Paul Ryan’s Own District Disproves Everything He Says About Poverty

In Racine, Wisconsin, it is clear that a community was abandoned.

On either side of Memorial Drive, one after another, are relics of better days: massive brick factories now closed, sprawling warehouses deserted, empty lots, boarded-up buildings. Rusted water towers and aged smokestacks rise from industrial rooftops, like sentries standing guard long after they served their duty. Racine Steel Casings, Case Tractors, Sealed Air, Jacobsen Textron, Golden Books, Young Radiator—once-great employers, all gone, but not forgotten by locals.

“We were known for making things here,” said Democratic State Representative Cory Mason, a fifth-generation Racine resident who has represented his neighbors in the Wisconsin Statehouse for 10 years. “You could graduate from high school, get a union job, and send your kids to college. For most of the 20^th century, that was what Racine was like.”

But in recent decades, as trade deals shipped most of the middle class jobs overseas, recessions hit, and labor protections deteriorated, that kind of shared prosperity vanished. Now many residents work in the service industry and can barely get by.

As a result, more than 21 percent of the city’s residents live in poverty, and it cuts across demographics—including 22 percent of whites, 23 percent of African-Americans, and 28 percent of Hispanics. Racine has the highest unemployment among large cities in the state. The school district serves approximately 20,000 students, and between 1,000 and 1,500 are homeless for all or part of the year.

Racine also lies in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s district, and Mason suggested that Ryan doesn’t seem to adapt his agenda to the hardship people are experiencing.

“Congressman Ryan can’t have it both ways,” he said. “He can’t be the guy for the trade deals that move the middle class jobs away and be the guy who’s opposed to raising the minimum wage, and then say that we need to take safety net programs away.”

Kelly Gallaher, a community organizer with Racine’s Community for Change, put it a little more bluntly: “How do you take away half of our manufacturing jobs and then say poverty is some moral failing?”

***

On Saturday morning, in Speaker Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, a dozen people lined up outside of Echo food bank a half hour before it opened.

Janesville plays a central role in Ryan’s rhetoric. In a recent commencement speech he delivered at Carthage College, he said: “I live with my family in Janesville. Every weekend I am here with my family. Yesterday was turkey hunting and track meet and then dinner at my mom’s.”

There is an idyllic quality to Ryan’s anecdotes, and on one side of the Rock River that snakes through town, you can see why: stately homes, charming shops downtown, bustling commercial activity.

But on the other side of the river, where Echo is located, the damaging effects of lost jobs and low wages are on full display: dilapidated and boarded up houses, vacant retail spaces, the palpable tension of people struggling to simply make ends meet.

“How do you take away half of our manufacturing jobs and then say poverty is some moral failing?”
– Kelly Gallaher

Within an hour of Echo’s opening, about 30 people were seated inside, waiting for their number to be called so they could meet with a case manager and then visit the pantry. People continued to stream in, and most did not want to speak with a reporter. As one young woman said, “It’s hard enough just to be here. I don’t want my picture all over some newspaper.”

But Robert, who works for Walmart, shared his story. He has a 45-minute commute to his job, and this March his car slid off the road in the snow and hit a tree. He no longer has reliable transportation and he and his family were recently evicted. They relocated, but now face a high electric bill.

He said that what people in the area need more than anything are good jobs, or training for good jobs, especially if Ryan wants to reduce the use of food stamps and other work supports that are needed in a low-wage economy. He recounted that at a Labor Day parade a couple years ago people held posters that read, “We Needs Jobs in Janesville.” Ryan walked in a different direction.

“The people with posters ran after him so that he could see,” said Robert.

***

Peter and his 9-year-old daughter, Love, met us at the Halo homeless shelter back in Racine. They had recently returned from 10 months in Chicago, where Peter cared for his mother who is diabetic while working as a driver of a medical supplies van. When his mother was stable, Peter and Love returned to Racine and moved in with his girlfriend. But she had fallen behind on rent due to her own hospitalization with sickle cell anemia, and they were evicted from the apartment.

Peter and Love slept in his car until they discovered Halo. The organization found them a permanent, subsidized house for which Peter now pays 30 percent of his income.

He obtained work operating a forklift, but the work dried up and he was laid off at the end of May. Peter described himself as “very skilled,” and was confident he would quickly find another job given his experience as a commercial vehicle driver, medical assistant, machine operator, and working in community-based residential facilities. He had filled out 100 job applications in the past week, and got two job interviews. He expected an offer for work in Kenosha, but was concerned about the commute in traffic and time away from his daughter.

