the whole purpose of government is to be there for those who need a helping hand during a very difficult time. Donald Trump doesn’t need government. He’s a billionaire. But there are millions of families in this country that do and they’re every bit as important as he is.

We need to take back our country. We need to watch very carefully what Paul Ryan means by entitlement reform and we have to make sure that he doesn’t view programs like SNAP as an ATM machine to pay for the corporate welfare that is part of their tax bill.

This interview was originally conducted for Off-Kilter. It was edited for length and clarity.

Nowhere would be harder hit than food deserts—areas, mostly low-income, without access to fruits, vegetables, or other healthy food. According to the USDA, 6,500 census tracts, or about 10 percent of American communities, are food deserts, and 25 million Americans lack access to a grocery store.

One of the leading champions on issues of food insecurity in Congress is Indianapolis Rep. André Carson (D-IN). In 2014, a study by WalkScore.com rated the city as the worst in the country for food deserts. The following year, the iconic Double 8 Foods supermarkets—which served neighborhoods largely neglected by other chains—closed its four locations, citing declining revenues.

I spoke to Rep. Carson about his efforts to expand access to healthy meals and his recent legislation addressing food deserts.

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Jeremy Slevin: What made you decide to take action on food deserts?

Rep. André Carson: In recent years, Indianapolis has been one of the worst food deserts in the country. Around 2014 we saw four Double 8 grocery stores close, and then last year it got even worse when several Marsh stores closed their doors. Many assumed that those customers would just get their groceries elsewhere. But unfortunately I think the implications were greater than that, and overnight we saw thousands of Hoosiers effectively lose access to the only grocery store they had available.

We’re talking about low-income families, often without vehicles or even access to public transit, and they’re living miles from the closest store. They had nowhere to go to buy fruits and vegetables and bread and milk, so they really relied on what they could find at their local convenience stores and fast food restaurants. The closure of these stores has created food deserts throughout the district.

JS: So tell us what your bill does to address this.

AC: The bill tries to address the absence of nutritious foods in many urban and rural communities by providing loans for the operation of grocery stores. The Department of Agriculture would provide grants to each state to establish a revolving fund, and each state would provide loans from its revolving fund for the construction (and even operation) of grocery stores, specifically for underserved communities. These loans would be made available to for-profit, non-profit, even locally-owned entities.

The states would handle loan processing and make awards to organizations that meet the requirements, but they have to have an emphasis on unprocessed nutritious foods, providing fresh fruits and veggies, providing staple foods like milk, bread, and wheat, charging prices below market average, and be sufficiently qualified to operate a store.

I think it’s important to note that priority will be given to applications that include a plan to hire workers from those underserved communities and provide information about healthy diet. They’re going to get their food from local gardens and farms, and a lot of these entities will not have beer and wine or tobacco products readily available—but I think in the future that’s an option that they can pursue if they want to go through the Alcohol and Tobacco Commission.

JS: So what’s at the root of this problem? Why are these stores closing in Indianapolis, and what’s the impediment to opening up new grocery stores in low-income areas right now?

AC: I think we haven’t brought enough attention to the issue nationally. It’s not specific to urban centers—rural communities are impacted as well. I think corporations and entities make corporate decisions that address their bottom line, but we have to make sure that the NGOs and other entities are in place so we can [incentivize] them to provide resources to these communities.

JS: Is part of the issue that it’s just not as profitable, unfortunately, in lower-income communities to have these grocery stores, and that’s why they need this leg up?

AC: Perhaps some would make that argument, but I would counter that and say that the demand is always there. If you look at the Double 8’s, there were customers there, but the facility was unkempt, the food offerings were spoiled or nearing spoilage, and it just wasn’t a great place to get food to attempt to live a healthy lifestyle. It wasn’t a sustainable existence. But the demand is always there. If you see a clean facility where healthy options are being presented, there’s a sense of pride that people will in doing business with that kind of operation.

JS: You mentioned transportation earlier, which seems like another huge driver of this. Do you think more investment in public transit in low-income communities could help stem this crisis as well?

AC: Absolutely, that’s always an issue. Folks who are on fixed incomes or have fewer means to purchase a vehicle, they have to rely on public transportation or friends and family.

JS: Do you see a path to this passing in Congress?

AC: We’re hopeful. It’s going to take a concerted effort to educate members of Congress, but also constituents and constituencies across the country to encourage and force their representatives to support this legislation. And the farm bill is a critical part of that conversation.

JS: And this is something that you’re hoping to be included in the farm bill negotiations?

AC: Absolutely.

JS: What’s been the response, if any, from the other side of the aisle?

AC: I think we’re in the midst of an austerity push, but we’re not in Europe. There are budget hawks that would be concerned about the cost of this, and understandably so. But this proposal helps their constituents. It helps spur economic growth, it helps their constituents live healthier lives, and have some sense of dignity about being able to go to a store that’s clean—where customer service is paramount, where food offerings are healthy, and the presentation is very professional.

JS: Obviously, we’re talking specifically about food deserts, but food insecurity is a problem that affects this entire country, particularly kids, that is not often talked about in the media. What more do you think we can do to shine a light on food insecurity more broadly?

AC: Studies have shown that when kids don’t have the nourishment they need, it impacts brain activity, it impacts retention in terms of memory, it impacts performance as it relates to their ability to contribute as a student and process information. And I think addressing these food deserts and having our schools be a part of this discussion will close the gap on many of these concerns. I even think that there are several attempts to get rid of the designation for free lunches for students because it removes the stigma. Schools have to be a part of this larger conversation if we’re going to address many of the issues in some of our schools that are underperforming.

JS: And we’ve even seen reports of school districts shaming kids for getting subsidized school lunches.

AC: That stigma’s been around for years. Kudos to those school districts and states that are attempting to remove the stigma. That’s something that’s been a source of bullying; it’s been a source of increased absences, so I think taking away that stigma will go a long way.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The language that Republicans are using to push these proposals—“make taxes simpler, fairer, and lower” for American families—sounds appealing. But the policies on their wish list are almost entirely tax cuts, and almost all of the benefits (99.6 percent under House Speaker Paul Ryan’s plan) will go to the top 1 percent of taxpayers.

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A real effort at tax reform would focus on closing loopholes that benefit the wealthy and well-connected. It would raise the revenue we need to strengthen Medicare and Social Security and maintain quality schools, housing, and roads. What Trump and Republicans have in mind is the opposite.

Here’s a list of the new tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations contained in the Trump and House GOP tax plans.

Cut the corporate tax rate

At the top of the list is a dramatic cut in the corporate tax rate. Donald Trump wants to reduce the rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, which the Tax Policy Center estimates would cost a staggering $2.2 trillion over 10 years (that’s more than three times what the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, would cost over the same time period). Congressional Republicans proposed a slightly smaller reduction to 20 percent in their 2016 plan, which the Tax Policy Center estimated would cost $1.8 trillion.

The standard justification for these cuts is that they’ll boost business and create jobs. During the 2016 Presidential debates, Trump vowed the cut would “be a job creator like we haven’t seen since Ronald Reagan.” The catch is, U.S. corporations’ tax burden is already comparatively lower than our major trading partners, and U.S. multinationals take advantage of so many loopholes that their effective tax rates are nearly half the statutory rate. Corporations as a whole are actually contributing less to total taxes than they did in the early 1950s: Their share of total tax revenues has dropped from 33 percent down to roughly 10 percent of total revenues.

Eliminate the tax on corporations’ overseas profits

Right now, U.S. corporations pay the U.S. corporate income tax on both domestic and foreign profits, but they can put off paying the tax on their foreign profits by keeping them offshore. This also gives them the incentive to shift profits they earn in the United States offshore. Trump has proposed moving to a territorial tax system, which would eliminate the tax on foreign profits altogether. That way, U.S. corporations would only owe taxes on profits made in the United States and no tax at all on their foreign profits. And the incentive to shift domestic profits offshore would be even greater.

Absent strong measures to prevent multinationals from shifting profits (and possibly jobs) offshore, a territorial corporate tax would create new tax loopholes that could be used for this purpose. Anti-profit shifting provisions are notoriously difficult to develop and enforce.

Cut the tax rate paid by high-income business owners

Businesses that are structured as S corporations, partnerships, LLCs, and sole proprietorships do not pay the corporate income tax at all. Instead, their owners pay taxes on their share of the business’s income at regular individual income tax rates, which range from 10 percent to 39.6 percent.

Trump and the House GOP have proposed capping the tax rate on pass-through business profits that individuals receive. Trump calls for capping the rate at 15 percent, while the House GOP has proposed a 25 percent rate. Since that would significantly lower the tax rate for business owners who are currently in higher tax brackets, this proposal would cost between $2 trillion (for Trump’s proposal) and $412 billion (for the House GOP proposal) over the next decade.

Trump and the House GOP claim this tax cut is for “small” businesses, but most actual small businesses won’t benefit much, if at all, from this change. Over 90 percent of pass-through businesses already fall in the 25 percent tax bracket or lower, and over 50 percent currently fall in the 15 percent bracket or lower. The people who will benefit from the change are very wealthy business owners—such as hedge fund managers, lobbying and law firms, and big businesses—that are organized as pass-throughs but compete with large corporations.

This proposal would also likely create a new avenue for wealthy individuals to avoid taxes, since they could avoid tax by re-characterizing their high salary as business income that would qualify for the lower rate. This can be accomplished, for example, by creating an LLC to receive their salary, then paying the preferential tax rate on the “profits” they receive from the LLC.

Collapse the individual tax rates from seven to three

Both Trump and the House GOP have made a lot of noise about simplifying the tax code for working Americans by reducing the number of tax brackets. Trump’s most recent proposal calls for individual income tax rates of 10, 25, and 35 percent, while the House GOP plan calls for rates of 12, 25, and 33 percent.

Depending upon where the rates kick in, there may or may not be any benefit for those who currently fall in the 25 percent tax bracket or lower. In fact, some moderate-income people may pay more tax than under current law, since other “simplifying” proposals include eliminating personal and dependent exemptions.

Millionaires, on the other hand, would benefit in two ways. The top rate, which currently applies to all income above roughly $400,000, would be cut from 39.6 down to 33 or 35 percent. For someone with $1 million in income, this could be a tax cut of roughly $30,000 or more. They would also get a secondary benefit from the lower rates on portions of their income that fall in the (newly reduced) lower-rate brackets.

Repeal the tax on estates worth more than $5 million

Repealing the estate tax is a perennial GOP proposal. The estate tax is a progressive tax that only applies to the super wealthy: estates worth more than $5.49 million for an individual or nearly $11 million for a couple. Of the millions of people who die each year in the United States, less than 0.2 percent of estates are subject to any estate tax at all.

Since the gain in value of stock, art, real estate, and other capital assets is not taxed unless the assets are sold, the estate tax is designed to ensure that wealthy people pay at least some tax on assets they’ve held onto before those assets are passed down to their lucky heirs. Repealing the estate tax is not about making the tax code simpler or fairer. It’s about enabling millionaires and billionaires to pass valuable assets to their heirs tax-free.

What real tax reform would look like

There are many ways the tax code could be improved to increase fairness and reduce complexity, while still providing adequate revenue to fund investments in education, housing, and transportation. These tax code improvements include eliminating loopholes that reward multinational corporations that offshore profits; ending special subsidies for oil and gas companies; treating income from wealth and work more equitably so that everyone pays their fair share of the cost of government; strengthening tax credits for working families so that those who need them the most can have access; and addressing tax accounting complexity faced by truly small businesses. These steps would constitute real reform.

Instead, the GOP is clinging to the premise that tax cuts will spur huge economic growth that will somehow trickle down to average American workers. History tells us they won’t. It also tells us that tax cuts of this size will lead to budget-busting revenue losses—and that could threaten funding for Medicare, Medicaid, education, and many other foundations of an economy that works for everyone.

So let’s stop calling this plan “reform” and call it what it is. It’s tax cuts. Trillions of dollars’ worth of them for the wealthy and corporations.

