Stop Child Hunger: An Interview with Senator Patty Murray

Summer meals for low-income children have been in the news of late, often with the interests of urban families pitted against those of rural families. But Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray (D-WA) has introduced the Stop Child Hunger Act to help ensure that all children who qualify for free or reduced-price meals during the school year aren’t hungry in the summer months. It’s a timely and important effort. In 2013, approximately 15 percent of children who participated in free or reduced-price meals at school also participated in the federal Summer Food Service Program, due to lack of transportation, limited food distribution areas, and other barriers.

TalkPoverty spoke with Senator Murray about her bill. Here is the conversation:

TalkPoverty: Senator Murray, what is the impetus for introducing the Stop Child Summer Hunger Act at this time?

Senator Patty Murray: Right now, across the country, students are eagerly anticipating the end of the school year and starting the summer break. But for many children, the summer months can be a time of uncertainty, not knowing when they will get their next meal. During the academic year, millions of kids can get free or reduced-price meals at school, but during the summer, many students lose that access to critical food and nutrition. When it comes to making sure children get the nutrition they need, there are no excuses. We can and must do more to prevent child hunger. This bill – the Stop Child Summer Hunger Act – would help kids who qualify for free or reduced-price meals during the school year get access to food during the summer months.

This issue is very important to me personally. When I was a teenager, my dad, who had fought in World War II, was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and could no longer work. My mom found a job, but it didn’t pay nearly enough to support seven kids and a husband with a growing stack of medical bills. For several months, we relied on food stamps. It wasn’t much, but we were able to get by. So, I know what it’s like for families to struggle to put food on the table. I believe as adults it is our moral responsibility to take care of our children, and this bill would be a step to ensure more kids get the nutrition they need to live healthy lives.

TalkPoverty: Are there particular stories from any of your constituents that show just how needed this legislation is?

Senator Murray: I’ve heard from many parents who struggle to put food on the table, especially in the summer months. One mom from my home state said before every meal, her family prays that their food will be enough to sustain them until the next time they’re able to eat. But during the summer, those meals aren’t always enough to keep her kids’ stomachs from growling. These are parents who are doing their best to stretch every penny, and still coming up short. I’ve heard from another woman who said that last summer, she tried her best at the grocery store to shop sales, use coupons, and only buy the store-brand items, but it wasn’t enough. This legislation would help those families, and millions like them, by filling a gap in the social safety net during the summer months.

TalkPoverty: If passed, how would the lives of low-income families improve during the summer months?

Senator Murray: This bill would target the challenge of summer hunger by helping families afford food when school is out of session. Providing families with an EBT card with funds for groceries would help replace meals that kids would otherwise get at school. Under this bill, families would receive an extra $150 for every child who qualifies for free or reduced-price meals during the school year. If enacted, it would help about 30 million children every year.

Right now, our broken and unfair tax system provides enormous subsidies to the wealthiest individuals and the biggest corporations, all while one in five households in our country struggle with food insecurity.

The bill is a common sense approach to help kids who might otherwise struggle with hunger. It’s based on a successful pilot program that has been proven to reduce “very low food insecurity,” often called hunger, by 33 percent. The pilot also resulted in children eating healthier foods, like fruits and vegetables.

TalkPoverty: What are the long-term benefits of this legislation—both in terms of children having more access to food and in moving the nation towards more effectively addressing food insecurity?

Senator Murray: When kids don’t get the nutrition they need, it can have ripple effects on their health, their development, and their chances at success in school and beyond. Studies have shown that kids who struggle with hunger and food insecurity don’t do as well in school and score lower on achievement tests. For low-income families, the challenge to put enough food on the table doesn’t end when school lets out for the summer. In fact, for many families, it can get more difficult because children no longer have access to school meals. In 2013, only about 15 percent of children who participated in free or reduced-price school meals were able to participate in summer meals programs.

