At The Nation, Greg Kaufman writes 'The Worst I've Seen by Far': Budget Cuts Meet Poverty in the Heartland:
For Jack Frech, director of the Athens County Department of Job and Family Services in Appalachian Ohio, the fact that Congress and statehouses across the country are pushing budgets that would further cut assistance for poor people is downright frightening.
Fourteen percent of Speaker Boehner’s constituents live below the federal poverty line of $22,400 per year for a family of four. His budget targets these vulnerable people.
“I’ve been doing this work for thirty years, and this is the worst I’ve seen it by far,” says Frech. “And when I say the worst, I mean the absolute worst.”
Frech says his clients are now “double and tripling up on housing” and “only surviving because they wait in long lines at food pantries.” They are forgoing medical treatment and trying to maintain “some old junk car” so they can “put in their fifteen or thirty hours—whatever they’re lucky enough to find—to meet their work requirement so they can continue to receive assistance.” ...
“States have implemented restrictive policies to reduce the number of families who are eligible for assistance,” says Dr. LaDonna Pavetti, vice president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
According to Pavetti, in 1994-95 seventy-five families were receiving AFDC benefits for every 100 in poverty. By 2008-09, that number shrank to just twenty-eight families enrolled in TANF for every 100 in poverty. The impact is borne disproportionately by children.
“There are 14.8 million children living in families with below-poverty income, and only 3.4 million of those children are receiving TANF-funded benefits,” said Gordon Berlin, president of MDRC, a social policy research group, in recent testimony to Congress.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2009:
On Friday, Netroots Nation held a salon titled Can the Netroots help make the Employee Free Choice Act law? But of course, in light of the much-publicized declarations by people like Arlen Specter and Blanche Lincoln that they will not vote for cloture on the bill, one of the questions that must be asked is "what are the chances of the Employee Free Choice Act becoming law at all?" Or, in light of the rumors flying about possible compromise bills, "in what form would the Employee Free Choice Act become law?"
The panelists included Stewart Acuff of the AFL-CIO, who is doing Employee Free Choice field organizing throughout the country, Rebecca Wasserman, Government Relations Manager at American Rights at Work, and SEIU online organizer Michael Whitney. (Plus me, and moderator Chris Hayes of The Nation.) Just about every angle in the fight for Employee Free Choice was covered, therefore: in the field, on the Hill, and online. And everyone was optimistic that we are on the brink of a significant victory.
As to the form of that victory, Acuff said "is sausage going to get made? Yeah, but we will fight to preserve the three core principles" of the Employee Free Choice Act.