Sunday, September 21, 2008
Change the cycle of poverty
From the RoundTable blog
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Heather Hash Simmons
Simmons is an educator in Botetourt County.
"We can't allow this kind of suffering and hopelessness to exist in our country. We can't afford to lose a generation of tomorrow's doctors and scientists and teachers to poverty. We can make excuses for it or we can fight about it or we can ignore poverty altogether, but as long as it's here it will always be a betrayal of the ideals we hold as Americans. It's not who we are." -- Sen. Barack Obama, Washington, D.C., July 18, 2007.
Since I was 26 years old, I have been a public school teacher. My husband and I have been married 17 years. We have three children. We both have good jobs, and we are able to provide our children with what they need. Not always what they want, but with what they need. We cannot complain about our situation, but we rarely, if ever, have anything left over at the end of the month. Sometimes we have even had real worries about how to pay for dental work or vision care, but we do have insurance, and we have always made it. We are able to provide for our children, and we are both grateful.
This is not the case for all the children in my life. American children who live in poverty are six times as likely to wake up each day hungry, and go to bed each night without that hunger being fed. Officially, a family is considered poor if it has an income below the official poverty threshold, which is established annually by the U.S. Census Bureau and is based on the number of family members and children. In 2007, the most recent year for which poverty data are available, a four-person family including two children was classified as poor if their income was less than $21,027. Seven of every 10 poor children live in families in which at least one family member worked full- or part-time. Yet for millions of these children, family incomes are insufficient to meet even their basic health and nutrition needs (Children's Defense Fund: Ending Childhood Poverty, 2008).
Poverty doesn't just leave kids hungry; they struggle more in school, and they are less likely to graduate. This begins the cycle of poverty: lower-paying job opportunities, less health coverage, more missed work, increased likelihood of involvement in criminal activities. Every family that backslides into poverty is a tragedy. It weakens our communities, which weakens our local governments, which weakens our state governments, which weakens our national government. What happens within the family affects us all. These facts about poverty are unacceptable and unnecessary.
There is only one candidate running for office this election who has had experience, as a community organizer, in fighting these problems. Obama fought for those in poverty, the jobless and hopeless in Chicago. He fought for Illinois families for more than a decade.
I believe he is the right man, at the right time, to fight for those existing in poverty now, and for those of us who are racing to stay ahead of it. His plan includes expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit to include more families, increase EITC benefits for families with more than three kids, and reduce the EITC marriage penalty, which hurts low-income families. (He successfully created and sponsored a similar credit in Illinois in 2003.) He also plans to raise minimum wage to $9.60 an hour by 2011. People who work full time should not live in poverty, and such a raise will allow families more of an opportunity to provide their children with so many of the things we all take for granted. (You can read an outline of his plan at www.barackobama.com).
Obama has consistently addressed the tragedy of poverty in his campaign, and he has a plan for change. When I go to the polls in November, I plan to make a vote for the 13.3 million Americans who are truly worse off than they were eight years ago. I plan to vote for Obama, and begin to change the cycle of poverty in America.
