By Deidre Purdy
Child Poverty in America – Together We Can Fix This
Most of the time it seems that politics in Washington, DC are far removed from our day-to-day lives. Powerful people are making decisions about issues that don’t touch our actual worries and concerns.
Children living in poverty, though, is front and center in our Calhoun County lives. A third of our children live in poverty; one in four live with grandparents or caregivers instead of their actual parents.
Too many of our children need food, shelter, or medical care their households cannot afford.
In 2021, America saw the largest one-year drop in child poverty on record. Child poverty dropped to an all-time low of 5.2%. This was huge. What happened?
The American Rescue Plan, supported by all Democrats and no Republicans, included an enhanced child tax credit. If people did not have enough income to need a tax credit, that amount would be paid to them, providing cash aid to the nation’s lowest-income families.
But in 2022, Congress failed to renew the enhanced child tax credit. Child poverty more than doubled to 12.4%. This is a tragedy.
Five million children fell into poverty in one year. Children raised in poverty are more likely to be malnourished, become sick, drop out of school, be unemployed due to lack of education, and continue the cycle of poverty with their own children.
Politicians of both parties contend that having a job is the best antipoverty program. But low wages and rising costs, especially for rental housing and food, mean that many working parents remain in poverty despite full-time work.
“Just get a job” is even less helpful advice for grandparents. Around 43,000 children in West Virginia are being raised by grandparents, the highest percentage in the nation
Only one Democrat, WV’s Senator Manchin, together with all Republican senators including our Senator Capito, prevented the enhanced credit from passing the Senate because it didn’t have a work requirement. Manchin even suggested parents might buy drugs instead of food.
The overwhelming evidence from the pandemic shows low-income families spent any extra money on the basics: food, housing, and clothes and school supplies for their children. Ironically, the credit has now fallen back to the old rules where more than 26 million children are unable to get the full credit because their parents earn too little!
Child poverty is far too important to be just a marker in our current divided party politics. Ha, ha, we won, you lost, your child tax credit didn’t pass. Who really lost? Our children.
One thing we all know is that children, whether R or D, are not responsible for their families’ poverty and should not be punished for it. Don’t we all want a country where every citizen is healthy, well-nourished, and well-educated?
It shouldn’t matter whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat. Senator Byrd would have brought this money home to West Virginia. Senator Manchin, Senator Capito, Get This Done!
Diedre you make a great observation. Our children are lacking in so may areas. Unfortunately, you try to shift blame from the root cause of the problem to the Republicans. The Democrats are the ones who use their agenda , which is designed for one thing and one thing only, to stay in power. You talk tax credits like it is some magical fix all. Do Democrats really care about kids lacking food shelter and clothing? Absolutely. Just not for American kids. Biden and his cronies send billions to Ukraine for, among other things, funding their peoples pensions and unemployment. Also to protect their borders. Democrats here scream racism and bigotry if anyone dares say anything about securing our border. Yet the literal millions of who have crossed into our country illegally are put up , in some cases, 4 and 5 star hotels, given money, food, cell phones and legal help among other things. The down side for them is that the cartels who seem to run the Democrats extract a price , especially on the kids by forcing them into prostitution, sex trafficking, drug running, and other morally dispicable acts. Yet American citizens, especially veterans are living on the street and get next to nothing if they get anything at all. How much do the Dems really love those entering our country illegally? Ask those living in Martha’s Vineyard, Washington D.C. or the mayor of New York. Have you seen the housing demographics in San Francisco lately? Dems. used covid to shut down businesses , oil production and and want trillions put into the green revolution. Dems cry tax credit. But legislate to have children undergo life changing sex change operations at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars at tax payer expense. Which they want the workers and corporations to pay for. Do Dems want kids to get a good lunch at school? I am sure they do. How much money could be put into the school cafeterias if they did not hire drag queens for story hour and eliminate the courses on trying to get kids, who are just learning to read and write ( which for centuries is what parents sent their kids to school for and paid taxes for such) questioning what gender they are or their sexual orientation. I believe that the majority of teachers are dedicated , caring people who pour themselves into our children. Most all of can remember a particular teacher or 2 who had a profound influence on our lives. The Dems have them fearful of their jobs. Parents who question school boards are referred to as terrorists, What strains are teachers who do not buy into their agenda put under. I could go on about the Dems agenda to destroy the middle class. But the issue here is kids needs being met. I argue that the tax credit being touted here is less than a drop in the bucket compared to all the money spent to reshape our kids and country. Just another Democratic smokescreen to make the Dems in office look like they care, when in actuality, the only thing they care about is themselves. They are just so arrogant though they they think everyone does not have the intelligence to see what is happening. They may be right. Because it is happening and all but a few true republicans are doing anything about it.
The democrats have had the power for many decades now and nothing got done.
Hopefully something can now without the democrats wielding power.
If i happens wouldn’t that say a lot?
