Poverty, Opportunity, and Upward Mobility
Floor Speech
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Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, in today's Special Order, my colleagues and I will focus on the important work being done in all of our communities to expand opportunity, alleviate poverty, and promote upward mobility for all Americans.
I want to personally acknowledge Speaker Ryan for his focus and leadership on this important issue and his efforts to energize local leaders to explore new, effective policies for combating poverty in the United States.
In 2014, we marked 50 years since the Great Society program was commenced by President Johnson. Over the past 25 years, Congress has taken numerous steps intended to reduce poverty in the United States, but these have not had the long-term effects that many expected.
This is largely because of an undue focus on welfare reform rather than just identifying specifically and focusing on addressing the underlying causes of poverty.
Identifying opportunities for self-improvement, addressing the increased growth in poverty and the pernicious effects across the U.S. are of keen interest to me, particularly given Arkansas' elevated poverty rate of 19.7 percent of our population.
I believe it is crucial to focus our attention on identifying ways to empower individuals to take control of their own livelihoods and futures so that they no longer feel that they must rely on external programs that, at best, only play an ancillary role in improving economic circumstances and, at worst, perpetuate intergenerational cycles of poverty.
In these important discussions surrounding poverty in America, I also believe it is critical that we focus on our rural, as well as urban, populations. In my view, the President's policies and proposals have largely ignored the needs of our rural communities that continue to struggle.
Arkansas has a significant population of rural, low-income families, whose hardships are often overlooked in the bigger picture of poverty reduction. That is because rural poverty occurs in lower population concentrations, and some deem the plight of rural poverty to be less acute than that in urban areas. It is important that both faces of poverty be recognized and that solutions be applicable and readily adaptable to a variety of circumstances and regions.
This past year, all of us in the House were graced with a visit by the Holy Father, Pope Francis. The Holy Father has stated that the principle of subsidiarity affords freedom at every level of society to work and to innovate.
The Pope argued passionately that day that attempts to resolve all problems through uniform regulations or technical interventions can lead to overlooking the complexities of local problems which demand the active participation of all members of the community.
In tackling the social challenges of the globe, the Pope expressed there are no uniform recipes. There is no one path to a solution. Instead, the Pope called on the principles of stewardship, subsidiarity, and collaboration to seek solutions.
Last year I started the Community Empowerment Initiative in my hometown of Little Rock to consider key strategies for tackling poverty reduction in Arkansas' Second Congressional District. The CEI also seeks to encourage community engagement and help educate communities to value their strength and identify their assets to foster community ownership and encourage individuals to be aware and involved in rejuvenating our communities and lives.
I am grateful for my colleagues who have joined me today to discuss this important topic. I look forward to sharing some of the success stories from my own district and highlighting action that Congress can take to support local initiatives.
I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Walker). I invite him to come to the podium and talk about his experiences. He is a freshman Member of Congress with me. I have very much enjoyed getting to know Representative Walker. He brings a unique perspective to this. I welcome my friend from North Carolina.
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Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Walker for his contributions. I appreciate his thoughts.
When I think about one of the most challenging things that we face in our country, I think about homelessness. When I first became a Member of Congress, it was one of particular interest to me to learn what was happening in Little Rock about homelessness because Arkansas has the third highest rate for children and families in homelessness, so it was a keen issue.
One place I found that was a major success story in using private money and some public money was an entity called Our House. It was founded back in 1987 to address the gap in services for central Arkansas' working homeless and homeless families. They now have a 7- acre campus in downtown Little Rock, and Our House empowers homeless and near-homeless families and individuals to succeed in the workplace.
Between 110 and 120 men, women, and children call Our House's campus home every night, and it serves about 1,800 people annually, about 75 percent of whom are coming to Our House completely homeless. But the shelter's goal is not just simply to provide a safe place for a few nights. It is to permanently break the cycle of homelessness by equipping the working homeless with the skills to be successful in the workforce.
In her decade of leadership of Our House as executive director, Georgia Mjartan has done a remarkable job overseeing the expansion and growth of the shelter into a one-stop shop to address the root causes of poverty. She has collected the many stories of hope from the people who have been touched by her work.
One that particularly touched me was the story of a young woman who didn't graduate from high school, was unable to pay her rent and support her children on the very little money that she made from working in the fast food industry.
When she got to Our House, she was dejected and without a sense of purpose or hope for the future. Within a few months, she was receiving training that she needed to earn her GED, and she was securing a job that paid a living wage.
Two years after leaving Our House, she went back to tell Georgia about the turn her life had taken. As the head teacher for a daycare center, she had acquired her own place, continued the saving practices that she had learned at Our House, and was putting money away for her own kids to go to college.
Mr. Speaker, that is the kind of model that we need in this country to make a permanent break for our working poor.
I now yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot). I ask my friend, a distinguished member of the Committee on Small Business, to talk about his views on what we can be doing in this area.
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Mr. HILL. I thank my distinguished friend from Ohio.
A distinguished member of the Committee on Ways and Means and a former member of the Committee on Financial Services, Mr. Dold has been quite keen on ways to improve opportunities for people throughout the metropolitan Chicago area. I welcome the gentleman and look forward to his remarks.
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Mr. HILL. I thank the gentleman from Illinois. I appreciate his passion for this issue and his hands-on approach about finding things in his community and district that work. I believe that we all can share that information and learn from each other, which is a key purpose for this hour.
