By GREGORY N. HEIRES
As Washington politicians are on the verge of pushing the government off the fiscal cliff and thereby triggering huge spending cuts in social programs, the number of impoverished and homeless people is on the rise.
The plight of the poor illustrates how the debate in Washington over how to avert automatic spending cuts and tax increases at the beginning of 2013 isn’t an abstraction.
The failure of U.S. House Speaker John A. Boehner to convince the Republican caucus to approve his alternative to President Barack Obama’s deficit-reduction proposal shows how the party’s reactionary, anti-tax Tea Party faction holds the country’s nearly 50 million poor in contempt and would love, through inaction, to whittle away at the welfare state.
On Thursday, the U.S. Conference of Mayors released its annual report on hunger and homelessness, which found requests for emergency food assistance increased in 21 of the 25 cities (84 percent) it surveyed in 2012. Homelessness increased in more than half of the cities. The surveyed cities included Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and Nashville.
With so many people in need, now is the time to be talking about increasing government assistance—especially help for job creation–rather than chopping spending.Yet as the House debates a farm bill, Republicans are looking to cut $16 billion in food stamps.
The president of the Conference of Mayors, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, on Thursday called for a “fair and balanced budget” that would help combat poverty through investment in infrastructure and spending on other social programs.
“In Philadelphia, I see people who are hungry and in need of shelter on a daily basis,” Nutter said, “and explaining to them that Congress is cutting funding for the help they need is not acceptable. What they need are jobs so they can support their families, and Congress can help to create those jobs if it passes a fair and balanced budget with investments in infrastructure, innovation, and real people.”
If the White House and U.S. Congress fail to reach a deal and the automatic spending cuts go into effect, the country’s municipalities will be hit with a reduction in assistance for services at a time in which they already are unable to provide adequate help to the poor. Consider:
• Because of increased demand for assistance, emergency kitchens and food pantries in nearly all of the surveyed cities were forced to reduce the quantity of food provided to visitors;
• Ninety percent of the cities reported turning away people because of a lack of resources;
• Sixty percent of cities experienced a rise in homelessness, with an average increase of 7 percent, in 2012, and
• Sixty-four percent of the cities indicated that they had to turn away homeless families because of a lack of beds.
Among those seeking food assistance, 51 percent were families and 37 percent were employed, according the survey. Nearly one in six was elderly, and 8.5 percent were homeless.
Greg Fischer, the mayor of Louisville, Ky., who chairs the conference’s committee on metro economies, said, “This report is a stark reminder of the long-lasting impact the recession has had on many of our citizens. Families, who once lived in middle class homes, now find themselves without a roof over their heads, needing multiple social services for the first time in their lives.”
The Conference of Mayors report illustrates the fragility of the recovery from the 2007-2009 recession. Rising unemployment led to more poverty and caused the demand for food stamps to increase dramatically.
Though unemployment has fallen from a peak of 10 percent in the recession to 7.7 percent, the poverty rate is stuck at 15 percent and 47.7 million people rely on food stamps, a record.
www.thenewcrossroads.com Posted December 22, 2012