This is the kind of legislation that Congress should be pursuing. It’s based on a proven pilot program that achieved participation rates of about 90 percent in some sites. To stop hunger among children, we need to build on effective local, state, and national strategies that fill gaps in the safety net and give people the chance they need to climb the economic ladder. And that’s what this bill does.

TalkPoverty: Your legislation includes provisions to offset the costs of addressing summer child hunger by closing loopholes that reward companies for shifting jobs overseas. Does this reflect a desire on your part that we reexamine our priorities as a nation?

Senator Murray: The legislation is fully paid for by closing a wasteful corporate tax loophole that encourages U.S. companies to shift jobs and profits offshore. So, this bill would help low-income and middle class families in two ways: It would help more kids get the nutrition they need during the summer, while taking a step to make our tax system fairer, by encouraging companies to keep more jobs here in America, in the process. Right now, our broken and unfair tax system provides enormous subsidies to the wealthiest individuals and the biggest corporations, all while one in five households in our country struggle with food insecurity. So I do think we should eliminate loopholes for those who need it least and prioritize doing more to expand opportunities for more Americans to get ahead.

TalkPoverty: What are some of the challenges of moving this or any other anti-poverty legislation through Congress?

Senator Murray: The issue of hunger among children in the summer months is one that clearly affects every state in the nation and one that should be a concern of both Democrats and Republicans. While I understand that any efforts to deal with hunger and poverty could be difficult based on some of the recent efforts in the House of Representatives, I believe that it is possible to achieve bipartisan consensus that would help address the problem of child summer hunger. The best opportunity to do that will be in the Child Nutrition Act that needs to be reauthorized next year.

TalkPoverty: What role and/or responsibility do Congress and the Executive have in educating the country about issues of poverty and inequality? What is your sense of how well poverty and hunger are understood by Americans and your colleagues?

Senator Murray: I think in our country, there is a broad understanding and a long-held belief that every American, no matter their zip code or their parents’ career, should have the opportunity to succeed. In Congress, I believe it’s our obligation to enact legislation that furthers that ideal. That includes leading on issues that help struggling families find their footing and ensuring we have a strong safety net.

As someone who relied on food stamps earlier in my life, I also feel very compelled to remind other leaders that investing in children is a good investment. Fortunately for my family, we lived in a country where the government didn’t just say ‘tough luck.’ It extended a helping hand. Because our nation honored the commitment it made to the veterans who had served it, we didn’t have to worry too much about medical bills for my dad. To get a better paying job, my mom needed more training. Fortunately, at the time there was a government program that helped her attend Lake Washington Vocational School where she got a two-year degree in accounting, and, eventually, a better job. My twin sister, my older brother, and I were able to stay in college through student loans and support from what later came to be called Pell Grants. And all of the kids were able to stay in school because we are lucky enough to have strong local public schools. My family got by with a little bit of luck. We pulled through with a lot of hard work. And while I’d like to say we were strong enough to make it on our own, I don’t think that’s really true. So when politicians refer to families like mine as “takers, not makers,” that these programs are “immoral,” or that we were in the “47 percent” who couldn’t be convinced to take personal responsibility or care for our lives, I remind them that the support we got from our government was the difference between seven kids who might not have graduated from high school or college and the seven adults we’ve grown up to be today. Today, we are all college graduates, paying taxes, and doing the best to contribute back to our communities. In my book, taxpayers got a pretty good return on their investment.

As Americans continue to struggle with the exploding costs of higher education and crippling levels of student debt, one constituency is getting hit hardest: low-income individuals.

While student debt is an issue that impacts Americans from all income brackets, races, ages, and from every part of the country, low-income Americans face unique challenges:

Now is the time to make student loan debt a top priority in our nation.

Student debt has a greater impact on low-income borrowers than other Americans. In fact, borrowers in the least affluent one-fifth of American households faced education debt that averaged 24 percent of their income in 2010. The average for all households was 6 percent.

