THREAD:

1) Earlier, I did a thread on terminology related to hunger, re: whether long-term hunger should be referred to as “hunger,” “food insecurity,” or “long-term food insufficiency.” I favor the last as the most precise, but the real problem isn’t what we call it.

2) The real problem is that real people are really going without - w/o food, shelter, sufficiently warm clothing, essential medication & other basic healthcare, etc. Not just in 3d world countries, but right here, at home, in the US.

3) The most recent numbers, from 2018, show that 1 in 9 Americans don’t have stable access to food & therefore go hungry too often. That’s about 37 million people, and it includes 11 million children.

4) They are likely suffering from malnourishment, as well as undernourishment. Long-term food insufficiency can lead to chronic diet-related diseases, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.

5) We’ve all seen news stories about diabetics who’ve had to ration their insulin. The cost of just healthcare issues related to long-term food insufficiency has been estimated at over $59M per year.

6) In addition, insufficient access to food on a long-term basis leads to other problems, & not just in terms of health. People who obtain food from charitable sources have reported making choices b/t eating & paying their rent/utilities, or b/t eating & obtaining their meds.

7) Evictions/foreclosures rise. Homelessness increases.
We have to do better to get people who are in need the basics of life.

8) The Preamble to the Constitution sets out the roles that the government is intended to play, and among them are “to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare.” We’re not doing well enough in that role when people are still going without in this society.

9) The poverty line is ill-defined. The formula, developed in 1969 by a Labor Department analyst, was never a good one. The analyst estimated that people spend approximately one-third of their income on food. ...

10) So to determine the poverty line, she took the cost of the lowest-cost food stamp program (which isn’t a full meal replacement program, but a supplement only), and simply multiplied by three.

11) The cost of food h/n risen as fast as the cost of other necessities, so now, the ave American spends 1/5 or 1/6 of their income on food. So, even if we were to continue to simply use the formula, the multiplier would have to go up & the poverty line would be much higher.

12) But that still wouldn’t take into account the differences in costs from area to area. Having one formula for a country as diverse in its economy as the United States makes no sense.

13) Using only food cost, and then using only a supplemental food stamp program, as the multiplier, doesn’t take into account the cost of the other basic necessities - shelter, utilities, clothing, transportation, healthcare, etc.

14) The poverty level definition needs to change, and it needs to depend on actual realistic budgets for the area in which the person lives, not on some random force multiplier that has no relationship to reality.

15) This may seem like an easily fixable problem, but I wrote about it when I was in law school. I graduated in 1994. It’s been a known issue for a long time, and nothing’s been done.

16) Part of the problem in getting the problem fixed is that a lot of programs are tied to the poverty level. Food stamps. Medicaid. Etc.

17) Want legal aid to help you w/your eviction proceeding? Most legal aids limit help to persons falling under/just at the pov level. They fear a loss of funding if they help those above it, even though the law providing the funding says they can go up to 110%. They w/n risk it.

18) If we change the way we define the pov level, a lot more people have to be acknowledged as being “poor.” Programs, like legal aid, get overwhelmed, & use more resources, requiring more funding. That isn’t a valid reason NOT to change it, but it's long been used as an excuse.

19) No more excuses. Let’s have some REAL stimulus. Fix the poverty level, up the funding to the programs tied to it, get real people real help, and stop pussy-footing around with $600 checks that make little difference to anyone who’s really in need.

20) I’m running for Congress in 2022. This is just one of the reasons why. IF you can afford it, please contribute at the link below. Thank you for your support. https://secure.actblue.com/donate/washburnforwis6th