Across the country, schools are using similar tactics to humiliate students with outstanding lunch bills. According to a troubling 2014 report from the United States Department of Agriculture, almost half of all school districts used some form of lunch shaming to get parents to pay outstanding bills. These tactics range from making children clean the cafeteria, to forcing them to wear a special wristband, to replacing their hot lunches with alternate food, to throwing away a student’s lunch right in front of their eyes—and the eyes of their peers.

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School lunch debt is not an isolated problem—76 percent of school districts have kids with school lunch debt, according to the School Nutrition Association. But stigmatizing children by singling them out in these cruel and public ways is a complete betrayal of our values as a nation. No child in America should be shamed by their school for their parents’ economic situation.

For many of our most vulnerable children, school lunches provide their most nutritious—or in some cases, their only—meal of the day. Good nutrition gives children a solid foundation for the rest of their lives. It builds their brains, aids the development of their immune systems, and sets them on course for healthy growth. But when children do not receive nutritious food, we see instances of poor academic performance, especially among elementary-age children in math and reading.

Instead of shaming children or putting their health on the line, schools should work with parents to find solutions for the underlying issue. Fortunately, there has been some progress to stop this abhorrent practice. In March, New Mexico passed the first law in the United States to prohibit lunch shaming, setting an example the rest of the country should follow.

That is why I am proud to join Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) to introduce the Anti-Lunch Shaming Act, which would ban schools from singling out children because their parents have not paid their school meal bills. The bill would prohibit shaming tactics, including the practice of throwing a child’s meal away rather than extending credit for meals. It would shift direct communications about debt to the parent, not the child. This is how it ought to be—a child should not be a go between for an institution and a parent.

The time has come to ensure that students no longer walk into the cafeteria afraid of humiliation. We have a moral obligation to end lunch shaming once and for all.

That leaves House leaders in a tight spot, since their bill is deeply unpopular with lawmakers and voters. Late Wednesday night, in an effort to gain support from the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, they added new provisions that make the bill’s Medicaid cuts—which already slashed the program by $880 billion—even more extreme.

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The “manager’s amendment” includes a provision that encourages states to impose work requirements on adults who receive Medicaid. In theory, the provision ensures that “able-bodied adults” who receive Medicaid benefits are either working or looking for work. But in reality, this amendment could take health insurance away from Americans with disabilities or serious illnesses, and even new moms experiencing complications from childbirth—stripping them of the health care that would enable them to return to work.

Here are three Americans who would be at risk of losing needed coverage under House leaders’ latest proposal:

Robin Conrad — Center Ossippee, New Hampshire

In 2012, Robin was laid off and lost her health insurance. She went without health insurance while she worked temp jobs, until she was hired full-time nearly two years later. In 2015, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer and was eventually forced to take long-term disability leave. Her employer terminated her job—and her health insurance—when she still had pressing health care needs.

Robin can get the medication she needs because she’s covered by the ACA’s Medicaid expansion. She noted that without it, “I probably would not have been able to get coverage even if I could afford it, because my situation would have been considered a pre-existing condition.”

Sarah Borgstede — Belleville, IL

Sarah was married and was unemployed when she became a new mom.  She and her husband decided that she should stay home with their baby boy, so that they wouldn’t have to worry about paying for child care.  Her husband continued working as a musician and a teacher, but neither job offered insurance—he either purchased private insurance went without it entirely.

Sarah’s husband passed away when he was just 28, after a long battle with sepsis. Sarah says that if she been forced to look for work within 60 days of having a child—like the new Medicaid work requirements demand—she would have needed to work full-time just to afford child care, while her husband continued working 80 hours a week to cover the rest of the bills. Then, Sarah says, “my son would have grown up without both of his parents.”

Ericka McClung — Clendenin, West Virginia

Six weeks after she qualified for Medicaid coverage under the ACA, Ericka found out she had Stage 3 breast cancer.  After chemotherapy, radiation, and a double mastectomy she’s now cancer free, but she needs to continue hormone treatments for another eight years.

“If the cancer came back I could never afford the treatments,” Ericka says. “My whole entire family put together could not afford my treatments.”

Between the emerging administration, and a Congress that is hell-bent on taking our country backwards—not just to before Obama, but to before Roosevelt’s New Deal—there is a clear need for citizen vigilance and activism. And Americans are meeting the moment: They’re flocking to marches, airports, and town halls; donating record amounts of money; and subscribing to responsible journalistic outlets that hold the government accountable.

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Americans are showing up in record numbers, but it doesn’t actually take that many people to move the government. The Tea Party proved this in 2009, when a small segment of the electorate organized to thwart President Obama. It rallied its members against a president who had decisively won both the popular vote and the Electoral College, and whose party held majorities in both Congressional chambers—a president who did, in fact, enjoy a sweeping popular mandate for his campaign promises.  Yet by focusing their energy with laser-like precision on a local, defensive strategy, the Tea Party became a force in American politics.

What the Tea Party did was a Civics 101 lesson on constituent power: They engaged with their members of Congress, and reminded them that they have opinions—and that they vote. And they did it week after week after week.

Now we’re in the beginnings of a new movement, and we can use a similar playbook.

It worked here in Roanoke when our Congressman, Republican Bob Goodlatte, proposed legislation to gut the congressional ethics office. Constituents flooded the office with so many calls that his staff seemed dazed when they picked up the phone. Then, when the phone lines were continuously busy, 12 of us decided we were concerned enough to visit his district office in person.

We knew that it was our Representative’s staff’s job to listen to our concerns and report them to Mr. Goodlatte.  But Congressional offices will also try to control the public narrative, and even silence constituents.  We have now visited Mr. Goodlatte’s district office three times, and we were denied entry each time.

On our first visit we were forced to meet with his staff in a lobby on a different floor, where we delivered New Year’s cards with our messages (one of which read “Happy New Year!  We expect better!”). On our second visit we were told the same lobby was private property and no longer available for constituent meetings, so we asked his staff to meet with us outside.  There, a group of teachers and medical and insurance professionals urged Mr. Goodlatte to vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) unless he had a health care proposal to replace it.  By our third visit a week later, building security physically blocked the lobby door to keep us outside. Once again, we called Mr. Goodlatte’s staff to meet us in the winter cold so we could deliver 80 letters from constituents asking Goodlatte to vote against a federal “personhood” bill that would criminalize abortion, in vitro fertilization, and some forms of birth control.

Like the woman from Utah who sent a message to her senator via pizza delivery when his voice mail was full, we have learned to improvise and be creative.  We’ll do whatever it takes to make sure our members of Congress hear our voices.

The first weeks of the Trump administration have shown that we can win some fights if we stand together. Congressional Republicans retreated from Goodlatte’s anti-ethics legislation, and the calls and visits demanding a replacement for the ACA before a reckless repeal throws millions of people off their health insurance have forced some Republicans to admit privately that they need to slow down and govern.

Civics 101 is working again.

Right now, we have the chance to do even more. This week, members of Congress are in their home states and districts. It is their job to listen to us, so find a local group and make sure that they do. We cannot afford to sit on the sidelines.

This is our republic, entrusted to each and every citizen.  Every call and every visit to our representatives is another beat of the heart of our democracy.  Our system only works when we make sure our representatives are not legislating for themselves or their lobbyists, but for those who gave them the power to govern in the first place: The American people.

From my seat in the United States Senate, I can attest that the last eight years have certainly not been free of strife or confrontation, to say the least. But despite all the political posturing and polarization, the past eight years have also shown us at our best. We have sought to build up our fellow citizens and fellow human beings instead of tearing them down, and made progress in the face of adversity.

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Nowhere is the hope and promise of the last eight years better exemplified than in the progress we have made in achieving equality for the LGBTQ members of our American family.

In January 2009, when President Obama first took office, it was not a federal hate crime to attack someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Same-sex marriage was only legal in two states. LGBTQ people could not serve openly in the military, or access their partners’ survivor benefits or health insurance. They were anxious and unsure—should a crisis arise—about whether they would be allowed to make medical decisions for their families, or see them in the hospital during an emergency, or keep their home if their partner died.

For over two hundred years, the story of America has been one of striving to live up to our founding ideal “that all men are created equal.” Slowly—often too slowly—we have broken down the barriers that divide us; that say some of us are more equal than others.  For the LGBTQ community, many of the biggest, most daunting barriers that they had faced for generations finally came down during President Obama’s administration. The millions of men and women within the LGBTQ community, who struggled for so long to be treated equally and enjoy all the same rights and opportunities as their fellow citizens, can attest to just how momentous the last eight years have been.

With the historic passage of the Affordable Care Act, it is no longer legal to deny health coverage to anyone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The President also decided that the government would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court, even before the Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional. He took this path because he believes, as he said during his second inaugural address, “that the most evident of truths—that all of us are created equal—is the star that guides us still.” And when the Supreme Court finally affirmed that “love is love” by ensuring marriage equality in every corner of our nation, President Obama declared it “a victory for America” and his administration moved quickly to implement the court’s ruling.

From my position at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, I have been privileged to work with the President and members of his administration to advance the rights of the LGBTQ community in Congress. We worked together to pass the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act, repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act with new protections for the LGBTQ community. In an historic, bipartisan vote, we passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in the Senate to ensure employers could no longer fire someone for who they are or whom they love. And though the House failed to act on this legislation, President Obama issued an executive order in July 2014 that secured this right for the 28 million Americans working for federal contractors.

But President Obama and I both know that as long as anyone is scared to put their spouse’s photo on their desk at work, or fears being evicted from their apartment if they have a same-sex partner, then our nation has not come far enough or broken down enough barriers.

That’s why I have worked with my House and Senate colleagues, President Obama’s administration, and an extraordinary coalition of grassroots and civil rights groups to craft the Equality Act, landmark legislation that would extend the same non-discrimination protections that so many of us take for granted in employment, housing, public accommodations, and more to our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.

We are proud President Obama endorsed our bill, one that his White House described as “historic legislation that would advance the cause of equality for millions of Americans.”

When the new administration comes into office on January 20, we will face a White House that is indifferent at best and hostile at worst when it comes to LGBTQ rights. It’s a daunting moment, especially in the face of all our gains over the last eight years. But these new challenges only make it more important for Americans who care about the rights of our fellow citizens to keep fighting—not just to fiercely defend the gains we have made, but to continue pushing on for full equality.

On the day we introduced the Equality Act, I knew the struggle to pass it would not be an easy one.  But I was convinced then, and I remain convinced today, that we will ultimately succeed. The arc of the moral universe is long, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, but it bends towards justice. But, it only bends when good people fight for justice. President Obama’s legacy on LGBTQ rights shows us that with hard work and struggle, we can bend the arc quite far in just a few years.

Now, it’s up to the rest of us to keep up the struggle, to do everything we can to ensure that justice reigns in our nation—and that every American, regardless of race, color, creed, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity, can live freely and equally in the eyes of the law.

Editor’s note: TalkPoverty presents this series in collaboration with the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality.

That upbeat report is likely to be the last burst of good news that the poor will see for quite some time. Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, and the bellicose tribunes of the hard right are in complete charge of the federal government. Their hostility to such crucial anti-poverty efforts as the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, food stamps, and substantial increases in the minimum wage is hardly a secret.

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With both houses of Congress under Republican control, big tax cuts (heavily weighted toward the richest among us) are a virtual certainty. As a result, trillions of dollars in revenues will likely be lost and Congress will be on the hunt for spending cuts to offset them. Social programs will be among the first items in their sights.

We’ve already seen something of a blueprint for what’s coming: Paul Ryan’s wish list was in his 2015 budget proposal. Nearly 70% of its heart-stopping spending cuts would have come from programs designed to help moderate or low-income people. Last spring Ryan came up with another proposal—this one specifically addressing poverty. He recommended, among other things, cuts to unemployment assistance, a phase-out of the Head Start program, and rollbacks in the federal Pell Grant program, which provides desperately needed assistance to low-income students pursuing higher education.