“My biggest problem is I want to get a job around here—I probably won’t be able to find one,” he said. “I don’t know why it’s so hard to get a job in Racine.”

Part of the reason he can’t find a job with a good wage in Racine might be that his skillset doesn’t match the limited number of high-tech manufacturing jobs that remain in the city. In better times, Peter might have been able to return to school for those jobs. Mason said that until 1980 there was no tuition for technical colleges in the state. But the state and federal governments stopped making the necessary investments, and now people who are struggling are expected to rack up $20,000 in debt in some cases to return to school.

***

At the Racine Interfaith Center, 20-year-old Valeria and her father Gabriel—both undocumented—talked about their family’s struggles and the need for immigration reform.

They moved to Racine 16 years ago, and without a Social Security card, Gabriel said he is only able to work minimum and low-wage jobs “that other people don’t want.”

For the past five years, he has worked at a foundry melting metals for reuse. It’s known as “the little Hell” because in the summertime, when it hits 80 degrees outside, it is 130 degrees inside the foundry. Prior to this job Gabriel worked at a duck farm, doing 12-hour shifts with just two breaks—30 minutes for lunch, and 10 minutes for the bathroom. If workers attempted to take another break they were sent home.

Because of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), Valeria is able to get higher quality jobs than her father, and currently works in sales. College, on the other hand, has had to wait, since Governor Scott Walker repealed in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants in 2009.

Valeria has lived in Ryan’s district since the age of three, and has met with him through her activism in the immigration reform movement. She is frustrated with his pledges to support immigrants and subsequent actions that she feels demonstrate a lack of commitment.

“I’ve met with him lots of time, face-to-face,” she said. “One time I was telling him my parents are living on a low wage and we can’t live like this. And he said, ‘Well why can’t they get a better job?’ And he knows they can’t get a better job because they don’t have a Social Security card.”

***

So what would Paul Ryan do if he wanted to address poverty in Janesville and throughout his district in a serious way?

Gallaher suggested the Speaker might start by visiting those who are struggling right in his backyard.

“If Paul Ryan wants to talk about poverty, he doesn’t have to go more than a mile from his house to talk with people who can tell him specifically how they found themselves living in their car, or without a job,” she said.

Representative Mark Pocan, whose district borders Janesville and who shares Rock County with Ryan, thinks that the ideas Ryan and other conservatives keep introducing “are really more stealth ways to cut programs that assist people in poverty.”

According to Pocan, the most important thing elected leaders can do in the fight against poverty is help people get jobs with family-supporting wages. That means investing in things like childcare, job training, apprenticeship programs, higher education, and infrastructure; raising the minimum wage, and supporting collective bargaining.

But if Ryan’s latest poverty plan is any indication, he won’t be supporting a bold anti-poverty agenda any time soon. His plan calls for cuts to much of what remains of the safety net for his constituents. It includes cuts to unemployment assistance, phasing out the Head Start program, and rolling back federal Pell Grants for students trying to pursue higher education. It does little to nothing to create jobs or raise wages. In fact, it looks a lot like this year’s House Republican budget—which gets more than 60 percent of its cuts from programs that help low- and moderate-income Americans, while protecting tax cuts for the very wealthy.

Finally, the Speaker’s plan demonstrates this: his enduring disconnect from the people struggling in his own district and across America.

Jeremy Slevin and Alyssa Peterson contributed reporting to this article. Photography and video by Jeremy Slevin.

One in two Americans will experience poverty or near poverty during their working years. But you wouldn’t know that from watching the news.

Nightly news broadcasts on the three major television networks barely mentioned the 47 million Americans living in poverty in the first quarter of 2016. According to a new report from Media Matters for America, NBC Nightly News ran just two segments on the topic in the first three months of this year. What’s worse, ABC and CBS failed to cover the issue entirely.

Even when it comes to income inequality—a trend gaining increasing media attention—the networks fell down on the job. NBC aired just 5 segments on the topic (out of hundreds), compared to just one from CBS Evening News and zero on ABC’s World News Tonight.

Cable outlets and Sunday shows performed marginally better, as Fox News and MSNBC each aired 32 segments on inequality and CNN ran 17. But less than half of those—48 segments across all three cable networks—focused on those most acutely affected by income inequality: Americans living in poverty. And, it should be noted, cable news outlets have 24 hours of airtime to fill—a total of 48 segments among thousands of hours of coverage hardly amounts to significant media attention.

This should come as no surprise. A separate survey of nightly newscasts in 2015 found that economic stories received less coverage than in any year since 1988. Of the economic stories that were covered, very few focused on poverty. The top economic story of the last year? The stock market.