The problem Robert is that the Republicans also have done little to nothing over the years, including those that they were in power. With the exception of a handful, all we hear is BBB Buy my book.
Hi Diedre……again I got to agree with you 100% ……with exception of the root cause and the solution. I think that you and I are a good illustration that we are truly more alike in our concerns and commitment to solutions than we are different. NO ONE wins when the focus in winning in a political arena. Calhoun County children living in poverty doubled from 2019 to 2022……from 20.6% to 43.2%. I find the national number very out of pace with local realities. In 2019, the oil and gas sector was booming. We were on the brink of being a net exporter of energy and our Calhoun men and women had good paying jobs. This was the reason the number was low not because of tax credits from the Biden Administration. The solution is not throwing money at people via tax credits…..the answer lies in good paying job on American soil with those corporations paying real tax. At least for WV the data certainly suggests this. We most definitely agree on the problem and a real problem it is. The solution is in all parties and independents working together to solve the real problem…….good jobs. This is exactly what we are trying to do in Calhoun with a stair stepped approach to revitalization. Keep up the great work on the Light and Sound project. It is so great to see the music program returning to its glory days.
It seems that the three of us, Diedre, Crystal and myself, all from different parties agree that child poverty is a growing problem and needs to be addressed. The question of how and by what means is what needs answered. Crystal is absolutely right that jobs will be a big part of solving that. According to economists, one job has an exponential effect of creating 10 other jobs that will support it. Thereby increasing the tax base and standard of living for all. That is the good news. What is possibly even more important, is fiscal responsibility. Crystal rightly states that under the Trump presidency things flourished and grew. As a consumer and MAGA proponent, I wholeheartedly agree. It did. But what also grew was the National Debt. By almost 8 trillion dollars. The claim by the Democratic party and some independents is that we need corporate America to pay more taxes. Do we? And how much more? I know statistics are deceiving because we can manipulate numbers in various ways to suit or argument. But we have to start somewhere. Again how much. According the the GAO numbers I called up the average corporation is is paying 24%. Again, this is the national average. It varies by state. It is also true that some major corporations pay nothing. How? By using legally approved accounting deductions. If you raise their rate. it is not just them. The average small business owner with one employee pays 13%. With more than one employee the rate goes up to almost 20% . Their taxes will increase too. If companies are forced to pay more taxes, increased investment in capital equipment and technology will go down. Thereby affecting their suppliers and their families. Employee benefits may also be cut. Pensions, 401k contributions, stock options, even things like raising premiums on health insurance , etc could all be affected, . Is it any wonder, especially with high interest rates that small businesses are shutting their doors? We want to end child poverty, Probably not a more noble cause could be found. But do we really? How much money are we talking about? We give it lots of lip service, and rightly so, but our actions show otherwise. We give Ukraine money. I heard another 6 billion yesterday. Why? To help keep their borders secure among other things. We open our birders and give every one who enters illegally more than the average citizen pays thru the nose for. Yet what about our own citizens.. How far would that billion go to feeding and clothing our own kids? But our schools and officials have deemed that a child needs to have their gender affirmed and surgically altered . Priorities. If we help child change their at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, and there is no money to get them food or clothes, who is to blame? I mentioned earlier that their is a 10 to one increase in jobs and standard of living. There is also a loss of ten support jobs when one worker loses theirs. To pay for illegal necessities for example, what do we cut? Military spending? Social programs? Foreign Aid? etc. There is only so much money. A government shutdown is looming as I write this. The possibility of the yuan replacing the dollar is becoming more of a probability if something is not done to shore it up quickly. If so, your and my dollar will be like the rubles that the Russian citizens woke up to one morning and found that they were virtually worthless. This is just one example. There are a lot more moving parts to this equation. The Dems and the Reps have different views on how to deal with issues. We need both sides of the aisle. Our government was founded basically on that principal. Independents can pick and choose which ideas what they like and mold it into their own idealogy. They really make very little if any laws that are enacted. Their biggest contribution is shaping our government with the independent vote that parties vie for at elections. Without the 2 sides, independents do not have much to draw from or the power to have their individual policies enacted. But they can when they vote for the party or candidate they align themselves with. I could go on, but the bottom line here is Crystal is right about jobs. What the 1982 foundation has been doing as well as the bootstrap program, and other things they are bringing to fruition are a boon to this county. And it is rubbing off. The mayor and the council revitalizing the park. Pickleball. Buildings in downtown being facelifted among other things. All these play off of one another and look at the community involvement. I believe most people want to be part of things and contribute where they can. Calhoun County is showing that. Should all 3 , Democrat, Republican and Independents get together to solve the issues that citizens are most concerned about? Absolutely. Will they? Only if idealogical differences can be put aside and focus on solving the problem. For all. Not just part of the faction. Lawmakers are elected to solve these issues. We have the power of the vote to see that they do. It is more power than you think.