Ryan’s poverty plans seem peculiarly designed to increase the hardships faced by the poor.

Trump’s approach will likely align with Ryan’s, since his fundamental take on poverty is that people are poor because they are not willing to work. In an interview with Sean Hannity last year, Trump was asked if he would be able to lift America’s 50 million poor people out of poverty.

“I would,” said Trump. “I would create incentives for people to work. People don’t have an incentive. They make more money by sitting there doing nothing than they make if they have a job.”

That, of course, was ominous. The man who is now president-elect did not seem to know that the majority of those who are poor in America are children, people with disabilities, and seniors. Nor did he seem to understand that many adults who are poor actually have jobs and are working every day. There are also millions of people in America who are jobless but frantically seeking work, and millions more who are working part-time but would much rather have full-time employment.

Trump has never given any indication that he knows much or cares much about the poor. Early in his campaign he seemed to be strongly against a higher minimum wage, one of the most important weapons in the anti-poverty arsenal. A year ago, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program, Trump said, “Our taxes are too high, our wages are too high, everything is too high.” And in one of the GOP primary debates, when asked if he would raise the minimum wage, he replied, “I would not do it.”

Since then, Trump has modified his position somewhat, saying variously that he would look at the possibility of a higher minimum wage, that people need more money, and that states should determine whether minimum wage levels should be raised.

It is, of course, always difficult to glean what Trump’s position is on any given policy. His approaches to policy matters are typically incoherent. But there is nothing that he and the rest of his party have said that would signal anything other than a relentless assault on programs that aid lower-income Americans. Paul Ryan has long been trying to undermine Social Security and Medicare—programs that are cherished by his own Republican constituents. Trump has said that he would protect the benefits of both programs, but who knows what he would do when the tax cuts kick in and deficits start to rise.

For those concerned about the well-being of lower-income individuals and families, it’s dismaying to hear how falsely the right has portrayed the state of the economy during the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency. Congressional Republicans have shamelessly bad-mouthed the economy at every turn, and their goal was not just to win elections. By trashing all things Obama, they have laid the groundwork for their campaign to undo many of the policies and initiatives that have helped so many Americans, including the poor, since the darkest days of the Great Recession.

This false portrayal of the economy was absorbed by an awful lot of voters. As Derek Thompson wrote in The Atlantic magazine:

“More than half of Republicans think that unemployment has increased under Obama. It has in fact fallen from 10% in 2010 to below 5% today. The labor market is in its longest continuous expansion ever, and the last 12 months have been the best period for wage growth this century.”

Memories are short. When Obama took office, the economy was hemorrhaging 700,000 to 800,000 jobs a month. Since 2010, the economy has grown by nearly 200,000 jobs a month. Twenty million more Americans have health insurance coverage as a result of the Affordable Care Act. Hillary Clinton may have lost Michigan in the presidential election, but if not for Obama and a willing Congress, America would have lost the automobile industry. Try to imagine the impact of that on Michigan and the rest of the country.

Sure, there are plenty of people who are still hurting. But the way to address the concerns of those who are struggling is not to demolish the policies that have already helped millions. We should build upon those policies, improve them, and make every effort to expand the economy and raise the living standards of those who continue to struggle.

What is difficult for so many people of goodwill to comprehend is that improving the lives of poor and low-income Americans is not the objective of conservative politicians. The overriding goals of Donald Trump and his allies in Congress are the same as the goals of the conservative movement throughout the modern era: to expand the wealth, status, and power of the privileged few at the expense of everyone else. That’s why big tax cuts for the rich are the top priority.

All of history tells us that the poor will suffer when Donald Trump comes into office. Just trace how the poor have fared under various administrations from, say, the beginning of the 1930s until now. There’s a reason why George H.W. Bush ridiculed his own party’s trickle-down theories as “voodoo economics.”

In contrast, here is what the policies of the Obama Administration have led to, as recently described by Bob Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

“For the first time since 1999, all three key indicators of well-being in the annual Census data moved decisively in the right direction in 2015. The number of uninsured Americans fell by 4 million from 2014 to 2015, on top of a drop of nearly 9 million the year before, with the uninsured rate falling to a historically low 9.1%. The typical household’s income rose by 5.2% or $2,798, after adjusting for inflation, the largest increase on record with data back to 1967. The poverty rate dropped from 14.8% to 13.5%, tying the largest improvement since 1968. Moreover, data to date for 2016 indicate further progress so far this year.”

That was the good news. The bad news is that President-elect Donald Trump and a like-minded Congress are barreling ahead with plans that will undo much, if not most, of that very substantial progress. Unless advocates for the poor in and out of Congress mobilize for a fight like they haven’t seen in decades, an awful lot of poor people will face many long years of extreme—and I do mean extreme—suffering.

Unfortunately, the program has failed to deliver on its promise, and it has left some families in even worse condition.

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Since TANF was signed into law in 1996, the number of children living in extreme poverty—defined as no more than $2 per person per day—has doubled, from 1.4 million to 2.8 million children. That’s evidence of a failed approach, not a successful model we should apply to other federal programs, as many Republicans would now like to do.

Our country is capable of developing a system that will create brighter futures for poor families with children; ensuring a robust safety net for families when they can’t work; and preparing impoverished parents to succeed in today’s labor market.

To achieve these goals, here’s what we need to do:

First, we must hold states accountable for properly spending the funding they get from Washington. A key premise underpinning TANF was that if states were given more flexibility they would do a better job providing families with a strong safety net when they can’t work and they need help to obtain a good job.  But two decades of evidence has shown that when states get a pot of money accompanied by few federal standards, they will act in their elected leaders’ self-interest, not in the interest of poor children and their families.

The TANF block grant has thus become welfare for states. Most of them use the money once provided directly to poor families to instead plug state budget holes—some of which were created when these same states enacted tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy. In 2015, states spent only about half of their TANF funds on the program’s core purposes—work preparation, child care, and direct assistance. My own state of Texas, which so often neglects disadvantaged children, spent less than 14 cents of every TANF dollar towards these ends. Nationwide, states are spending only about 1 cent of every TANF dollar on education and training for recipients to find long-term and good-paying employment.

That’s not what Congress envisioned, and we need to ensure meaningful accountability.

Second, we need to eliminate provisions that restrict access to the education and training that low-income parents need to succeed. TANF recipients—mostly single parents raising their children—should not be denied the opportunity to pursue education and training that will prepare them for better jobs.  And yet, in many states a parent receiving TANF assistance would not be able to attend a community college or university to obtain the skills they need for a family-supporting career. Instead they might be forced into a for-profit job-training program in a low-wage industry, or a work assignment with no promise of upward mobility.

Preparing disadvantaged individuals for jobs that are in demand offers significant long-term payoffs. For example, Project Quest in San Antonio has enabled many individuals to escape poverty by training for in-demand jobs that pay a living wage, in sectors such as health care and bioscience, information technology and security, and aerospace. We need to ensure that struggling individuals have access to those kinds of high-quality opportunities.

Third, we need to hold states accountable for providing a safety net for families who either can’t work or can’t find work. The 1996 welfare law contained a number of incentives for states not to serve families who need cash assistance—and states have responded by serving fewer and fewer. In 1996, for every 100 families with children living in poverty, 68 received cash assistance. By 2014, TANF reached just 23 of 100 poor families. Texas is one of a dozen states that provide income assistance to less than one in ten poor families with children.

Moreover, the value of TANF funding has fallen by more than one-third since 1996 because it was never adjusted for inflation. We must therefore provide more, and change the incentives so that states are encouraged to assist more families—those who are able to transition to work, and those who need assistance because they are unable to work.

TANF was enacted 20 years ago on a bipartisan basis.  It’s past time for us to revisit the law and improve it on a bipartisan basis as well.  Unfortunately, congressional Republicans continue to reject any genuine change, content to talk about reform but offering only kinder talk with less help. Indeed, Speaker Ryan would double-down on this broken system to make other types of assistance—such as housing and nutrition—even harder for struggling families to obtain.

We need to heed the lessons of the past two decades and create a new approach—one that will truly put good jobs within reach, while strengthening the safety net to keep families from falling into poverty when they are experiencing hard times.

While I was there, I also had the opportunity to speak with Representative Mark Pocan (D-WI), First Vice Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.  Rep. Pocan’s district borders on the Speaker’s hometown of Janesville, and the two congressmen share representation of Rock County as well.

Despite seeing the same conditions on the ground, and their constituents having similar experiences in our economy, the congressmen’s ideas about how to reduce poverty in their state and throughout America could not be more different.

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Here is my conversation with Rep. Pocan:

Greg Kaufmann: Congressman, your district shares Rock County with House Speaker Paul Ryan’s district.  Can you tell us about the changes you have seen in terms of people’s economic struggles in the area in recent years?

Rep. Mark Pocan: Yes, I share Rock County with Paul, so I have the western side, and he has the eastern side.  I also grew up in Kenosha, which is in his district, so I know the area well.  We used to have a big auto plant, American Motors, for many, many years.  Then it went away.  And we went through some of the difficulties that the Speaker’s hometown of Janesville—which is in Rock County—has more recently gone through with GM leaving.

A couple of things that really stand out.  In Janesville—having an auto plant where a lot of people had good family-supporting wages, and then having that industry and the industries that fed into it really impacted, a lot of people are out of work who had jobs that had good salaries.

Also, poverty programs in Rock County are pretty significant in helping people either transition because of a loss of a major employer, or because a number of employers over the years have left and made life more difficult.

So this is certainly a district that you would not describe as affluent.  In fact, just the opposite.  It’s had a lot of job and manufacturing industry loss in the last 20 years and that’s impacted good family-supporting wages.

GK: From a public policy perspective, when you think of the needs in the area and the way we combat poverty—what comes to mind?

MP: I am on the House Budget Committee.  And when Paul was the Chair last session, he would often put a lot of ideas around poverty out there, which largely were around block grants.  These days they now call them “opportunity granting,” but the bottom line is a lot of these ideas are really stealth ways to cut programs that assist people in poverty.

Also, if you block grant all these effective safety net programs—like housing, food stamps, and Medicaid—and just give a lump sum of money to states, I don’t have a high level of confidence that the right thing will happen for people who are living in poverty.

Take Wisconsin, for example. Governor Scott Walker hasn’t accepted federal monies for a high speed rail program—in fact, he turned back over $800 million dollars in federal monies before he even got sworn in, including $150 million for light rail even though we have the fourth worst roads in the nation and a lack of adequate funding for transit.  He was trying to make a point about not taking federal dollars.  So those are some of the bad decisions we’ve seen in just one state, much less bad decisions you could see in other states. We just can’t rely on all of these governors to continue the level of [federal] programs that are there now.  So conservatives say block granting is about giving flexibility to local governments to most strategically use the money, but the reality is people could very likely just have less money and less help during a difficult time in their lives as they’re trying to find work.

GK: I’m sure you’ve had that conversation plenty of times with Speaker Ryan. What do [conservatives] say to the fact that the TANF block grant [has gone] from over two-thirds of families with children in poverty getting assistance, to less than one-fourth getting assistance?

MP: Well, they just keep focusing on the flexibility to allow states and local government to best direct money.  They know better than the federal government.  It’s really more of a rhetorical exchange.  They don’t actually address the facts.

GK: In contrast to focusing on block grants as conservatives prefer, what do you think a good anti-poverty proposal would do?

MP: I think most people would argue that the best poverty program is a job and anything we can do to help people find that job we should do. That means helping people acquire the skills to find a job with a family-supporting wage, so their families have the opportunity to live the American dream.  It involves things like job training, and addressing childcare needs, investing in early childhood education, and making sure people can afford higher education.   And of course increasing wages, including the minimum wage.  Right now people are taking second jobs to try to get by, and that’s taking away from spending time with their families.  So there’s a quality of life difference that definitely exists when you don’t have that stronger wage.