And the guests discussing issues of inequality and poverty are hardly representative of those experiencing it. Women accounted for less than a third of guests during segments on inequality or poverty on TV News programs, despite the fact that women are more likely to experience poverty at every stage of life.

One simple explanation? The 2016 election. The presidential race has been the most-covered story of the year—with one candidate, in particular, occupying the lion’s share of coverage. Donald Trump has received more earned media coverage than every other candidate combined in 2016. His candidacy alone is on track to earn more than double all media coverage of the economy in 2015.

And a deeper dive shows that most of the limited coverage of poverty came in the context of presidential elections. Interviews with Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders accounted for six of the nine Sunday show segments mentioning poverty.

While the data speaks to the TV news’s indifference to issues that affect low income Americans, it also proves that presidential campaigns—and the activists, operatives, and public thinkers who influence those campaigns—have an increasingly outsized ability to steer that coverage.

Another silver lining? TV news is dying. 35 percent of millennials (18- to 29-year-olds) found social media to be the most helpful new source in 2016. In contrast, just 12 percent say cable TV news was the most helpful. And at 4 percent, network news barely registers. While cable news is still the most popular source among older age groups, all trend lines point toward the growth of mobile and video content in the future.

As the TV audience shrinks, online outlets are filling the void. The list of top 50 online news outlets is littered with news organizations who eschew horse race coverage of the election in favor of substantive coverage. Not-for-profit outlets like The Marshall Project, the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and this very site all take different approaches to covering issues that affect low-income Americans.

So while the current TV landscape may look bleak for Americans working in poverty, the future of news is bright.

Dear Speaker Ryan,

I read that you will roll out your new poverty task force’s proposal tomorrow, and I wonder if you remember me. I testified at one of the hearings you hosted on the War on Poverty two years ago. Of the 17 expert witnesses who participated in the series, I was the only one who actually lived in poverty.

At the time I felt like I had the weight of so many people on my shoulders—people who don’t normally have a voice in Congress. How would Congress ever know what they should do to address poverty if they don’t ever speak to us?

I did my best to share my story and those of others in my community, and then I had the opportunity to meet you. As you reached to shake my hand, I said I wanted a hug. It was my way of trying to make our connection more personal—a reflection of my hope that we would begin to work together to make change around hunger and poverty.

As important as you said the issue was to you, I was sure that you would make a place in your work for me, my Witnesses to Hunger brothers and sisters, and many others who are living in poverty. Since 2008, we have used our photographs and testimonials to show the world what the experience of poverty is like and to advocate for serious change at the local, state, and national level.

So in the past two years, I reached out to your office numerous times. So did the people at Drexel University’s Center for Hunger-Free Communities, where Witnesses to Hunger is based. Your office never responded to us. Unfortunately, people such as me and my husband, and many others who are struggling, continue to be shut out of your conversation in Washington.

Should any person in America end up homeless for taking care of a sick child?

As you may remember from my testimony, my husband and I work hard to provide for our family. I work at a community recreation center on afterschool programming for children. In recent years, my husband has worked the deli at a grocery store, overnight at a meat-packing plant, and as a security guard. He has endured two-hour commutes, worked night shifts, held multiple jobs at the same time—made the kinds of sacrifices a parent makes to try to lift up a family.

Yet despite our hard work, we’ve remained in poverty. Our three children suffer from epilepsy and asthma and take life-sustaining medication. We’ve rarely had benefits like paid leave that allow us to miss work without taking a hit to a paycheck. In 2008, our son was having seizures, and I had to leave my job to take care of him. Because of the lost income, we eventually lost our home and were homeless.

Should any person in America end up homeless for taking care of a sick child?

It’s clear as we look at how many people are struggling on low wages, forced to make impossible choices between basic necessities, that we still have plenty of work to do. It’s also clear that you could still learn a lot from me and many others who are experiencing poverty.

In your first speech as Speaker you called for combining many safety net programs into a single block grant. But I know you realize that poverty would be twice as high without the safety net, with nearly 30 percent of Americans living below the poverty line. What would our nation look like with 30 percent poverty? We can thank the safety net for the fact that we don’t know the answer to that question.

You and I also both know that more than half of people in America will be poor or near poor for at least a year during their working years, so the safety net is there for all of us. But it needs to be strengthened. We are already cutting poverty in half with our current safety net. Now, let’s set our sights on cutting poverty in half again. And let’s do it without messing up what is already working.

