The political choice Congress made that pushed children into poverty
The poverty rate has risen to 12.4% in 2022 from 7.8% percent in 2021. We know exactly why.
Choices – good and bad – are part of life. But poverty is usually not the result of bad choices people make. It’s the result of politicians making policy decisions.
The new Census Bureau report, released on September 12, showed a dramatic rise in poverty in America, especially and most painfully among children. In just one year, the poverty rate has risen to 12.4% in 2022 from 7.8% percent in 2021.
Why?
Not because of the choices low-income families made, but because of choices made by members of Congress. This change reversed the real progress we were making in reducing child poverty.
Poverty, especially among children, increased because programs that provided aid to families during the COVID pandemic were allowed to expire.
Poverty among children more than doubled to 12.4% percent from a record low of 5.2% the year before, according to the Supplemental Poverty measure, which factors in the impact of government assistance and regional differences in the cost of living.
This stunning rise in child poverty follows two years of historically large declines, because of programs that were created or expanded during the pandemic.
Unemployment benefits, rental assistance and child care subsidies all helped. But perhaps most important was the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), which provided regular monthly payments to families with children. Research shows families used the extra money for essentials like groceries, rent, school supplies and medical expenses. What worked was direct payments to households, because what poor families need is cash!
Those are the facts. Also a fact: the decision to end critical help for our poorest families was made by politicians. Let’s be clear about who those politicians are: virtually all Republicans and a few Democrats, like Senator Joe Manchin. They made the choice to increase child poverty.
As New Jersey Senator Cory Booker said recently: “We have now proved something pretty phenomenal and at the same time, pretty obscene. And what we've proved is that poverty for children in America is not some accident. It's a policy choice.”
What was working to reduce and help eventually overcome poverty was frittered away. I have a poster in my home office that says “Fight Poverty Not The Poor.” For more years than I can count, I and others have pleaded with politicians to understand that “Budgets Are Moral Documents.” Our choices in all our budgets – for families, churches, organizations, cites, states, and nations – tell us who is important and who is not. And the politicians who decided reverse real solutions to poverty clearly told us that poor children don’t matter to them.
As always, increasing poverty is most painfully felt by Black and brown children in America, with whom most white politicians have almost no contact or any relationship to. It is always the lack of proximity which prevents compassion and accepts injustice. To say poor families are now struggling to raise their children is one of those great understatements in American politics.
Stories abound about how families were uplifted by the Child Tax Credit. One of many was reported in The New York Times:
When a high-risk pregnancy forced Amber Summers to leave her job in rural Southern Illinois in 2021, the expanded child tax credit provided a lifeline. The $250 monthly payments helped cover her mortgage and allowed her son, now 9, to play Little League Baseball for the first time.
“It was financial stability and stress relief for our family,” she said.
But when the payments lapsed at the end of 2021, the family’s finances quickly unraveled — especially after Ms. Summers’s husband, Tim, contracted Covid and lost his job as a cook. And while both of them have since returned to work, neither is receiving full-time hours, and they are falling further behind on their bills. Opportunities for better-paying jobs are limited in their area.
“The child tax credit helped pull our family out of poverty for such a short period of time,” Ms. Summers, 32, said.
From food to rent to Little League Baseball, ( which touches my heart as a former Little League baseball coach for my two sons); life got better for our poorest families. Now life has gotten worse.
Stories of church food pantries and community food banks being overwhelmed again also abound. And now, many church groups across the country are coming together in the hope of bringing back the expanded child credit. You are going to see the CTC lifted up as a faith issue, rooted in the Scriptures and in Jesus’ call to protect “the least of these,” with broad coalitions of faith leaders, denominations and organizations like the Circle of Protection.
The New York Times reported the political facts of how the CTC was allowed to expire:
“Faced with united opposition from congressional Republicans as well as some conservative Democrats, Mr. Biden dropped his effort to extend the program at the end of 2021; a renewed push failed again last year. The rise in poverty in 2022, social policy experts said, was the inevitable result of that decision.”
Those who call for “work” over “aid” often fail to acknowledge the fact that the CTC and the Earned Income Tax Credit, the most effective programs in overcoming poverty, are rooted in the work of low income families by adding to that income.
A Columbia University study demonstrated how poverty would have been nearly 50% lower in 2022 if the expanded tax credit had been kept in place.
Now, Republicans in the House of Representatives are demanding further funding cuts – or they will shut down the government. Unsurprisingly, these cuts will hurt poor families and children, especially with Black and brown children, most of all.
I stayed up late to watch the second Republican presidential debate on Fox. The shouting at and talking over each other made many parts of the debate hard to hear. But what we clearly did hear – from all of the contenders – was a commitment to more deeply cut government programs, and the programs they will select to end are always the ones that serve the poor and vulnerable, especially impacting families of color.
Let’s end with a text from Proverbs:
As a roaring lion, and a charging bear; so is a wicked ruler over poor people.
— Proverbs 28:15
Choices to raise poverty for those whom God calls on us to protect are indeed wicked choices. It’s time for people of faith to tell their political leaders to make very different choices. Fighting poverty should be a non-partisan and bi-partisan issue. We should do that together and the faith community must lead the way.
The good news is that the Child Tax Credit may come up again in an end-of-the year tax package. Republicans want to extend tax breaks for corporations. Democrats like Cory Booker and Sen. Sherrod Brown are saying that corporations should not get tax breaks unless children get them, too. In the coming weeks and months, the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown will be sharing resources for raising your voice in this important debate. I hope and pray you will do so.
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FACT: People do make choices and MANY are certainly unwise. Jesus talks about that in Matthew 7:13-14 & 24-27. Sadly MANY do go through the wide gate to destruction and build their lives on “sand” instead of the “solid rock” of Christ’s teachings. The secular US Congress is not commissioned to make people follow Christ’s teachings. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Because Jesus says to help the poor some here think those are marching orders for Congress. But what then about what Jesus says about adultery & divorce? Why not mention those? God’s truth is not a buffet table where one picks & chooses though many act as it is.