I’ve also always been a big fan of apprenticeship programs.  I think Germany has about a tenfold use of apprenticeship-type programs per capita compared to us.  There’s are a lot of things like that we can do to help people get on-the-job training that can turn into a good paying job, or help people overcome barriers—people who literally are going out there every single day trying to find something and can’t.  But, you know, just simply providing less resources for people in poverty and putting artificial work requirements—that actually are barriers to the time and effort needed to find a good job—are going to be counterproductive compared to things that actually help people.

GK: Janesville and Rock County actually seem like a case study in why Speaker Ryan and other conservatives’ views on poverty are entirely wrong. It’s clear that they’ve had auto plants shutting down, offshoring of jobs—that is not the fault of workers who are struggling in poverty.  Do you think Speaker Ryan is blind to this reality, or are his proposals on poverty purely ideological?

MP: Paul is a neocon ideologue, and this is how they think you solve it, based on their papers and all the rest.  But the fact is Janesville is the antithesis of their kind of argument that poverty is about someone being too lazy to work, or someone [not being] out there trying to find a job.  I would argue too many of my colleagues are millionaires and a bit too removed from poverty—that they just don’t understand the reality of the on-the-ground experience.  In fact, too often it seems like until a Republican has something happen to a family member of theirs, it’s not real.  Until they find out they have a kid who’s gay, or a kid who gets addicted to heroin, it’s not an issue, and then as soon as it is a personal issue for them, then suddenly they care.  And unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of people in Congress who are directly affected by poverty.

This interview was edited for length.

For the first time since 1880, it is now more likely for young adults ages 18-34 to live with parents than with a partner or on their own.  On average, parents also provide young adults with about $2,200 annually in material assistance—such as food, educational expenses, or direct cash assistance—throughout the transition to adulthood.

But for the tens of thousands of young people exiting or aging out of the foster care system each year, most often when they turn 18, parental support is not an option. Without parents as a safety net, these young people face a vast array of extreme disadvantages. They are more likely than the average youth to drop out of high school, be unemployed, and rely on public assistance. Many of these young adults find themselves in prison, homeless, or as parents earlier or less prepared than they would have liked. Any one of these outcomes can result in immediate and long-term hardship. For example, adults without a high school degree have an unemployment rate of 8 percent, compared to 5.4 percent for those who have one. Interaction with the criminal justice system can make it difficult to obtain employment, housing, education and training, and more. And homelessness causes and exacerbates health problems, ranging from communicable diseases to behavioral health problems.

Overall, the cost of aging out is devastating to these youth and to our society.

Since 2000, more than 340,000 young people have aged out of foster care without permanent family connections. Taxpayers and communities pay nearly $300,000 in social costs over the lifetime of the average young person who ages out of foster care. Even conservative estimates find that the overall social costs of these young people to the United States hover around $8 billion every year. Yet policymakers have real opportunities available to help some of our nation’s most vulnerable youth and save public dollars.

In an effort to address some of these challenges, Congress enacted the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008. This law permits states to receive federal support for young adults who remain in foster care through age 21, while they are working or pursuing education and training. In short, the legislation allows young people to remain connected to their foster families as they transition to adulthood.

So far, the results of the Fostering Connections Act have been encouraging. It is associated with an increased likelihood that these young people will complete at least one year of college, which can result in higher earnings. Other studies suggest that extending foster care to age 21 is related to a reduction in the number of foster youth who become homeless. Another study revealed that remaining in extended care is associated with less reliance on public assistance and a lowered likelihood of being arrested.

Disappointingly, fewer than half of states have chosen to take up the federal option to extend foster care to age 18 under this legislation. Considering the effects of aging out and the proven benefits of this additional support, this is a commonsense choice that all states should take. It not only will give some young people a better shot—it will also likely save on social costs that instead can be invested in housing, education, training, or other initiatives that support youth aging out.

The cost of the status quo is too high and the potential benefits for extending support to older foster youth are too promising for states to justify their continued inaction.

I read that you will roll out your new poverty task force’s proposal tomorrow, and I wonder if you remember me. I testified at one of the hearings you hosted on the War on Poverty two years ago. Of the 17 expert witnesses who participated in the series, I was the only one who actually lived in poverty.

At the time I felt like I had the weight of so many people on my shoulders—people who don’t normally have a voice in Congress.  How would Congress ever know what they should do to address poverty if they don’t ever speak to us?

I did my best to share my story and those of others in my community, and then I had the opportunity to meet you.  As you reached to shake my hand, I said I wanted a hug. It was my way of trying to make our connection more personal—a reflection of my hope that we would begin to work together to make change around hunger and poverty.

As important as you said the issue was to you, I was sure that you would make a place in your work for me, my Witnesses to Hunger brothers and sisters, and many others who are living in poverty.  Since 2008, we have used our photographs and testimonials to show the world what the experience of poverty is like and to advocate for serious change at the local, state, and national level.

So in the past two years, I reached out to your office numerous times.  So did the people at Drexel University’s Center for Hunger-Free Communities, where Witnesses to Hunger is based.  Your office never responded to us.  Unfortunately, people such as me and my husband, and many others who are struggling, continue to be shut out of your conversation in Washington.

As you may remember from my testimony, my husband and I work hard to provide for our family.  I work at a community recreation center on afterschool programming for children. In recent years, my husband has worked the deli at a grocery store, overnight at a meat-packing plant, and as a security guard.  He has endured two-hour commutes, worked night shifts, held multiple jobs at the same time—made the kinds of sacrifices a parent makes to try to lift up a family.

Yet despite our hard work, we’ve remained in poverty. Our three children suffer from epilepsy and asthma and take life-sustaining medication.  We’ve rarely had benefits like paid leave that allow us to miss work without taking a hit to a paycheck. In 2008, our son was having seizures, and I had to leave my job to take care of him.  Because of the lost income, we eventually lost our home and were homeless.

Should any person in America end up homeless for taking care of a sick child?

It’s clear as we look at how many people are struggling on low wages, forced to make impossible choices between basic necessities, that we still have plenty of work to do.  It’s also clear that you could still learn a lot from me and many others who are experiencing poverty.

In your first speech as Speaker you called for combining many safety net programs into a single block grant. But I know you realize that poverty would be twice as high without the safety net, with nearly 30 percent of Americans living below the poverty line.  What would our nation look like with 30 percent poverty?  We can thank the safety net for the fact that we don’t know the answer to that question.

You and I also both know that more than half of people in America will be poor or near poor for at least a year during their working years, so the safety net is there for all of us. But it needs to be strengthened. We are already cutting poverty in half with our current safety net.  Now, let’s set our sights on cutting poverty in half again.  And let’s do it without messing up what is already working.

I hope your task force’s proposal builds on the things that we already know work—for example, we know the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) reduces food insecurity and prevents hospitalizations, housing assistance helps young children stay healthy, and preschool helps kids reach their full potential. But I’m pretty sure we will see the same old dangerous ideas like block granting wrapped up in new pretty packaging.

Mr. Speaker, the cameras have long moved on since I had the opportunity to introduce myself to you.  I continue to live in the struggle with my Witness sisters and brothers and millions of others in poverty, and we continue to be shut out of your conversation in Washington.

Meet with us.  Let us show you what’s going on in our neighborhoods and our homes, and share our ideas about solutions and change.

Your friend,

Tianna Gaines-Turner
Philadelphia, PA

In 2014, 46.7 million Americans—more than one in seven—lived in poverty, and nearly half of Americans will experience at least a year of poverty or near-poverty during their working years. Along with causing tremendous human hardship and suffering, poverty is enormously costly to the United States. It hampers educational attainment, reduces health, decreases workforce productivity, and damages the social cohesion of communities. Child poverty alone costs the United States an estimated $672 billion every year—nearly 4 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.

Poverty is not inevitable, particularly not in the richest nation on earth. Rather, its persistence is in large part a result of misplaced priorities and deliberate policy choices. Indeed, it has already been shown—in both past experience and extensive research—that policy choices can make a difference in the lives of low-income families, helping them reach and remain in the middle class. Recently, however, politicians and policymakers have lacked the political will to make many of these policies a priority.

Most good policies are not costless. But the price tags for many poverty-reducing programs pale in comparison with the billions of dollars the United States already spends on tax breaks that primarily benefit wealthy individuals and corporations—funds that could be used to provide adequate nutrition or access to high-quality child care, reduce homelessness, or invest in low-income children and workers. What’s more, the price tags of smart policies do not reflect the substantial public savings the nation experiences from investments that improve health, increase educational attainment, enhance workforce productivity, and boost the economy. To take just one example, every dollar spent on benefits in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, generates an estimated $1.70 in additional economic activity.

The United States can afford to dramatically reduce poverty and increase economic opportunity. Here are four ways in which the U.S. Congress could make an enormous dent in poverty and the opportunity gap—each costing significantly less than the tax breaks Congress currently gives to the wealthy.

Boost effective tax credits for low-income workers and families

The Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC, is one of the nation’s most effective anti-poverty tools, encouraging work and boosting family income. In 2014, it helped more than 6.2 million Americans—including 3.2 million children—avoid poverty. However, low-income workers without qualifying children receive very little help from the EITC; indeed, these so-called childless workers are the only group whom the tax code taxes further into poverty. Lawmakers across the political spectrum—including Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Paul Ryan (R-WI)—have long called for improving the EITC for childless workers. President Barack Obama’s and Speaker Ryan’s similar proposals, which would double the maximum credit to more than $1,000 and lower the minimum age of eligibility from 25 to 21, would help nearly 13 million workers, lifting more than half a million people out of poverty.

The Child Tax Credit, or CTC, delivers a credit of up to $1,000 per child to families with children. The credit protected about 3 million people from poverty in 2015, including 1.6 million children. Because it is not fully refundable, however, the CTC misses the poorest children entirely, and only about 20 percent of the CTC’s benefits go to families who earn less than $30,000, compared with 60 percent of the EITC.

Expanding the CTC—as proposed by the Center for American Progress in a recent report—would ensure that the credit does not skip the families who need it most. The proposal would also create a supplemental credit—delivered monthly—for families with children younger than age 3. This would nearly double the number of children younger than age 17 who are lifted out of poverty by the CTC and would protect more than two-and-a-half times as many children younger than age 3 from poverty than does the current law.

Reduce hunger and food insecurity

Each year, SNAP benefits, formerly known as food stamps, protect millions of struggling Americans from poverty, including children, individuals with disabilities, seniors, and low-wage working families. SNAP’s nutrition assistance also boosts health outcomes, educational attainment, and earnings over the long term. Currently, the value of SNAP benefits is based on the Thrifty Food Plan, the lowest-cost of the four food plans developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA. At an average of just $1.41 per person for each meal, SNAP benefits—while critical—provide only the “bare bones” of nutritional adequacy. Many families are unable or barely able to stretch these modest benefits until the end of the month: Recipients use nearly 80 percent of SNAP benefits within the first half of each month. Switching to the Low-Cost Food Plan, the second lowest-cost of the USDA’s four plans—would increase SNAP benefits 30 percent. This would dramatically reduce hunger, food insecurity, and poverty, as well as boost long-run economic mobility for struggling families.

End homelessness

Homelessness and housing instability are leading causes—and consequences—of poverty. On any given night in 2015, more than 560,000 Americans faced homelessness, a problem primarily caused by a lack of affordable housing. The housing voucher program plays a crucial role in keeping at-risk households stably housed, yet 3 in 4 eligible families receive no housing assistance due to scant funding.

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Housing Commission calls for reforming and expanding the Housing Choice Voucher program in order to end homelessness in the United States. Their proposal would provide rental assistance to all 3 million currently unassisted renting households that are extremely low income and cost burdened, meaning that they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing and utilities.

Allow all families to access high-quality child care for their children

Child care is an economic necessity for most families with children: 65 percent of children younger than age 6 have all of their available parents in the workforce. But its cost is prohibitive for many families and especially for low-income families. In 37 states and the District of Columbia, the annual cost of child care for an infant is more than half of what a full-time, minimum-wage worker in that state earns. Existing child care assistance reaches only a small portion of eligible families and is much lower than actual child care costs.