Grant aid is not nearly enough to cover the cost of college for low-income families. Even after factoring in grant aid, a family in the lowest quintile—with an average income of $17,011—would have to pay more than 70 percent of their income to cover college costs.

When starting out, students from low- and middle-income households already face a higher burden. They are less likely to have family assistance and more likely to have other pressures, such as a part-time job or family caretaking role in addition to classes. And many low-income students avoid applying to college altogether, citing the cost. This has resulted in a shrinking economic diversity at schools.

Low-income Americans have become a target of private lenders and for-profit colleges. Some private lenders have even manipulated financially unsophisticated borrowers in an effort to profit.

What’s more, for-profit colleges often target and take advantage of low-income individuals and people of color, leaving them with high levels of debt that they are later unable to pay off. Investigations into these corporate education giants have found deceptive and misleading practices to recruit students and more than half of students at for-profit colleges drop out within a few years.

Despite numerous investigations highlighting the deceptive nature of the for-profit college industry, this issue has ballooned. More students are enrolling in for-profit institutions, more students are dropping out before receiving a degree, and CEOs of these education corporations continue to make millions.

Mane Lavadenz knows firsthand about what a bad deal for-profit colleges are for many students. After the real estate market collapsed, it was difficult for her to earn a living and support herself. She enrolled in some courses at UEI College, a for-profit school. Advisors there assured her, she says, that her student debt would be manageable and that she would have no trouble finding a job after graduating.

But that simply wasn’t the case: Like many of her classmates, Lavadenz graduated without any job prospects and, she says, UEI did nothing to help her. Lavadenz was stuck with $9,000 in student loans, which has now accrued to $10,000. Her experience is hardly unique. Former students of for-profit schools have found that their schools overpromised on the kinds of jobs they would land after earning a degree.

Further, for-profit colleges charge their students over 3.5 times more than public institutions, but they spend far less per student on instructional costs than public colleges and universities. In the 2008-2009 school year, for-profit schools spent $2,659 per student on instructional costs; by comparison, public universities spent an average of $9,418 per student and private non-profit universities spent $15,289.

Now is the time to make student loan debt a top priority in our nation. That is why, earlier this year, Generation Progress and dozens of our progressive allies launched the Higher Ed, Not Debt campaign—a coordinated effort to address the existing $1.2 trillion in student loan debt, caused in part by the predatory practices of the for-profit industry.

More than 60 organizations have already signed on to the campaign, including: the American Federation of Teachers, Demos, Jobs with Justice, One Wisconsin Now, SEIU, Scholarship America, Student Veterans of America, Working Families Organization, and the Young Invincibles.

While for-profit colleges are a main focus of the campaign, we’re utilizing this broad reach to focus on four key elements: college accessibility and affordability; addressing the existing $1.2 trillion in debt; civic engagement; and educating the public about the role of Wall Street in the privatization of higher education. In partnership with Higher Ed, Not Debt, Generation Progress will continue to advance long-term policy solutions, like holding private institutions accountable for bad lending practices and giving borrowers the ability to refinance student loans.

Student loan debt has severe and visible impacts on the American economy. Borrowers with tens of thousands of dollars in debt are unable to purchase homes, start families, obtain employment in certain fields, and save for retirement. It’s time to address this problem in full force. I encourage others to join in the fight to create long-term solutions to protect current and future borrowers from the economically crippling effects of student loan debt.

Across the country, legal services attorneys play a largely hidden but essential role as first responders to American poverty. The family facing foreclosure after falling behind on the mortgage when both Mom and Dad lost their jobs in the recession. The mother of three, fleeing domestic abuse, who desperately needs a protective order to keep herself and her children safe. The woman with stage four cancer and six months to live, who has been wrongfully denied Social Security and Medicare. Without legal services, they would have nowhere to turn.

