Congressional Republicans’ budget plans would force America’s working class to foot the bill for tax cuts for the wealthy by cutting back on programs that help families remain financially secure.
The programs at risk for the largest cuts include Medicaid, which enables 72 million people – more than 1 in 5 Americans – to obtain health care, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps 42 million people – more than 1 in 8 Americans – avoid going hungry. Other proposals include eliminating the child and dependent care tax credit, making it more onerous for taxpayers to claim the child tax credit, and eliminating tax credits for qualified education expenses.
In our Congressman John Joyce’s district, nearly a third of the 167,700 constituents would lose Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage, and the district would lose $2.1 billion in federal funding.
With an economy in which wages grow too slowly and prices grow too fast, it’s not surprising that nearly 80 percent of U.S. adults say they worry that their children will be worse off than they were.
What is it like to be among the working poor? Many people assume that if a person receives an increase in pay, his/her personal financial situation will improve. It’s a simple concept: work hard and you’ll get ahead. But what if the harder you work, the more your spending power goes down? That happens to some people.
Devan Grote, a Gettysburg College graduate, researched poverty in Adams County and created a video about a typical single parent of two attempting to pull her family out of poverty. But it’s practically impossible; as her salary increases, her assistance decreases, and she becomes progressively worse off. The video was produced by the College’s Center for Public Service with input and stories from Circle Leaders in the South Central Community Action Program’s Circles Initiative, a community endeavor to inspire and equip communities to end poverty.
Imagine you are that single mother, with a preschooler and a child in elementary school, earning $7.25/hour, the current minimum wage. That is $15,080 a year, significantly lower than the federal poverty level for 2024 of $26,650 for a family of three. (This mother is not alone; nearly ten percent of families in Adams County have incomes below the federal poverty level.)
After transportation expenses such as car insurance, maintenance, and gas, you have $20 left each month for savings, emergencies, loan repayment, recreation/entertainment, education/training, gifts, the internet, meals out, a vacation, a pet, health insurance, etc. If you get a raise to $8.25/hour, your spending power increases by $40 a week.
You are eligible to receive assistance for housing, childcare, food, and medical insurance for your children. But what happens next sounds like the Chance or Community Chest cards in the board game Monopoly: “Get a raise/new job to $11.25/hour, lose so many benefits that you actually have $23 less in spending power than you had when you were making $7.25/hour.”
It gets worse. “You are a good worker, get a raise to $15.25/hour, lose more than $300 per month in benefits, including all your food stamps, which further decreases your spending power. In fact, you will be $422 short of fulfilling your basic needs.”
At $16.25/hour, you begin to recover a little, but it’s not until you earn $20.25/hour that you can pay your basic needs again – back where you began. You’ve nearly tripled your income, but you have only the same spending power you had at $7.25/hour.
At $21.25/hour, you lose your final benefit, childcare, and again you cannot fulfill your basic needs. It’s not until you earn another dollar an hour to $22.25 that you will be able to again meet your basic needs, and your spending power would be $19 – about where you began.
Most of us know how difficult it is to improve our financial situation: getting a promotion or a better job for more pay, improving our skills or obtaining more education, receiving an inheritance from a rich relative or winning the lottery. In other words, it’s hard or highly unlikely.
There are many misconceptions about poverty in America. Perhaps the most misleading is that anyone who works harder can move up the ladder to a higher standard of living.
If only that were true.
Mark Berg is a community activist in Adams County and a proud Liberal. His email address is MABerg175@Comcast.net.
Are you factoring in child support from the father and the Child Tax Credit which is proposed to rise to $2,500 per child ($5,000 annually in this case) in the new spending bill?
The fact that assistance programs are set up to reward not working harder and becoming more self sufficient is precisely why they need to be reformed.
This situation you describe is not something Republicans alone created. My sister went through this situation 30 years ago in a State that was Democrat for several terms! This is a problem with a very select, elite class (in both political parties) who value themselves over others and are creating literally ‘family dynasties’. It is also a problem in the UK and continental Europe and has gone on for over a century. Look further into the Progressive Party era of the Roosevelts and you will learn something about this ‘problem’ that is deliberately created for “control of the masses” for… Read more »