The facts about government assistance efforts

The newsletter to the General Assembly Mission Council of the Presbyterian Church USA published the following very useful and clarifying report concerning the public assistance programs of the federal government.  Whatever your point of view about the efforts of our government to assist the poor among us, the facts of this report are important to understand. 

Myths and Facts

Poverty and the federal budget

By Amelia Kegan

Renee Hummel, a mother in Staunton, Va., remembers a time when her family was struggling to make ends meet.

“We saved by buying food on clearance that had passed the expiration date,” she says. “I cooked from scratch and never ate out; it took a lot of time, but it sure saved a lot of money. When you’re poor you have to do things to stretch the food. … I watered down my daughter’s apple juice. I watered down her formula, but stopped doing that when she became anemic. That time I got really scared.”

Most of the items in a household budget—rent, utilities, transportation, child care—are fixed expenses. When the car breaks down, a child gets sick, the furnace goes on the fritz or a parent is laid off from work, a struggling family may fall into poverty. When money starts to run out, food—one of the few flexible items in the budget—often must be cut back.

Certain federal programs are designed to help low-income families cover those unexpected costs without going hungry. Those programs include the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP; formerly known as the food stamp program), school lunch and breakfast programs, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), housing subsidies and job training.

Most Christians agree that helping poor and hungry people is an important part of Christian discipleship. But not all agree on what the government’s role should be in this effort. Research by Bread for the World, a Washington, D.C.–based Christian advocacy organization dedicated to ending hunger, suggests that government programs play an essential role in helping low-income families.

MYTH: Federal anti-poverty programs are wasteful and ineffective.

FACT: The programs have a strong track record of efficiently targeting assistance to those who are eligible. For example, while poverty has reached record highs over the past three years, the percentage of households that the U.S. Department of Agriculture considers food insecure (struggling to put food on the table) has not gone up, because programs like SNAP and the school lunch program have responded to the rise in need. Nearly 46 million Americans now use SNAP benefits to buy groceries. Half of all SNAP participants are children.

The WIC program currently serves about 9 million people. Women who participate in WIC have fewer premature births, fewer low-birth-weight babies and fewer fetal and infant deaths. Moreover, 4- and 5-year-olds whose mothers participated in WIC during pregnancy have better vocabularies than eligible children whose mothers did not receive WIC.

MYTH: If government programs are cut, churches and private charities can provide the necessary safety net for low-income people.

FACT: The difficult economy challenges churches, soup kitchens and food pantries to step up their efforts, but it simply isn’t possible for these organizations to meet all the needs. For example, if you add up all the food provided by all the charities in the country, the total is only 6 percent of the amount of food that poor people receive from federal food programs.

To read the entire report click here.

July 4 reading

Worth reading again today. . .

The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

To read the entire document click here. 

Texas tax system: fair or unfair?

Tax Fairness

Fairness of a tax system can be judged by comparing the percentage of income different households pay in taxes. In a state with a fair tax system, households with higher incomes, who can afford to pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes, pay more.

In Texas, the households with the lowest incomes pay the highest percentage of their income in taxes; the households with the highest incomes pay the lowest percentage of their income in taxes. In other words, those who can least afford it pay the most. A system that takes a higher percentage of the income of a
lower-income family is called "regressive."

Texas has the fifth most regressive state and local tax system of the 50 states.

Households with the Lowest Income Pay the Highest Percentage in State and Local Taxes

[This report provided by the Center for Public Policy Priorities.  To read the entire, much more extensive report click here.]

American wisdom from a "founder"

"Happy it is when the interest which the government has in the preservation of its own power coincides with a proper distribution of the public burdens and tends to guard the least wealthy part of the community from oppression!"

Alexander Hamilton

Federalist Papers, #36

Sam Rayburn

This is well worth your time. 

Andrew Jackson and equal protection

President Andrew Jackson made the following remarks during a speech regarding his veto of the controversial national bank bill that had passed by the Congress in the summer of 1832.  Jackson's view of the proper role of government is worth consideration.

"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.  Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government.  Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions.  In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society--the farmers, mechanics, and laborers--who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government.  There are no necessary evils in government.  Its evils exist only in its abuses.  If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does it rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, ti would be an unqualified blessing."

from American Lion:  Andrew Jackson in the White House, by Jon Meacham, page 210.