Day in and day out, legal services attorneys fight for the rights of poor individuals and families, providing legal help to people who cannot afford an attorney. Access to representation is vitally important. But as we commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the War on Poverty, it’s time to renew the vision of legal services as antipoverty work.

While American legal aid has existed since the turn of the 20^th century, the creation of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) as part of LBJ’s War on Poverty offered a bold new vision of legal services as an antipoverty strategy, and legal services attorneys as agents of systemic change. Catherine Carr, Executive Director of Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, describes this historic shift:

Access to representation has supplanted the bolder vision of law reform and systemic change.

No longer were legal aid programs being designed to simply respond to the problems that individual poor people brought to intake offices; instead, the programs were to work with low-income communities to identify needs and strategically set priorities that protected and advanced the rights of poor people and poor communities as a whole.

In the years that followed, legal services proved to be an enormously effective antipoverty tool. Legal services programs lobbied elected officials, engaged in local and national social justice organizing efforts, won landmark victories in courts across the nation on behalf of their clients, and thereby brought about systemic change that benefited poor people nationwide. The watershed U.S. Supreme Court case Goldberg v. Kelly, for example, established that a poor person has a constitutional right to a fair hearing before his or her welfare benefits can be terminated.

Fifty years later, legal services attorneys continue to fight on behalf of low-income Americans who cannot afford legal help. But much of the work today more closely resembles the “legal aid” vision that existed prior to the 1960s rather than the “law reform” vision brought about by the OEO as part of the War on Poverty.

This shift is in large part due to conservative backlash against legal services as an antipoverty tool. It didn’t take long for conservatives to view a strong legal services movement as a threat. In the decades that followed the launch of the War on Poverty, they placed restrictions on legal services programs, barring those that accept federal funding from engaging in much of the work that effects systemic change.

President Nixon prohibited staff attorneys from lobbying or engaging in political activities. President Reagan—who, as Governor of California, had battled efforts to improve the working conditions of poor migrant farmworkers—prohibited legal services programs from using federal dollars for legislative and regulatory activities as well as class action lawsuits. Even after the Reagan restrictions, many legal services programs found alternative funding sources to support their law reform activities. But in 1996, the Gingrich Congress hammered the final nail into the coffin, expanding the restrictions to any legal services program that accepted even a single dollar of federal funds.

While a small number of programs found ways to continue their law reform work—for example, by creating separate programs to receive unrestricted dollars—most responded by backing away from the kinds of systemic work that had proven most effective at impacting large numbers of poor people, in favor of the “legal aid” model of one-off individual client representation.

Today an ever-shrinking number of legal services programs—and legal services attorneys—view their role and mission as that of antipoverty work. Access to representation has supplanted the bolder vision of law reform and systemic change.

To be sure, a handful of programs still embrace the OEO vision. As a new lawyer fresh out of law school, I had the good fortune to land in one of those programs: Community Legal Services in Philadelphia (CLS). As a staff attorney at CLS, I learned firsthand the power of the “law reform” model that CLS continues to embody, providing representation to poor Philadelphians, and using that individual representation to inform large-scale systemic work—through class action and impact litigation as well as legislative advocacy on the local, state and national level.

The cutbacks and restrictions championed by Nixon, Reagan and Gingrich have without question made it much more complicated and challenging for many legal services programs to engage in law reform. As long as the restrictions persist, unrestricted programs like CLS must take seriously their responsibility to prioritize law reform work, given that there are so few programs free to pursue it.

But even restricted programs can find ways to maximize their role as part of the antipoverty movement. Media is a powerful example, as human stories have the power to bring abstract policy debates to life. As advocates who interact with low-income individuals and families on a daily basis, legal services attorneys are uniquely positioned to tell the story of how few poor families are actually helped by TANF, for example; or how struggling families have no room for SNAP cuts; or how inadequate the official federal poverty measure is. They can paint a picture of the barriers people face in seeking to get a job—people with criminal records, for example—or what it’s like to be working full-time and still unable to rise out of poverty. They can tell the story of how and why it’s expensive to be poor. Even better, they can empower their clients to tell their own stories. Talkpoverty.org offers a unique new outlet to tell these stories, and I hope to see a steady stream of contributions from legal services advocates and their clients in the months and years ahead.