I hope your task force’s proposal builds on the things that we already know work—for example, we know the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) reduces food insecurity and prevents hospitalizations, housing assistance helps young children stay healthy, and preschool helps kids reach their full potential. But I’m pretty sure we will see the same old dangerous ideas like block granting wrapped up in new pretty packaging.

Mr. Speaker, the cameras have long moved on since I had the opportunity to introduce myself to you. I continue to live in the struggle with my Witness sisters and brothers and millions of others in poverty, and we continue to be shut out of your conversation in Washington.

Meet with us. Let us show you what’s going on in our neighborhoods and our homes, and share our ideas about solutions and change.

Your friend,

Tianna Gaines-Turner
Philadelphia, PA

Between 2000 and 2013, the number of people living in high-poverty neighborhoods—where more than 40 percent of residents lived below the poverty line—nearly doubled. As of 2013, 13.8 million people lived in these impoverished neighborhoods, the highest figure ever recorded.

High-poverty neighborhoods are characterized by inferior housing, higher levels of pollution, underfunded schools, inadequate public infrastructure, and few employment opportunities—realities that carry significant consequences. A growing body of research shows that concentrated poverty undermines the long-term success of children and even lowers life expectancy. What’s more, despite the fact that most low-income people in the United States are white, people of color are much more likely to live in impoverished areas due to the enduring effects of segregation and ongoing discriminatory housing practices.

Historically, federal programs have prescribed a one-size-fits-all approach to address concentrated poverty, with a focus on housing. But it has become increasingly apparent that what’s needed is a more comprehensive approach—one that addresses the interrelated challenges faced by low-income people in high-poverty neighborhoods, alongside efforts to move some residents out of concentrated poverty. A Harvard study found that if a person moves to a low-poverty area as a child, he or she will be more likely to go to college and will see an increase in total lifetime earnings of roughly $302,000. While policies that enable low-income people to live in more prosperous communities, such as housing vouchers, are critical, leaders must address the challenges facing the many people who remain in underserved communities.

President Obama has taken note. When he took office in 2009, his administration set out to ensure that the federal government was supporting local innovation rather than dictating community development strategies, and established programs to help local leaders address modern realities such as changes in technology, aging infrastructure, and jobs moving to the suburbs and abroad. These efforts culminated in the announcement of the Promise Zones initiative in 2014, in which Obama declared, “A child’s course in life should be determined not by the zip code she’s born in, but by the strength of her work ethic and the scope of her dreams.”

Today, the Obama Administration announced the third and final round of Promise Zone designees, which include communities in Nashville, southern Los Angeles, Atlanta, Evansville, Indiana, San Diego, eastern Puerto Rico and southwest Florida. In addition, the Spokane Indian Reservation and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians also received the Promise Zone designation.

Designees will receive priority access to existing federal resources to help them implement their comprehensive plans to support job creation, increase economic security, expand educational opportunities, increase access to affordable housing, and improve public safety. In addition, new zones will receive AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers to help build capacity on the ground.

Over the course of just two years, the Promise Zone designation has proven to be an effective strategy for bringing local stakeholders together around shared goals, and for streamlining the relationship between local and federal leaders. For example, the designation has allowed the Los Angeles Promise Zone, one of the first cities selected, to leverage millions of dollars in grants across 14 agencies to support its work.

But with a new presidency on the horizon, the Promise Zones initiative could end with this administration.

The Los Angeles Zone, which includes parts of Hollywood, is one of the densest and most diverse parts of the city, but is also one of the poorest. As a result of the initiative, the zone is utilizing federal support to transform its 45 different schools into “community schools”—providing full-time nonprofit staff to work with parents, coordinate resources, and provide workshops and wellness classes for students and parents alike. In addition, the school district is placing its own staff in job training centers, youth centers, and family centers to ensure coordination of resources throughout the zone. According to Dixon Slingerland, Executive Director of the Youth Policy Institute and a leader in the zone, “We believe anywhere a family goes in the zone should be a one stop shop. It shouldn’t be that we need to send them to all these different agencies. Wherever they go, we’re going to make sure we have all the pieces in place to support them.”

To be sure, in a world of limited resources, targeting funding to high-poverty communities means fewer resources will be directed to less disadvantaged communities that still face many of the same challenges. However, the goal of the initiative is not only to transform the selected zones—it’s also to change how the federal government works with local communities overall, while demonstrating effective and efficient strategies that other communities can adapt.