Unable to forego critical income from work, many parents have little choice but to seek out low-quality care, potentially putting their children’s health, safety, and development at risk. The Center for American Progress recently proposed a tax credit that would expand access to affordable high-quality child care, allowing more low-income parents to participate in the work force while promoting their children’s healthy development. High-quality child care is an investment in the nation’s human capital: It increases children’s school readiness and reduces the educational disparities—based on socioeconomic status—that can be predicted long before a child even starts kindergarten.

Conclusion

Radically reducing poverty in America may sound like a costly proposition. But compared with the billions of dollars that lawmakers give away to the wealthy each year, Congress could make a huge dent in poverty at a bargain price. What’s more, investments that reduce poverty today will provide enormous economic opportunity for generations to come. Prioritizing the nation’s struggling families is an investment Americans cannot afford not to make.

In recent weeks, that is the question I continuously find myself asking as I read media accounts of Zika and follow the funding debate in Congress.

Somewhere along the way the focus shifted.  What began as coordinating a response to Zika that is rooted in smart public health policy and caring for our fellow citizens became a funding fight on Capitol Hill in which many conservatives seem completely divorced from reality—particularly the reality of low-income women and children of color living in the South.

This disconnect is not due to a lack of information.  Indeed, lawmakers know well that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found that Zika will likely wreak disproportionate havoc on the southern United States. Due to an increase in summer mosquito populations, the South could be a breeding ground for Zika transmission.  Moreover, as the summer months approach, the CDC reports that the number of Zika cases is on the rise.

The Obama Administration certainly hasn’t ignored the urgency of this moment. In February, the Administration announced a $1.9 billion plan to track transmission of the virus, increase testing, institute vaccine research, and prioritize access to health care for low-income pregnant women who are at-risk.  Since then, the President has met with governors from each state and announced a coalition of public health experts and local and national decision-makers who will work together to address transmission of the virus. Yet proposals in the House and Senate both fall well short of what is needed to address the current public health threat.

As the CDC has made clear, the most common way to contract Zika is simply through bites from infected mosquitos. The virus thrives in warm environments with standing water, making low-income people in the South who live in homes without air conditioning, or lack door and window screens, particularly vulnerable.  Additionally, people working jobs that require extended periods of time outside—such as farmworkers and other predominately low-wage workers—are more likely to be exposed to the virus.  Zika can also be transmitted sexually by men to their partners.

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In the South, poverty stricken communities overwhelmingly include people of color who lack access to the kinds of things that will help protect wealthier populations—like health education, livable wages, adequate shelter, and other social support services. Being economically disadvantaged also often translates to a lack of access to comprehensive health services, including reproductive and maternal health care and pediatric care. This is particularly important with regard to Zika, since transmission of the virus among pregnant women can lead to severe birth defects in fetuses, including a congenital brain condition known as microcephaly which can result in developmental disabilities in children.

There is currently no treatment available for microcephaly. Over time, the direct costs associated with caring for a child with the condition could easily exceed hundreds of thousands of dollars for a family—including costs for child care, health care, and lost wages due to providing for a child with a disability.  Expenses like these will increase hardship for low-income families who are already living on the brink.

That is why low-income women need comprehensive counseling and access to the full range of contraceptive methods to prevent unplanned pregnancy right now. Both male and female condoms must be made widely available.  When pregnant women test positive for Zika and want to carry their pregnancies to term, timely prenatal and postnatal care are critical.  Low-income women of color are more likely to delay care and medical treatment for many reasons, including a lack of access to healthcare, no paid leave at work, or inadequate childcare options.  In the event that a woman has to make the decision to terminate her pregnancy, safe abortion should be part of the full continuum of reproductive health care options made available.

With funding for these urgent needs currently held up in Congress, state and local public health responders have been slow to scale plans at the community level. Many local health systems are already operating under strained or inadequate resources, both programmatically and financially, and they need the federal government to step up and respond to these pressing public health concerns.  It comes down to this: we simply do not have time to waste.

What will it take for Congress to recognize the urgency in addressing Zika? We have the opportunity, resources, and plans to protect the American people from this virus.  However, without access to necessary comprehensive health care and social support services, low-income women and families could be looking at even deeper levels of poverty and poorer health outcomes on the horizon.

At least that’s the argument in a recent article by Vox’s Dylan Matthews. Matthews cites new research finding that the rich and middle class agree on about 90 percent of bills that come before the United States Congress. He adds:

That leaves only 185 bills on which the rich and the middle class disagree…

…on these 185 bills [in which the rich and middle class disagree], the rich got their preferred outcome 53 percent of the time and the middle class got what they wanted 47 percent of the time. The difference between the two is not statistically significant.

Of course, that leaves out another group of Americans entirely: the poor. Admittedly, individuals cycle in and out of poverty so the notion of who is poor isn’t static. But that doesn’t change the fact that the poor are not only the least-represented group in American society, they’re also the contingent arguably most affected by federal policy decisions. So how do bills supported by low-income Americans fare? Not so well. The passage rate for bills favored only by low-income groups is 18.6 percent—slightly lower than those that lack support from all of the income groups. In fact, as the study’s authors conclude, “These results suggest that the rich and middle are effective at blocking policies that the poor want.”

What’s more, policies favored by the middle class and poor, who together comprise a majority of Americans, passed just 20.4 percent of the time, while those favored by only the rich passed 38.5 percent of the time. In other words, the rich had more success getting their policies enacted than the middle class and poor combined—which is the very definition of an oligarchy.

Underscoring how little representation low-income Americans receive at the federal level, another recent report found that Members of Congress from states with higher poverty rates were also less likely to support measures that help their low-income constituents.

Each year, the Shriver Center ranks Members of Congress from every state based on how they vote on a series of anti-poverty measures, ranging from the Child Tax Credit to Medicaid. Given that these programs earn overwhelming support from low-income voters (and most income groups), the Shriver rankings also illustrate the responsiveness of elected leaders to the concerns of low-income people.

In most cases, the divisions fall along party lines. In California, for example, every Democrat received either an A or A+, while every Republican received either a D or F. But party identification wasn’t the only predictor of a Member’s voting record. States like Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, and Arkansas all have poverty rates above 19 percent—some of the highest in the nation. Yet each of these states has a state delegation grade of D or F. In Mississippi, the state with the highest poverty rate in the country (21.5 percent), Senators Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker both received F grades.

In contrast, Connecticut and Maryland—ranked 48^th and 49^th in poverty levels—received A grades for their state delegation. Massachusetts, the state with the best average voting record in the country, also has one of the lowest poverty rates.

Of course, correlation isn’t causation. The fact that states with higher poverty levels also have records that fail to reflect the preferences of many low-income voters doesn’t mean a higher poverty rate leads to undemocratic voting records. More likely, the two share some root causes. Many of the states with the highest poverty rates are located in the Deep South, a region that has historically been hostile to worker organizing and political participation by low-income people in addition to its legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

But the report sheds some critical light on the paradoxical relationship between families who live in poverty and the politicians charged with representing them. And it suggests that for the most vulnerable Americans, the U.S. is far from democratic.

That’s because for millions of Americans, tax time is a big boon—their refund is the single largest check they’ll receive all year.  In fact, for lower-income tax filers, their annual refund can amount to 30 percent or more of their income for the entire year, providing a rare period of financial security in a year full of financial distress. These filers spend their refunds mostly on paying down debts, investing in their kids and their own future, and putting some savings away.  For the rest of the year, though, a near majority of Americans are financially insecure, lacking even the most basic savings to deal with an emergency like reduced work hours or car trouble.

And that’s the problem with tax season: it’s just one short season. But life goes on and financial security shouldn’t end when that refund check is gone. A new bipartisan bill, the Refund to Rainy Day Savings Act, introduced by Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS), aims to stretch out the positive impact of tax season by boosting emergency savings and year-round financial security.

The legislation tackles that goal in two simple ways. First, it allows all tax filers to opt in to a new Rainy Day Savings program at tax time. Under this program, when tax filers check a box on their 1040, a full 20 percent of their refund is saved for six months, accruing interest over the course of that period. Six months later, that deferred refund is put into their direct-deposit account. (Any account that is direct-deposit eligible can be used, including prepaid cards.) Filers would still get a sizeable refund at tax time, but they also get to set some aside for the year ahead and earn interest on it.

The second big component of the bill is designed specifically for low-income households. The Refund to Rainy Day Savings Act creates a new research and evaluation pilot program run by the Department of Health and Human Services to test out different models of savings matches for tax time. Driven by the needs of local anti-poverty practitioners and the populations they serve, this program will invest in innovative strategies to help lower-income households build savings and become financially secure. For example, as we’ve written previously, a pilot site could set up a 50 percent match for opting into the program. If the family saves $500 of their tax refund, they’ll receive $750 plus interest in six months. For reference, $750 is larger than the typical high-interest payday loan.

The legislation also provides research funding to evaluate what works and what doesn’t in the field of matched savings for low-income families and individuals, paving the way for future reforms that could scale up countrywide. This is what real evidence-based policymaking looks like.

Of course, the Rainy Day Savings program won’t eliminate financial insecurity. Families need adequate income to get by day-to-day, not just savings to weather emergencies. Low-wage workers who can’t claim children on their tax return in particular will continue to lose out under the current tax code unless Congress acts to stop taxing them into poverty. And a deferred refund won’t work for everyone. Some households will need immediate access to their tax refund. It makes sense—it’s their money and they should have access to it when they want and need it.

But the Refund to Rainy Day Savings Act takes a critical step in the right direction. It’s the first bipartisan bill of its kind aimed at expanding emergency savings and financial security. It creates a new tool that could help millions of low-wage workers take better control of their financial lives. And it will do that while simultaneously laying the groundwork for future large-scale reforms.

The good news is that it won’t take an act of divine intervention to boost financial security for millions of lower-income Americans—just an act of Congress. When two senators from two different parties can come together to announce something like this legislation, the rest of Congress should take notice and make it happen.

As the first vice-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), I couldn’t agree more.  In fact, it’s one of the reasons I was proud to unveil the CPC’s budget for Fiscal Year 2017—The People’s Budget: Prosperity Not Austerity; Invest in America.  It offers evidence-based fiscal policy that boosts both short- and long-term economic growth, while also reducing the deficit by more than $5.1 trillion dollars over ten years. More importantly, it demonstrates that We the People can rise in this economy together, and that current levels of poverty and economic inequality aren’t inevitable—they are the result of policies that don’t put hard-working Americans first.

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While conservatives are battling over how much to cut vital programs that help the 46 million people in poverty, our budget recognizes that serious economic hardship is something that will affect most of us. More than half of all Americans will experience at least a year of poverty or near-poverty during their working years.  If you include people who will endure at least one year of unemployment or who will need to turn to the safety net, that represents nearly 80 percent of us. That’s why The People’s Budget reinvests in our country after years of austerity policies, which have cut the social safety net and resulted in crumbling infrastructure across the country.

Americans are working longer hours and taking home pay checks that haven’t kept up with the rising cost of health care, housing, and education. We must find a pathway out of poverty for low-income Americans and restore economic security to the working class. That begins by investing in infrastructure, investing in education, and investing in wage growth to increase opportunity for all.

The People’s Budget invests $1 trillion to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, which would ensure that our roads, bridges, railways, and facilities will be strong, and that no town will experience the kind of devastation that we are witnessing in Flint, Michigan.  In all, we create 3.6 million well-paying jobs to push our economy back to full-employment, and the increased demand for workers will help spur across-the-board wage growth. We also protect collective bargaining, seek to close the pay equity gap, and increase funding for worker protection agencies in order to crack down on wage theft, combat overtime abuses, and safeguard workers’ retirement savings. In short, we recognize that the struggles of people in poverty and the middle class aren’t due to a lack of hard work—they are due to the lack of a fair deal.