But we must also look beyond the present. As we celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the War on Poverty and the Office of Economic Opportunity, let’s pave the way for a renewed legal services movement—one that is unhindered by restrictions and plays a leading role in bringing an end to poverty.

Nikki fell in love with her pimp. “Instantly,” she says. “He knew that I didn’t have a dad. He used that to gain control over my mind and eventually over my actions, showing me that he loved me, and giving me things that I had never had before. They move you away from your family, from anyone who could care for you, or rescue you… Things that would make other people’s skin crawl turn out to be normal occurrences to you. And at that point, you are completely dominated by this person… I knew I was being exploited, or beaten, or raped, or tortured, for the commercial gain of another human being.”

This is a real story—an all-too common story—from an American girl. Others like it can be heard in a powerful video compiled by the Human Rights Project for Girls. Together, these stories weave a narrative of one of the most heinous human rights abuses against American children in the United States today: commercial sex exploitation, often described as a form of modern-day slavery. “You belong to this person,” Nikki says in the video. “I was definitely not free.”

I knew I was being exploited, or beaten, or raped, or tortured, for the commercial gain of another human being.

According to a 2009 review commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the average age at which girls first become victims of sex trafficking is 12-14 years old, and direct service providers report increasingly younger victims over the past decade. Two of the most significant risk factors for children to become victims of sex trafficking are poverty and a history of trauma, especially sexual abuse. These are girls who live at the margins, and they need and deserve our attention, and our help.

Yet we are failing these girls—on a significant scale. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates that at least 100,000 American children every year are victims of commercial sexual exploitation, and the vast majority are girls. To help address this crisis, the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality issued a report, Blueprint: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Sex Trafficking of Girls, which analyzes the problems with current approaches to sex trafficking. As the report describes, law enforcement typically treats the girls as prostitutes, even though they are too young to legally consent to sex. They are seen as perpetrators of a crime, rather than victims. The majority of states do not have safe haven laws that prevent children from being prosecuted for prostitution.

The story of Withelma “T” Ortiz Walker Pettigrew, a former victim who is now an anti-trafficking advocate, reveals how our systems can miss opportunities for intervention. Ms. Pettigrew was abused from infanthood and placed in a group home that was targeted by pimps. She says that she came to believe that her life was valuable only for the paycheck her body could earn. She was repeatedly re-sold and raped for her pimp’s profit and was moved from state to state. Finally, she was arrested at 15 and placed in one of the largest juvenile detention center in Nevada, where, she reports, many girls languished on solicitation charges.

We must do better for our girls—and, indeed, some communities are. Our report highlights collaborative approaches in three jurisdictions that represent real progress in the fight against sex trafficking. One is LA County, in which the probation department, the LAPD, the child welfare system, and the district attorney’s office are working together with the strong backing of local government to better identify victims, many of whom have been wards of the state. As a team, the group assesses victims’ needs and creates appropriate treatment and placement plans that prioritize diversion from the criminal justice system. In addition, the county has created a special court to serve victims based on the same collaborative model that also includes the survivor, her attorney, and advocacy groups.

Other localities should follow such admirable leads and form comprehensive multidisciplinary teams that benefit from the diverse experience of its members, many of whom have met these girls before.

Child sex trafficking victims are survivors. They are tough. But they need our help. In T’s words, “They need hope, relationships – something to live for.” They deserve that much – and far more.

Relationships matter. They really matter.

For Niki Davis, it took more than money to move from homelessness to homeownership. A college educated artist, when she walked into LIFT’s DC office after a decade of financial and emotional stressors, she was skeptical.