Such values should appeal to leaders across the political spectrum. After Eastern Kentucky was selected as a Promise Zone during the first round, Congressman Hal Rogers (R-KY) released a press release praising the initiative stating, “This program shows promise for recruiting private industry in several of our hard-hit counties.”

But with a new presidency on the horizon, the Promise Zones initiative could end with this administration. The progress that has been made in just two years through this initiative must be built upon to ensure such efficiency and effectiveness becomes business as usual for how the federal government works with local communities. To be sure, the Promise Zones initiative is not a substitute for a comprehensive plan to address poverty, which would require paid sick leave legislation, raising the minimum wage, protecting unemployment insurance, among other proven strategies. But when it comes to addressing the unique challenges of high poverty communities, the next president should take the lessons from the Obama administration and include this initiative in their governing agenda. Unprecedented levels of concentrated poverty require long-term strategies that cannot end in just a few months.

In 2007, then-Professor Elizabeth Warren reminded us that “it is impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five chance of bursting into flames and burning down your house.” But as she noted, it’s entirely possible to buy a financial product with the same odds of causing financial ruin—payday and car title loans can come with annual interest rates of 300 percent or more, leaving many borrowers worse off than before.

Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released new regulations to help take these harmful financial products off the shelf. This rule is expected to help struggling families avoid $8 billion in fees from predatory lenders each year. And yet, it faces an uphill battle—the CFPB will need not only public support for its rule to come to fruition, but also for Congress not to sabotage its efforts and for state legislatures to help push it to the finish line.

These reforms are sorely needed, as payday and title lending turn a profit on the backs of cash-strapped families. In exchange for access to someone’s bank account or a spare set of keys to their car, these lenders typically offer quick cash—anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand—expecting it to be paid back either from the next paycheck or within the next month.

Missouri has almost as many payday loan stores as grocery stores.

But, many borrowers can’t afford to pay back the loan at the next payday or the end of the month. Instead, 4 out of 5 borrowers have to roll over that loan, or take out another one to pay back the first. The result is that interest and fees pile up, and borrowers are unable to pay down the initial loan even. This can lead to enormous economic hardship. As St. Louis resident Naya Burks found after borrowing $1,000, her loan became a $40,000 debt through interest, fees, and a lawsuit. And as the CFPB’s own research has shown, 1 in 5 car title borrowers lose the car to repossession.

It’s no wonder, then, that faith leaders from all different traditions have spoken out against these loans. The states have taken action as well. As many as 14 states and the District of Columbia have instituted interest rate caps of 36 percent or less to ban these loans. Indeed, in Arkansas, where the state Constitution now puts a ceiling on interest rates, only 12 percent of former borrowers said that they were worse off as a result.

Unfortunately, many members of Congress seem to have missed the memo that these are toxic products that do more harm than good. Florida’s Congressional delegation, among others, has tried to block the CFPB, arguing that the state already has the problem under control—even as lenders take $76 million a year out of the state’s economy. And just last year, Congress tried to weaken tough anti-predatory lending rules that protect service members and also considered hampering the CFPB’s ability to act independently.

The CFPB’s rule will rein in some of the worst practices in this industry. In many circumstances, it will require lenders to figure out whether the borrower is actually able to pay back a loan before making one in the first place. It will limit how many loans borrowers can take out, and when. And it will limit lenders’ ability to pickpocket by seizing funds from borrowers’ bank account over and over without consent.

These strong federal rules are also important because many states haven’t been able to address this problem on their own. Missouri has almost as many payday loan stores as grocery stores, with an an average interest rate on these loans of 444 percent. And in 2014, the Louisiana legislature couldn’t even pass a weak bill limiting payday loans to ten per year. That’s not to mention Ohio, where voters overwhelmingly supported a payday lending ban, but lenders rechartered themselves as mortgage companies through a legal loophole. But states still can take action to curb this abusive practice. They can follow the lead of New York, North Carolina, and others states by capping interest rates, an action of extra importance given that a loophole in Dodd-Frank blocks the CFPB from taking this action. And even states with strong laws on the books need to stand firm when tempted to adopt a looser standard.

Stopping the debt trap won’t happen in a day. But today, the CFPB takes a big step toward taking a toxic product off the shelves. Congress, and the nation, should take notice.

Paul Ryan’s Own District Disproves Everything He Says About Poverty

Nightly Newscasts Have Virtually Ignored Poverty in 2016. Here’s Why.

I Told Paul Ryan What It’s Like to Live in Poverty. Here’s What Happened Next.

How the Next President Can Help High-Poverty Neighborhoods

Payday Loan Rules Would Help Low-Income Families Avoid $8 Billion in Fees

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