When it comes to ensuring that children in working families are prepared for success, The People’s Budget tackles the current inequities in education head on. From pre-school through college, every student deserves a high-quality affordable education and a fair shot at the American Dream. That’s why The People’s Budget provides pre-K for all students and fully funds Early Head Start to help families during the critical prenatal through toddler years. We fully fund Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—the most powerful tool that we have to drive improvements in educational outcomes for low-income children. Finally, our budget creates a federal matching program that supports state efforts to promote debt-free college, and invests in federal student aid programs to ensure that students with the greatest need aren’t priced out of a higher education.

In addition to creating good jobs for workers and educational opportunities for their children, The People’s Budget ensures that those workers can afford housing for their families.  This isn’t just the right thing to do—it’s the smart thing to do.  For example, new research demonstrates that housing assistance during childhood is associated with higher adult earnings for girls; and among black households, increased earnings for both boys and girls when they reach adulthood.  Yet only 25 percent of families that qualify for federal housing assistance actually receive it; and nearly 8 million low-income families pay more than 50 percent of their income on housing.

The People’s Budget fully funds programs to make housing affordable and accessible for all Americans.  Moreover, at a moment when there are a record 1.3 million homeless students in our public schools, we invest $11 billion to end family homelessness through vouchers, new affordable housing units, and rapid rehousing assistance in cooperation with the efforts of cities, counties, and tribes.

By now—after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and historic levels of inequality—we should realize that there is really no separation between the interests of people with low incomes and those of the middle class. The People’s Budget is an aspirational document indicative of our shared progressive values that puts a down payment on a brighter future for all Americans, ensuring every family struggling to make ends meet has a fair shot at the American Dream. It’s past time that we embrace policies that will dramatically reduce poverty, restore economic mobility, and grow and strengthen the middle class.

These proposed cuts to the safety net will devastate the lives of millions of Americans like me. As a single mother of three, I have spent much of my life pulling myself up by my proverbial bootstraps. I have weathered spells of unemployment, food insecurity, homelessness, and domestic violence.

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But in spite of my struggles, I obtained a four-year college degree. Were it not for federal and California state programs, I would not have been able to balance the many challenges of higher education with my familial obligations. CalWorks, the income assistance program in my state, helped me to identify a cognitive disability that otherwise would have gone undiagnosed, and then helped me to secure the accommodations I needed to finish my education. Medicaid gave my children health insurance––which helped me sleep better at night. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and WIC helped me afford groceries and feed my family. With the help of this vital assistance, I graduated with a degree in public policy in 2007. I am living proof that the safety net can work—but only when it’s adequately funded.

Since my graduation, I have continued to pursue my passion for social justice and political advocacy by working with a legal services agency. I connect low-income individuals with state and federal resources that help them keep their heads above water. The clients I work with are not “takers.” They are people who are trying to find affordable housing and nutrition assistance for their families so that they can escape abusive relationships, find a better-paying job, heal from an illness or injury, or overcome  addiction. And perhaps they, too, will one day be able to connect others with these vital programs.

But in recent years, I have noticed that these programs have become harder to access. When I first started at this job, the majority of my caseloads were approved with almost no issues. Now, as block grants and “work first” reforms have hacked away at many of the programs that were so crucial to my success, more and more people are seeing their applications denied. For example, today just 23 of every 100 families with children living in poverty benefit from cash assistance through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, compared to 68 in 1996. In my experience, a lot of the clients who come to our agency for help have trouble keeping up with the intrusive and needlessly complicated applications, reauthorizations, and verification forms required to receive benefits. Just one missed deadline, and you can be cut off with no warning. The wait to get back into the system can be over a month long.

These realities are deeply misunderstood by many legislators. Indeed, conservatives—who seek cuts to the very programs that have served as a lifeline for me and my three daughters—peddle an oversimplified and inaccurate notion of poverty. Instead of raising wages or increasing access to affordable housing, these legislators work to further stigmatize low-income people through instituting drug testing requirements, even though very few recipients test positive for drug use, or by banning the use of SNAP benefits to purchase lobster. These frivolous “solutions” in search of a problem underscore how, unlike me, they have never had to strategize about which food pantry to get bread from, or which public restroom to wash up in, or which shelter to spend the night in with three children.

Lawmakers have an obligation to pass a budget that invests in all Americans. They have an obligation to recognize the struggles that people in poverty endure every day—not shame them for those struggles.  They have an obligation to strengthen the safety net, not unravel it. It’s not just people living in poverty who need these key federal investments. Every American who believes government can make a fundamental difference in people’s lives has an inherent interest in protecting public assistance programs.

Because we are deeply committed to ensuring everyone has the opportunity to achieve the American Dream, we launched the Democratic Whip Task Force on Poverty, Income Inequality, and Opportunity in 2013. Since then, our Task Force has introduced and advocated for policies that provide pathways out of poverty for the most vulnerable, and we have worked to demonstrate our commitment to helping those struggling to make ends meet and get ahead. Last November, we sent Speaker Paul Ryan a letter inviting him to join us in enacting bipartisan policies that combat poverty in America, hoping to find common ground with someone who just last month launched his own Republican task force on poverty.

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While it is encouraging that Speaker Ryan discusses the need to address poverty in America, he must back up his rhetoric with action. Unfortunately, even since his election as Speaker, House leadership has continued to block even basic measures that could benefit millions of struggling Americans, such as raising the minimum wage, and they continue to tell families across the country: “You’re on your own.”

Today, the House Budget Committee is marking up the Majority’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2017 that continues to promote draconian budget policies that set back the cause of eliminating poverty. From cutting Medicaid to repealing the patient protections of the Affordable Care Act, from ending the Medicare guarantee to slashing funding for programs that encourage job growth, the Majority’s budget disinvests in our nation and shifts the burden of deficit reduction onto the shoulders of the poorest and most vulnerable.

Despite making these extreme spending cuts, the most conservative members of the House still believe the proposed budget does not go far enough. Speaker Ryan should not be tempted to move even further to the right in an effort to get the extreme wing of his party to agree to a budget. Any attempt to do so would result in even more dangerous policies that would harm those living in poverty. We strongly urge Speaker Ryan instead to work across the aisle to adopt a budget resolution that adheres to last year’s bipartisan budget agreement and invests in economic opportunity for all Americans.

The budget released by the President in February—which House leaders irresponsibly dismissed out of hand—laid out a number of proposals that would do just that, such as a mobility counseling program to help families move to safer neighborhoods with better schools and more job opportunities; a permanent program to ensure that children who rely on free or subsidized school lunches are fed and healthy; and an expansion of Pell Grants. We will continue to fight back against disinvestments that hurt working families and the very poor, and we will push for measures like the ones the President has proposed that create opportunities for families to escape poverty.

In addition, there are a number of areas where Democrats and Republicans could work together to achieve bipartisan progress. For example, Congress could adopt the Half in Ten Act (H.R. 258), which we co-sponsored, to establish a national strategy to halve poverty over the next decade. We also believe we can work together to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to childless adults, a policy Speaker Ryan advocated for when he chaired both the Budget and the Ways and Means committees.

In the weeks ahead, the Speaker has an opportunity to do more than make promises or launch a new task force—he can partner with the Democratic Whip Task Force to act. For the sake of the more than 46 million Americans struggling to get by, we will be ready to meet with the Speaker and his team to find common ground and help lift families out of poverty and into the middle class.

Earlier this month, the Senate Banking Committee, on which I serve as Ranking Member, held a hearing on the economic recovery, and I was proud to see ordinary Americans outnumbering lobbyists in the audience. Instead of expensive tailored suits, they wore T-shirts with a simple but powerful message: “Whose Recovery?”

That’s a question we must keep asking ourselves.

If we are serious about helping working families and reducing the persistent poverty holding too many Americans back, we need to get serious about expanding and strengthening one of the most effective poverty-fighting tools we have: the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

The EITC was created with broad bipartisan support in 1975, and it has been expanded by every president since. It encourages people to work by putting thousands of dollars back into the pockets of low-wage and moderate-wage workers. Last year, 27 million American households—950,000 households in my home state of Ohio alone—claimed the EITC and earned an average refund of $2,400. That means millions of families getting a check in the mail this spring—a check making their hard work pay so they can make a down payment on a new car, put a deposit on an apartment, pay off medical debt, or save for a rainy day.

Each year, the EITC protects more children from poverty than any other government program. What’s more, research shows that it is an investment that pays long-term dividends, improving children’s health, educational attainment, and even earnings in adulthood.

One of our most important accomplishments last year was the bipartisan tax package that permanently expanded the EITC, providing certainty for the millions of families who rely on the credit and are counting on it again this year. But there is one glaring hole in the program that we still need to fix.

Under current law, workers without children barely earn any EITC. And childless workers under age 25 don’t qualify for the credit at all.

We are talking about people working full-time, 40 hours a week, all year round. But at minimum wage or even $9 per hour, they earn less than $20,000 a year. And without a significant EITC, these workers can actually be taxed deeper into poverty.

That is shameful. It goes against our core values as a nation, and it has to end.

These people work hard and play by the rules. They contribute by paying Social Security and other payroll taxes. How will they save for the future and plan for their families if they constantly struggle to get by, paycheck to paycheck—all the while being taxed deeper into poverty?

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In the final budget of his presidency, President Obama has proposed expanding the EITC by reducing the eligibility age from 25 to 21 and nearly doubling the maximum value of the credit.

This is a step in the right direction, but it does not go far enough.

The Working Families Tax Relief Act, which I introduced last year, would nearly triple the maximum value of the EITC to ensure that no one is taxed into poverty. Just expanding the childless EITC as that legislation would do, would lift more than half a million people out of poverty and reduce poverty for an additional 10 million Americans.

We must also combine the tax credit with an increase in the minimum wage, to make sure a hard day’s work is rewarded with an honest day’s pay.

Expanding the EITC will mean more people attending college and getting GEDs. It will mean more Americans working at higher salaries. And it will enable millions of people to earn their way out of debt or to begin saving a nest egg, potentially for the first time in their lives.

And that means stronger communities, and more stable families.

If we are serious about creating an economic recovery for all Americans—not just those who work on Wall Street or in Washington—we need to let working people keep more of their hard-earned money. Then when we are asked the question, “Whose recovery?” we will be closer to answering: “All hardworking Americans.”

While I disagree with the Speaker’s attempts to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, which partially equalize outcomes by preventing seniors from falling into poverty, I wholeheartedly reject the assertion that trickle-down economic policies would do more to advance equality of opportunity than a middle-out approach.

It is sadly appropriate that the forum took place in Columbia, South Carolina, an area with some of the lowest socioeconomic mobility in the country.  According to the Equality of Opportunity Project, a child raised in the bottom fifth of the national income distribution in the Columbia area has just a 4.2 percent chance of rising to the top fifth, making it one of the worst places to grow up poor in America.  If right-wing policies expand economic opportunity, why hasn’t South Carolina, with right-wing policies prevalent throughout state government, seen the benefits?