Mr. Speaker, last week, Representative Tipton and I were up in Manhattan. We went to The Doe Fund. What an impressive operation that is. I came away so renewed in faith. What is going on there in New York, where they face an enormous avalanche of challenges, is so well tackled by the men and women of The Doe Fund. I look forward to talking about that, but it is a nice segue for me to yield to the gentleman from western New York, (Mr. Reed), my good friend and a distinguished member of the Committee on Ways and Means, for his views on how we can tackle poverty.
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Mr. HILL. I thank the gentleman from New York. I appreciate his comments and I appreciate his personal testimony today about the importance of this issue. It is a bipartisan issue. It requires all of us working together.
The concept behind our discussion is new ideas, new directions, because what we have done for the last 50 years is not working. And somebody who has been a leader on the Committee on Financial Services for seeking out the best ideas, particularly in how we can tackle a housing solution for so many people in need of quality housing, is the distinguished gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Luetkemeyer), chairman of our Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance.
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Mr. HILL. I thank my colleague from Missouri. I enjoy so much our service together on the Financial Services Committee, and I appreciate his leadership in tackling the puzzle of how to create a housing mission that helps people that need it the most.
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Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Nevada. I am so inspired by the success that he talks about in Nevada on a local level that is working and how powerful mentoring is.
I mentioned a few minutes ago that our colleague, Representative Tipton from Colorado, and I were up in New York last week. We visited The Doe Fund, which just recently celebrated 30 years of fighting homelessness and hopelessness in the boroughs of New York. They provide affordable and supportive housing for individuals and families struggling with chronic homelessness.
They are famous because of their Ready, Willing & Able program, the bright, colorful uniforms all across the boroughs of New York that provides homeless and formerly incarcerated individuals with transitional work, housing, case management, life skills, education assistance, occupational training, job readiness, and graduate services.
About 2,000 individuals per year are helped through The Doe Fund's extensive network of training and jobs. It is exactly the kind of thing, Mr. Speaker, that we want in all of our cities where citizens come together and help the least of these, those coming off parole and those trapped in alcohol or drug abuse.
My hats are off to Harriet McDonald, the executive vice president and cofounder, and her husband of The Doe Fund and all that they are doing good and the success they have by the number of former Doe Fund beneficiaries, like Don Pridgen, who now is a caseworker helping his fellow citizens as an alumnus of The Doe Fund.
Arthur Brooks said recently at the American Enterprise Institute: ``The Doe Fund is an extraordinary success not just because of its numbers (it has lower criminal recidivism and higher work attachment than virtually any other program for the homeless in New York City) but because it specializes in taking care of some of the most difficult members of society--the hardest cases.''
That is what impressed Representative Tipton and me on our visit last week. My friend from Nevada was talking about mentoring, and that is so essential, in my view, to the idea of educational attainment because, truly, if the best program to end poverty is a good job, we have got to stop the horrendous dropout rates that we have.
We have to have people that have the kind of mentoring they are not getting, potentially, from their family or in their school system only to be able to stay in school and think ahead about their future, to have aspirations for their future. If we can close that gap of staying in school, we can close that learning gap as well.
Some programs in my district that have impressed me in this regard are, first, Greenbrier High School. Greenbrier High School is a public school in a rural part of my district that is doing both skill workforce training while students are in high school as well as getting them up to 2 years--2 years, Mr. Speaker--of college credit by partnering with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to have a dual enrollment system.
This saves families money and gets people the kind of educational attainment that we want. This is all done in the confines of a successful, locally controlled local public school.
Representative Brooks of Indiana stopped me this week and said that she couldn't be with us for this important hour of discussion about the ways and means of beating poverty in our society, and she wanted me to say--and I think it is illustrated by Greenbrier High School, Mr. Speaker--that, if we could lower dropout rates, we, in turn, could change the direction of family success and family income.
My friend from Nevada was talking about mentoring programs, and we have a bright story there in Little Rock with Donald Northcross, founder of the OK Program. OK stands for ``our kids.''
Donald is a former deputy sheriff in Sacramento, California, who moved to Little Rock, inspired by the work, vision, and leadership of Fitz Hill, president of Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock.
Donald was troubled by the violence and despair that he found in Black communities in California and the growing incarceration rates of young Black men.
Determined to make a difference, Donald founded the OK Program back in 1990 and is now spreading it across the United States with a goal of using it as a way to mentor young African American males while they are in their middle school years and through high school years to make sure that they are on the right track.
These are just a few examples of what you are hearing around all of our districts whenever I travel in the U.S. about how people are banding together as citizens in our great country to tackle poverty using local resources and local ingenuity.
I hope, Mr. Speaker, that we can come back in a few months and talk about this issue again and give more Members an opportunity.
I want to thank those that joined me today on the floor to discuss this important issue about how we alleviate poverty in our States and our local communities and how we overcome barriers of our existing Federal programs or other program barriers that are preventing success. There is no doubt that we have unique, successful opportunities throughout this country to beat this challenge.
I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues in the House and the Speaker's Task Force on Poverty, Opportunity, and Upward Mobility. I thank Speaker Ryan for his personal dedication and leadership to this topic across our country.
I want to thank our team in Arkansas and in Washington, D.C., and my staff for their commitment to this issue and how we are coming together to find solutions in the Second Congressional District to both urban and rural challenges.
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