A long overdue plan to cut childhood poverty

Opinion

A long overdue plan to cut childhood poverty

The Covid relief bill now working its way through Congress will mark a transformation in the way this country treats poor children. It’s about damn time.

First the numbers, which vary ever-so-slightly from yearto-year, but which should be appalling to the citizens of the world’s richest country: 24 percent in Swain County, 26.6 percent in Macon, 22.5 percent in Jackson and 22.5 percent in Haywood. That the number of children living in poverty every single day of their lives. Right at one-fourth of the youngsters we see around our community every day.

And what is poverty? It’s defined as a family of four making less than $26,200 per year, but what that translates to is working families — many of them single-parent households — unable to pay for childcare, clothes, constantly living with food insecurity, fearing any unexpected automobile repair, medical emergency, dealing with embarrassing situations at school or when their kids play sports and the costs eat into the family’s meager earnings.

Can any citizen of this country who is in a comfortable economic position tell me how they could even imagine making a household of four work on $504 per week? No, because it’s just not feasible.

Look, we can discuss how some of those parents made bad choices, perhaps don’t have a great work ethic, didn’t take school seriously, all of those type arguments about how choices have consequences. Those are important issues and need to be addressed.

But let’s also look at wage stagnation, which has been the result of economic decisions made by lawmakers at the state and federal level. Anyone can google and find an avalanche of reports on wage statistics, and nearly every one reveals that real wages for those in the bottom 20 percent of earners has declined since the 1970s. Low-wage workers are working just as hard but have less buying power, hence the rising poverty level of their children. And so despite all the important issues we can discuss about the why’s and the how’s of child poverty, the truth is that these children need help. The new proposal would pay families earning less than $150,000 per year $300 per month for every child under 6 and $250 for every child over 6 until that child reached 18 years of age. The benefit, according to one report, could cut child poverty in the U.S. by half, according to an analysis by Columbia University. More than 93 percent of U.S. children would receive a benefit under the plan.

Think about just one challenge facing every family and how much more dire it is for those in poverty — childcare. Last week’s cover story in The Smoky Mountain News went into great detail about our fragile childcare system in Western North Carolina. This payment won’t solve this issue for families, but it will certainly help parents concentrate on finding jobs or going back to school and earning the chance to enter a better-paying profession.

This new payment plan will be in place for one year, but many on both sides of the political spectrum think it’s long overdue and should become permanent. Some conservatives like that the monthly income encourages a spouse to stay home with their children instead of other benefits — like subsidies for childcare — which encourage parents to work away from home and leave child-rearing duties to daycares. Libertarians have argued that direct payments to families — unlike benefit plans that provide food or medical care —allow families to make their own decisions on how to spend the money. Since welfare benefits were slashed in the 1990s under Bill Clinton, many Democrats have argued for this kind of direct payments to families of poor children.

We know that moving children out of poverty gives them a much better chance at succeeding in life, earning their own way once they enter adulthood. When that happens, we save money on other social programs and the criminal justice system. If we lift children out of poverty, we forge a better society. Again, it’s about damn time.

Scott McLeod Editor

(Scott McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews.com)

Let’s honor a different history

To the Editor:

I am so sick of hearing this argument that we’re “changing” or “erasing” history by changing statues or county namesakes. The history of the Civil War and the history of how we treated Native Americans in this country will always be the same, because the past is the past. However, we can choose which parts of history we want to honor. Statues, memorials, and namesakes are created to honor people or events. Should we have statues honoring people who fought for a cause that, at its core, was over slavery? Should we have our county be named after a man who forced people off the land they’d inhabited for thousands of years so that white people could live there?

It’s ironic that people talk about these things as if we’re changing history when the very history books used in most schools (at least when I was growing up) conveniently avoid the parts of our history that involved mass genocide and forced labor of Native Americans and instead paint the history of our country’s beginnings as some peaceful, “rainbows and butterflies” story, where the colonists had a nice dinner with the Native Americans and the Natives taught the settlers how to forage and grow food for themselves. They also don’t talk about how Native American children were forcibly separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools where their culture was stripped away from them, their names were replaced with European names (to “civilize” and “Christianize” them), and they were often abused. So, who’s really wanting to erase history here?

Sports stadiums have their names changed every time they get a new sponsor. So what’s so wrong with simply changing the namesake of our county? No trouble is involved as it would be with doing a full out name change. It’s simply a symbolic gesture that would mean a lot to the people whose land falls within the county border and whose original land, in reality, all of us outside the Qualla Boundary are living on now. It seems like a no-brainer to have our county be named after a good man who lived in this area and who was part of a tribe whose original territory covered this entire region, rather than an atrocious man who wasn’t from here and who forced thousands of people off of their land so that white people could live there instead. So how about we try to repair some of the wrongs that were inflicted on our neighbors and choose a different history to honor? Rachel Smith Whittier

LETTERS

Trump is a threat

To the Editor:

The other day a friend of mine made this remark: “I never want to hear Trump supporters mention morality (as in the Moral Majority) again. They have bowed down to his steady stream of lies as though the rest of us merely have to accept lying as a way of life in America.”

Another said, ”Do people not see the blatant hypocrisy in chanting ‘Lock her up!’ about Hillary Clinton’s peripheral role in the tragic deaths in Benghazi while they tolerate Donald Trump’s central role in inciting an insurrection that resulted in a violent break-in and multiple deaths in the Capitol of the United States of America?”

Hillary Clinton has weathered hours upon hours of investigations that resulted in no charges of wrongdoing against her. Since the January 6, 2021, insurrection is so recent the investigation of Donald Trump has only begun. His failure/refusal to use his mighty power to protect the people in the capitol that day will haunt everyone who has a conscience coupled with a strong devotion to democracy as the cornerstone of our government.

In short, Clinton’s actions and inactions did not threaten democracy. Donald Trump’s did.

If you believe this verse from John 8:32 (KJV), how do you follow Trump: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” What have his lies done to our democracy?

Dave Waldrop Webster

Cawthorn should have stayed to vote

Representatives voted on the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. His first offense was trying to project blame on Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.,claiming she purposely changed the floor schedule knowing that he and about 10 other Republican members were scheduled to speak on Friday at CPAC in Orlando. Speaker Pelosi is a master vote counter and it’s not uncommon for her to modify the floor schedule if there’s an issue that needs further attention before calling for a vote. She knew how Cawthorn and his CPAC comrades were going to vote, so she had no need to work around them.

Secondly, is “an ongoing public health emergency” really a legitimate excuse for Cawthorn’s absence when he traveled to a Code Red state? In addition, CPAC was pretty much a maskless event. All things considered, the U.S. House chamber was a safer environment for him.

Finally, Cawthorn tossed out a classic “whataboutism” by claiming that Democrats had cast proxy votes “from yachts, mansions and speaking events.” Perhaps that is true, but it’s unlikely that they claimed a “public health emergency” as the reason for their absence. For those of you who may not be familiar with the term, “whataboutism” is typically associated with Russian or Soviet propaganda.

Cawthorn has openly admitted that his primary focus is “comms” (publicity), not legislating. In short, it’s all about the show for him and speaking at CPAC presented a better opportunity for him to be a star than being