She recalls that it had been a long time since someone treated her with dignity and respect—like a human being. Over the course of a year, she and her Advocate—a LIFT volunteer—partnered weekly to get her off of shaky ground. What began as a goal of finding a shelter became a journey to homeownership, with Niki and her Advocate working side-by-side to navigate the maze of mortgage lending. Today, Niki owns her home and is feeling more empowered than ever before about her future. She didn’t come to us seeking only financial help. She sought collaboration, and LIFT became her social network.

To hear Niki tell it, LIFT worked for her because, “There’s something much more empowering about working collaboratively. [The volunteer Advocates] had a great zest and enthusiasm—a young generation without the experience but the brainpower and hope and no loss of spirit, because it hasn’t been beaten out of them. It’s a different pace, a complete positive belief that it can get better. That let me get out of any sense of hopelessness.”

What Niki’s story underscores—and what we’ve seen in many of the stories from the 100,000 families we’ve worked with—is the importance of connections in driving success. It took cash for Niki to secure her mortgage and make ends meet, but it also took her plugging into and activating the network of people around her to ensure that her dream became a reality.

...if we ultimately want to help people establish financial security we must bolster confidence and build social capital.

At LIFT, we help people build the personal, social, and financial foundations they need to get ahead. In fact, we believe that having confidence and connections are so important that it actually accelerates the financial gains a person is making.

When people are plugged in—have a social network, friends, people who they know will have their back—it can make the difference between giving up and pressing on; between getting a job opportunity or not. It can also make the difference between having a safe, stable home and living on the street.

I know this—not just from my work at LIFT—but because I lived in a homeless shelter in DC when I was a kid. It was a converted old Hotel called The Braxton, and back then, times were really tough. But, even before Facebook and Twitter, I had my own social network of sorts that rallied around my family. I had the support of DC’s most iconic organizations like Martha’s Table, Central Union Mission, Bread for the City, the Capital Area Food Bank, and my church. This network ensured that we were able to eat, get back and fourth to school, and get housing faster than the 10-year waiting list for Section 8 housing would allow. These organizations and many more helped my family get answers to problems that seemed too intimidating to answer on our own. They were my social network much like LIFT is to the community members we serve. I didn’t have to go through being homeless by myself and today I have the incredible privilege of telling the stories of hope that need to be told to thousands of people every day.

The result of LIFT’s focus on relationships and connections—the transformation that occurs between two people working together in trust—is real and tangible.

We are actually measuring whether things like confidence and connectedness have an impact on our Members’ ability reach their goals. We call that measurement Constituent Voice (CV) and you can learn more about it here. Essentially, it’s an evaluation and measurement tool we use to unearth the critical keys to our Members’ success. What we are finding so far supports the power of social networks in social services.

We’re seeing that members with top CV scores are twice as likely to achieve things like getting a job or securing stable housing. There is consistent correlation between the quality of our relationships and our members’ achievement of economic outcomes. This is telling us that relationships matter.

We are also finding that three of the top five most predictive indicators of ultimate economic progress aren’t financial in nature – they’re social connectedness, belief in oneself, and confidence. This is also telling us that relationships really matter.

For anti-poverty organizations, it is clear that if we ultimately want to help people establish financial security we must bolster confidence and build social capital.

Think about what this could mean for closing the opportunity gap and for the strength of the anti-poverty movement as a whole. If we allow ourselves to imagine the possibilities, we can envision an America where Niki’s zip code, or my own, or yours, wouldn’t determine the trajectory of our lives.

When relationships are formed, individuals thrive, communities thrive, and collectively we ALL thrive as a nation. Having each other’s backs should be a given. Those relationships are the thread that keeps struggling families tethered to hope.

Stop Child Hunger: An Interview with Senator Patty Murray

Student Debt, Higher College Costs Are Hurting Low-Income Americans The Most

A Renewed Vision of Civil Legal Services as Antipoverty Work

New Ways to Fight Sex Trafficking

Tethered to Hope

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