The reality is that the Expanding Opportunity forum, while perhaps well-meaning, must not distract from the fact that trickle-down policies—and the Ryan budget in particular—would severely constrict opportunity in numerous ways. Consider the following:

• In order to take advantage of opportunity, one must be healthy. The Ryan budget would cut Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars and send the funds to the states as block grants, putting life-and-death decisions in the hands of state governments. South Carolina is one example of a state government that has thus far made the choice not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, despite an estimate that such a decision would result in the premature deaths of nearly 200 South Carolinians every year.
• Ryan’s budget would double down on this opportunity-crushing, lethal agenda by repealing the Affordable Care Act, stripping health care away from millions who have gained coverage in the marketplaces or through the Medicaid expansion.
• Similarly, while working one’s way out of poverty is difficult under the best of circumstances, Ryan wants to make it even harder by drastically cutting nutrition assistance so that those striving to rise above the poverty line don’t have enough to eat.
• High quality pre-K expands opportunity for a lifetime. But the House Majority refuses to support universal pre-K and would cut hundreds of thousands of Head Start slots.
• Opportunity is virtually impossible without access to educational resources. But the Ryan budget reduces funding for education by an amount equivalent to 3,600 schools, 13,000 teachers, and nearly 1.6 million students.
• In the 21st century knowledge-based economy, a college education is essential to career opportunities. But the Ryan budget would cut Pell Grants by $370 million, making college even less affordable for poor students.
• For many Americans, job training and employment services are vital opportunities to gain the skills necessary for a productive career and to find jobs using those skills. But the Ryan budget would take these services away from 2 million people.
• The Equality of Opportunity Project found that, by the time they reached adulthood, poor children whose families received a Section 8 housing voucher earned nearly $2,000 a year more than children raised in public housing projects. But the Ryan budget threatens to take this opportunity away from 100,000 families.
• The same Equality of Opportunity Project study found that poor children whose families received an experimental voucher to move to low-poverty neighborhoods earned nearly $3,500 more when they grew up than those raised in public housing. But in 2014, 219 House Republicans, including Speaker Ryan, voted to stop an Obama Administration effort to create similar opportunities on a wide scale.
• Republicans and Democrats agree that children born from unintended pregnancies are particularly likely to struggle for economic opportunity. But the Ryan budget would eliminate Title X Family Planning funding, which averts approximately one million unintended pregnancies every year.

As much as Speaker Ryan might want to talk about expanding opportunity without caring about inequality, it has been shown repeatedly that societies with more inequality also have less opportunity—a relationship known as the Great Gatsby Curve. If Speaker Ryan and the House majority are truly committed to making opportunity more equal, they should take steps to increase the minimum wage, expand paid sick leave, and target resources to persistent poverty communities. We could start with my 10-20-30 proposal, which Ryan appeared to be open to when I testified before the House Budget Committee in 2014.

Even the few positive proposals that some members of the House Majority support—such as bipartisan criminal justice reform—would not come close to making up for their broader agenda, which constricts opportunity for low-income families while cutting taxes for the rich by trillions of dollars.  Forums like the one held in South Carolina are good for gathering input but outcomes are needed to lift people out of poverty.

Although we have seen a dramatic decrease in the number of teen pregnancies, the United States still experiences higher rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (including HIV) than other Western countries. Despite this fact, current conservative proposals would cut funding for TPPI by nearly 90 percent. This critical program, which represents one of the two major federal funding streams for comprehensive sex education, works to reduce the number of unplanned teen pregnancies through increasing access to medically-accurate and age-appropriate evidence-based programs, contraception, and reproductive health care services. But instead of backing this successful model, Congress would increase funding for Abstinence Only Until Marriage programs (AOUM) by $10 million, despite the fact that states with abstinence-only education have the highest teen birth rates.

Many AOUM programs (also known by the misleading term “Sexual Risk Avoidance” programs) advance deeply problematic gender expectations and generally ignore the needs of LGBTQ youth or stigmatize homosexuality. They also often provide medically inaccurate information, undermining students’ ability to make safe and informed choices.

This misguided effort by conservatives to gut TPPI fails to address the immediate causes of teen pregnancy. The U.S. has high rates of unplanned pregnancy and STIs relative to other nations likely because we have lower rates of contraceptive use. By contrast, comprehensive sex education, which TPPI helps to provide, increases contraception usage and particularly benefits teens, who are disproportionately likely to experience unplanned pregnancies.

Unlike abstinence-only programs, TPPI also works to address racial disparities in access to comprehensive sex education by specifically focusing on the African American and Hispanic communities. These communities are less likely to receive comprehensive sex education—if any at all—and face higher rates of poverty. Economic deprivation is known to make it more difficult for teens of color to access contraception and other sexual health services. The result is that Hispanic and black youth have the highest teen pregnancy rates—more than double that of white youth—and are disproportionately likely to contract STIs.

The facts clearly show that it is counterproductive for Congress to slash funding for evidenced-based programs while pouring more resources into programs that we know are ineffective. Moreover, it is inequitable, as cutting TPPI funds would specifically harm the students who already face limited access to comprehensive sex education and reproductive health care services.

But while the correlations between poverty, race, and teen pregnancy are undeniable, we have to avoid treating teen pregnancy prevention as a silver-bullet solution to ending poverty. A 30-year study from the University of Pennsylvania that followed 300 teen mothers from Baltimore found that teen childbirth was not the major cause of their economic difficulties. This finding has been supported by Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine who also note that, “teen birth itself does not appear to have much direct economic consequence.” Rather, women who grow up in poverty are likely to live in poverty their entire lives regardless of whether or not they have a baby as a teen or wait until they are older.

But regardless of its effectiveness as an anti-poverty measure, the work of TPPI to reduce the prevalence of STIs and unplanned pregnancy is valuable. The program promotes equality among teenagers and increases students’ agency. Moreover, TPPI is ushering in an important paradigm shift by funding comprehensive sex education aimed at empowering young people to parent when they decide they are ready; this contrasts with the dangerous notion of using contraceptives to reduce the number of poor children, an idea popular among some moderate and conservative politicians that brings to mind a dark history of forced sterilizations and state control over the bodies of low-income women.

Instead of gutting effective programs, our elected leaders should adopt a broad strategy to ensure young people can reach their full potential. While programs like TPPI that fund comprehensive sex education are a central part of this work, the government must also invest in jobs and adopt strong anti-poverty policies in order to bring about more opportunities for social mobility.

The clock is ticking for Congress to act. We need politicians that will fight for the sexual health and empowerment of teenagers, not contest the very existence of the institution they serve.

While Ryan pushed many of his favorite myths about the safety net, he also inadvertently made one of the strongest cases to date for raising the minimum wage and investing in policies to help people balance work and caregiving.

Indeed, in his grand finale, Ryan called on Congress to:

“Push wages up. Push the cost of living down. Get people off the sidelines. I could think of no better way to restore confidence in the American economy.”

Bravo, Speaker Ryan. We couldn’t agree more. Now, if only we knew how to do these things…

Oh, wait. We do!

How can we “push wages up”?

It’s called raising the minimum wage. And luckily for Speaker Ryan, over 75 percent of Americans support raising the federal minimum wage to $12.50 by 2020.

But wait, there’s more.

As Speaker Ryan so eloquently points out, our minimum wage is a poverty wage and not nearly enough for working parents to support their families, leaving many with no choice but to turn to public assistance to make ends meet.

“So say you’re a single mom with one kid. You’re making minimum wage. You’re on food stamps, Medicaid, housing assistance, and other assistance.”

So, by raising the minimum wage to $12 by 2020 as the Murray-Scott bill would do, not only would 35 million Americans get a raise, but we would also save nearly $53 billion over the next 10 years in SNAP alone.  

Unfortunately Ryan has voted against raising the minimum wage at least 10 times since he’s been in office.

So, how can we “push the cost of living down”?

Paul Ryan is correct when he says that the cost of living is rising. But families with young kids often face the tightest squeeze of all. Childcare expenses have skyrocketed; the average annual cost for center-based childcare is now more than tuition and fees for a public 4-year college in 31 states and DC. And low-income families spend an average of nearly 14% of their annual income on diapers alone.

What these families need is affordable, high-quality childcare—which also helps parents work—and a stronger Child Tax Credit to help alleviate the squeeze of stagnant wages and rising costs.

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And, finally, how can we “get people off the sidelines”?

While there’s obviously a lot that policymakers can and should do on this one—including investing in job creation and removing barriers to employment for people with criminal records and people with disabilities, a major piece of the puzzle is ensuring access to paid family and medical leave.

Speaker Ryan has led by example on this important issue—well, for himself anyway. But, in opposing legislation that would help families access up to 12 weeks of paid family leave, he’s left other working parents high and dry.

The U.S. stands alone among developed nations in failing to guarantee access to any form of paid family leave. But research has shown that when women are able to take paid leave, they are more likely to be working; to have higher wages 9-12 months after their child is born; and to avoid turning to public assistance.

***

Interestingly, a major theme of Speaker Ryan’s speech was about how conservatives need to push new ideas to cut poverty and boost opportunity. “Our number-one goal for the next year,” he said, “is to put together a complete alternative to the Left’s agenda.”

Unfortunately, somebody forgot to tell him that his speech didn’t actually contain any new ideas on tackling poverty and boosting opportunity – only the same old stuff conservatives have been pushing for years such as block grants and cuts to effective programs.

Instead, at his poverty summit on January 9th, Speaker Ryan should endorse raising the minimum wage and adopting work-family policies. To borrow his hashtag of choice, that would make us a #ConfidentAmerica.

The Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Education bill cuts these programs by $3.7 billion below last year’s level.  Moreover, these cuts would compound years of flat or shrinking funding, due largely to the tight funding cap on non-defense discretionary spending of the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA), so that total funding for programs in this bill would fall to roughly one-sixth below its 2010 value, adjusted for inflation.

Major cuts include the following:

• Education: The bill cuts federal education programs, many of which serve low- and moderate-income students, by $2.5 billion. In particular, funding for elementary, secondary, and preschool education programs would fall to one-fifth below its 2010 inflation-adjusted level.  The bill would eliminate more than two dozen education programs, including Preschool Development Grants, which give states money to build or expand high-quality preschool programs in high-need communities, and School Improvement Grants, which provide grant funding to boost student achievement in low-performing schools.

• The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS): The bill cuts CMS funding by $649 million, or roughly one-sixth. CMS operates Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and it implements many aspects of health reform, including the federally run health insurance marketplaces and health reform’s consumer protections. That cut, along with language that would stop HHS from implementing most of health reform, would effectively block most assistance that helps low- and moderate-income people ; it could also hamper Medicare operations.  All told, CMS would have less funding than in 2010, before health reform took effect — and that’s before adjusting for inflation or Medicare’s growing numbers of beneficiaries.

• Job training: The bill cuts job training funding by $135 million which, after years of deep cuts, brings funding to 23 percent below its 2010 level, adjusted for inflation. The bill’s main job training cut comes from reducing by two-thirds funding that provides extra help in responding to large disruptions such as plant closings, mass layoffs, and natural disasters, as well as to support demonstration projects and technical assistance.

• “Title X” family planning: The bill eliminates all funding, which totaled $286 million in 2015, for Title X, which supports clinics that offer family planning and related preventive health services, such as screenings for cancer and sexually transmitted infections. The funding is a key source of revenue for these clinics, which reduce or eliminate charges for low-income patients (many of them uninsured). The clinics served more than 4.5 million patients, according to HHS, and helped avert an estimated 870,000 unintended pregnancies in 2013.

• The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS): The bill cuts CNCS funding by $367 million, or more than one-third. The cuts primarily target AmeriCorps, which provides funding for public service jobs, frequently in economically disadvantaged areas. These cuts would shrink the number of AmeriCorps positions and threaten the modest educational stipend that AmeriCorps workers receive after completing a year of public service work.

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The bill does include some much-needed increases in key investments, such as medical research and special education funding.  But, given the bill’s reduced funding levels overall, those increases are only possible because of the damaging cuts it makes to other areas.

The President and congressional Democrats have pushed to raise the BCA’s caps for both non-defense and defense spending, offset by a mix of other cuts and revenue increases.  But congressional Republicans — who run both the House and Senate — have stuck to these tight caps in this year’s budget process for non-defense programs (while using a gimmick to evade the cap on defense).  With the existing cap on appropriations for non-defense programs in place, there’s little chance of adequately funding key investments in labor, health, and education programs in 2016.

How are we doing in this measure of morality?

A key moral issue of our times is extreme wealth inequality in the U.S., along with structures that block people from accessing what they need to rise out of poverty, such as a lack of affordable housing or access to healthcare. Like Pope Francis, we at NETWORK believe there is an urgent need to address these twin injustices. The federal budget is one of our country’s most important tools to make that happen.

However, most major budget proposals coming from Capitol Hill do little or nothing to address inequality – or, even worse, they exacerbate it. This is not a partisan view. In fact, powerful and wealthy voices motivated by self-interest have seen their influence greatly increase across party lines in recent years. Their voices drown out those of millions of people with less clout.

In 2011, appalled by years of skewed budget priorities, my organization joined a coalition of 37 faith groups representing Jewish, Muslim and Christian traditions. Our goal was to formulate a new budget plan rooted in our faiths’ teachings about compassion and justice.

Our work resulted in a document we call “Faithful Budget,” which combines bedrock values drawn from our sacred texts and shared experiences with real examples of how our federal budget can address economic injustice. We later updated the document to reflect our new economic reality.

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Our principles for a faithful budget are these:

• Economic opportunity for all: The economy is failing to create enough jobs with sustaining wages. We need to invest in education and job creation, along with policies that help families to build assets.
• A genuinely progressive tax system: Our tax system now frequently places more of a tax burden – as a percentage of income – on the middle class than it does on the wealthiest among us. We need to prioritize raising sufficient revenue for vital programs over cutting taxes for those with the most wealth.
• Prioritizing true human security over Pentagon spending: Our nation now allocates well over half of its discretionary budget to the Pentagon. We need to cut Pentagon spending while we fully fund healthcare and other sources of individual, family and community wellbeing.
• Addressing human needs in the U.S. and around the world: Far too many people live with hunger, unemployment and untreated or avoidable illnesses. We need to fully fund programs like SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid.
• Care for the economic wellbeing of future generations and for all creation: We now do far too little to ensure that future generations will thrive in a sustainable world. We need to fund programs that help children to be better prepared for the future and move us to a healthier environment.
• Healthcare access for all: We must build on recent successes in increasing the percentage of people with health insurance. Current efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act through defunding and other means should be thwarted, and healthcare access should be expanded to include all.
• Recognition of a robust role for government in fostering economic justice: Government must focus on the wellbeing of all, not just those who are rich and powerful. We need more effective budget priorities designed to overcome inequality.

Catholic sisters, and all who serve people at the economic margins, experience on a daily basis how poverty and inequality unravel the social fabric of our entire nation. We can’t afford to let that continue.

On April 28, members of our Faithful Budget community will be on Capitol Hill to brief congressional staff about our vision. We hope and pray that next year’s budget will better reflect our shared values of fairness and compassion. Thousands of our members intend to convince Congress it should act to ensure that happens. This is the right thing to do to pass the moral test of our time.

Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) famously took a “poverty tour,” earning himself no shortage of praise as a supposed anti-poverty crusader. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has waxed eloquent about what he calls “opportunity inequality.” And former Governor Jeb Bush devoted his first major policy speech as a presidential candidate to the so-called “opportunity gap.”

This sudden concern for struggling families has reached the highest levels of Congressional Republican leadership. In January, in a joint interview on 60 Minutes, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) worried aloud about the growing gap between rich and poor. Senator McConnell even characterized the economic recovery following the Great Recession as a “top of the income recovery,” expressing dismay that “middle- and lower-income Americans are about $3,000 a year worse off than they were when [President Obama] came to office.”

Conservatives’ about-face on inequality, wage stagnation, and how hard it is to get ahead is no doubt newsworthy—particularly following Mitt Romney’s fatally tone-deaf remarks about “the 47 percent.” (Romney himself even performed a dramatic U-turn on the subject earlier this year.) So it’s hardly surprising that it’s garnered a great deal of media coverage of late.

But in marveling at how conservatives seem to have found religion on poverty, inequality, and the plight of the working and middle class, we must not lose sight of the other half of the story—their policies.

It’s not like we don’t have plenty of evidence as to what they really stand for. In addition to their voting records (check out the Shriver Center’s poverty scorecard to see how Members of Congress voted last year on minimum wage, paid leave, and other key policies that support working families), we have their budgets—the clearest statement of their priorities for the country.

As my colleagues Melissa Boteach, Anna Chu, and I wrote earlier this month, if the House and Senate majorities were serious about expanding opportunity and tackling poverty and inequality, their budgets would include job-creating investments in research and infrastructure, as well as policies such as raising the minimum wage, paid family leave, and universal pre-K—not to mention protecting and strengthening key safety net programs such as nutrition assistance and Medicaid.

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Yet while Rep. Ryan may spend a lot of time talking about poverty and opportunity, year after year as Chair of the House Budget Committee, his budgets got two-thirds of their cuts from vital programs that help keep struggling families afloat—such as nutrition assistance, housing assistance, and Medicaid—all to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

And despite their newfound talking points on economic opportunity, the House and Senate majorities last week released Fiscal Year 2016 budgets that were just more of the same: deep cuts to nutrition assistance and Medicaid; repeal of the Affordable Care Act; cuts to job training, Pell Grants, Head Start, and more—all to once again protect tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

Remarkably, these policies are printed within the budget proposals alongside grand statements of concern for working and middle class families—e.g. “The economy is not working for many Americans. A lot of people are struggling to keep up or are being left behind altogether.” It makes for a glaring if inadvertent juxtaposition even within the budget documents themselves.

In another recent head-on collision between rhetoric and reality, Jeb Bush last week publicly stated his opposition to the federal minimum wage, barely a month after his speech on the “opportunity gap.” (You read that right: he didn’t just oppose raising the federal minimum wage, he said he opposes having one at all. Sen. Marco Rubio has made similar statements.)

With both parties talking about poverty and inequality these days—and a presidential campaign that is likely to focus on these issues just around the corner—it’s more important than ever to remind our political leaders that actions speak louder than words. Citizens and the media need to look past rhetoric—no matter how pretty it sounds—and focus on voting records, budgets, and policy positions.

That’s where we will find the truth.

But even as we are learning more about the magnitude of the rental crisis in the streets surrounding the U.S. Capitol and across the nation, many Republicans in Congress want to prevent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from funding the Housing Trust Fund and the Capital Magnet Fund, two programs that provide resources to help build and preserve affordable housing nationwide.

The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to place a sliver of their earnings each year into the two funds. But before those contributions ever began, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) had to bail out the mortgage giants due to the financial crisis. As part of the rescue activity, FHFA suspended contributions to the funds.

Now that Fannie and Freddie have regained their financial footing, FHFA Director Mel Watt has lifted the suspension and given the go-ahead for the mortgage giants to resume payments into the funds. But for conservatives in Congress, even this small measure of assistance to poor families is too much. When Watt announced his decision near Christmas last year, the Republican-controlled House Financial Services Committee deemed it “a lump of coal to every taxpayer.”

In January, Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) introduced legislation that would prevent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from directing money to the two funds until they are out of conservatorship. The bill is almost identical to one he authored a year ago, which garnered 22 cosponsors, including House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX). As lawmakers deliberate the Republican budget proposal this week, it’s likely we will see efforts to end the Housing Trust Fund and the Capital Magnet Fund resurface.

If members of Congress are ignoring what’s happening right in their own backyard, then they probably are ignoring what’s happening across the country, too. The cliff-dive in rental affordability is not limited to our nation’s capital. Data shows that more than half of all renters in the nation spend more than 30 percent of their gross income on housing (and most extremely poor households pay more than half of their meager incomes), leaving precious little for groceries, medication, transportation, and other necessities of life. For example, in California – Rep. Royce’s home state – there is a serious housing affordability crisis, with average monthly rents about 50% higher than the national average.

Any moves to cut the funding for the Housing Trust Fund and the Capital Magnet Fund ignore the dire need for them across the country right now. Unfortunately, it’s a trend with Congress. Our lawmakers have repeatedly cut rental assistance programs, even though the number of households in worst-case scenarios – living in abysmal housing or having to use more than half of their income on rent – has only increased over time.

Members of Congress should look out their office windows more often, or better yet, visit surrounding neighborhoods – then maybe they would get a clue about our affordable housing crisis.  Passing legislation to slash these two funds would not only make the housing situation worse, it would be an insult to hard-working families who are already struggling to make ends meet in every state and district.

One might assume that the experience of a woman trying—along with her husband—to build a secure life for her family on poverty wages and federal assistance would mean a lot to representatives who are trying to assess the effectiveness of the government’s anti-poverty programs. And, at first listen, it might have seemed that the members were open to learning from Gaines-Turner. Ryan quoted from her previous written testimony in his opening remarks, affirming her assertion that to reduce poverty we must understand and address the needs of whole persons, rather than treating “people as numbers.”  He said that he hoped the committee would “listen and learn” from her testimony.

And Ryan wasn’t the only committee member who praised Gaines-Turner’s unique contribution to the series of hearings. There were at least six explicit mentions of how important it was to have her—a person living in poverty—there to testify. Both parties seemed grateful that they had an opportunity to hear a real account of struggles with financial insecurity. What unfolded, however, revealed that some legislators had a very different objective.

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Heather Reynolds of Catholic Charities Fort Worth and Jennifer Tiller of American Works DC were the two other witnesses selected by the Republican majority for the panel. Their testimony, and a large number of the questions asked by conservative representatives, reflected a real bias in these anti-poverty discussions: the entrenched belief that poor people will have the better life that they want when they get a job.

Both Reynolds and Tiller insisted on the importance of getting their clients off of government assistance and into employment whenever possible—they testified that these steps were key to their organization’s definition of successfully getting clients out of poverty. Work-first policies and work requirements for welfare programs where mentioned repeatedly. The importance of “accountability” and “independence” was raised more than a few times (though always in reference to individuals receiving government assistance, until Gaines-Turner noted that there should be accountability for corporations like Target and Walmart, which bank huge profits while paying poverty wages or exploiting tax loopholes). “Receiving federal aid” was used interchangeably with “dependence on the government.”

If this had been a hearing on work-first programs or the efficacy of work requirements for recipients of federal aid, that might have been expected. But the title of this hearing was Working Families in Need, and Gaines-Turner and her husband both already have jobs.

Simply put, conservative members of the House Budget Committee didn’t show up on July 9 to listen to Gaines-Turner or to learn about the experiences of the working poor. They came to preach what they think they already know about people in poverty. They made Gaines-Turner repeatedly remind them that she and her husband have jobs, and when she tried to pivot to other issues that complicate her financial security—low wages, lack of affordable childcare, asset limits in assistance programs—she was asked whether or not she would prefer to be independent rather than rely on the government. It was embarrassing—not for Gaines-Turner, who handled the pressure and condescending questions with grace—but for the members who showed how unwilling they were to use this hearing to actually listen and learn rather than just hear themselves talk.

Perhaps no member exemplified more than South Carolina Representative Tom Rice the desire to repeatedly assert his own opinion rather than listen to Gaines-Turner talk about her experiences.  After getting all three witnesses to confirm that federal anti-poverty programs alone will never lift a person out of poverty, Rice focused on Gaines-Turner with a clear goal— get her to admit that a job is the only way out of poverty:

“If they just simply rely on federal programs and don’t try to make themselves better and go out and get a job will they ever get out of poverty?” asked Rice.

“Do you agree with me that that’s the path out of poverty? That they have got to go out and get a job?”

“If you rely on federal programs, you’re never going to come out of poverty. The only way out of poverty is to be self-reliant and find yourself a job.”

Gaines-Turner has already found herself a job. What she needs—and what she was asking the members of the committee to consider—is help with the myriad of factors that prevent her from working her way to financial security. If Rice, Ryan, and Indiana Representative Todd Rokita had listened to her, they would have heard Gaines-Turner talk about some of the issues that matter to a person in poverty, even when that person already has a job: healthcare, childcare, transportation, paid sick leave, just wages, safe and affordable housing, equal pay, asset limits. Perhaps they even would have heard her talk about the most shameful part of the reality of the working poor in our nation: that we let them go to work to provide for their families and continue to live in poverty, and make them feel isolated, dehumanized, and dismissed while they are trying to share in the American dream.

It’s truly shameful that Ryan, Rice, and other conservative members held a hearing to not listen to Tianna Gaines-Turner. She already knows what they still need to learn: anti-poverty programs in this country do work and they can work more effectively; but they will never be as successful as they could be until we listen to people in poverty when they share their experiences.

And that goes for all of us.