How Poverty won the War on Poverty--duplication, waste, poor planning and lobbying Congress

Community Action Agencies are local groups who get their funding from The Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) which is federal tax money. They were first incorporated 47 years ago with the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964--the so-called War on Poverty.

This "war" has provided a steady stream of income for well paid middle class government workers and employees of non-profits, but hasn’t done much for the poor of Ohio even with half a billion a year. If you have the patience for the paperwork, you can set one up yourself and become a staff of one and recruit volunteers from your church. If you don't wish to work with the poor directly, organize an association of agencies and providers and lobby your city or state governments for a budget line. Or become a workshop provider for other agencies--show them how to use Twitter, Facebook and Blogging to recruit clients or make nice Power Point presentations. Do sensitivity training. The money's there.

There are tremendous duplication and few measures of success or accountability. Remember, the half a billion a year that Ohio agencies get doesn’t include all the other programs like SNAP (former food stamps) or TANF (former AFDC), Medicaid, or WIC or home weatherization or school feeding programs. That’s not home foreclosure workshops or programs for zero percent mortgages.

Vast amounts of money are funneled to local nonprofits whose purpose is to reduce poverty and to help low-income people become self-sufficient. Church groups can get this money as long as they just perform social acts and don't do anything religious, like tell their clients about Jesus. There are more than 1,100 Community Action Agencies in the United States and there are 50 Community Action Agencies in Ohio, “with every county receiving service. During the last program year, they administered $523,407,248 in resources aimed at alleviating the problems of poverty in Ohio's Communities.” (http://www.development.ohio.gov/community/ocs/cacs.htm )

Half a billion a year should be able to solve a lot of problems, wouldn’t you think? Apparently not, because the agencies were doing so poorly they needed a huge influx of temporary ARRA funding to stay afloat. (Example of application) The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was signed into law by President Obama on February 17th, 2009 and was supposed to be “a down payment on addressing long-neglected challenges so our country can thrive in the 21st century.” A down payment? Neglected? We’ve been addressing those challenges for 47 years, and it’s not like there were no state and local programs before 1964 which addressed poverty.

There are loud cries of alarm coming from the CAAs that receive CSBG funding right now because the Obama administration is looking at cutting some duplication in the block grants (not to worry--right now there’s no budget at all). All the CAA websites say pretty much the same thing--WE ARE DOING ESSENTIAL WORK FOR THE POOR!!!

It’s time to take the federal budget apart, agency by agency, bureaucrat by bureaucrat, nonprofit by nonprofit. And let’s begin with the bloated Block Grants’ overlapping programs and their 1100 Community Action Agencies. They don’t seem to be meeting their goals and mission statements if after almost half a century they they only morph and expand. Examples of mission statements:

http://www.impactca.org/ -- “provides a comprehensive array of services that enables struggling families to find jobs, maintain affordable housing and get on the road to becoming active, contributing, tax-paying citizens.” (Don't use these folks for computer training--still offering Windows XP).

http://www.leadscaa.org -- “is a private non-profit corporation that provides immediate assistance and lasting solutions for people in need”

http://www.tricountycls.com/index.htm “helps people find jobs, get educated and become financially secure”

http://www.lccaa.net/default.aspx “committed to improving the social well-being, economic capacity and opportunities for low- to moderate-income individuals and families.”

Why there were more hungry children in 2007

Hunger will never go away in the USA because the government keeps redefining and refining what that word means, and continues to meet other nanny state goals such as decreasing obesity or distributing healthy food, promoting environmental goals, safe neighborhoods and being step-daddy and sugar daddy for women making bad choices, holding both the taxpayer and low income families hostage to these ill-thought-out goals. Yes, big announcement by USDA this week:

Household Food Security in the United States, 2007—11.1 percent of U.S. households were food-insecure at some time during the year in 2007; 4.1 percent had very low food security. This report, based on data from the December 2007 food security survey, provides the most recent statistics on the food security of U.S. households as well as how much they spent for food and the extent to which food-insecure households participated in Federal and community food assistance programs.

The word HUNGER makes the headlines, but the government term is "food security." And that only has to happen once a year, maybe at the end of the month in which you went to Disney World or got new glasses for the kids, to be included in the report. For some people "food insecurity" is not being able to go to McDonald's regularly.

I know what food security is--I've seen it at the Food Pantry in 2007. It's a mother of 4 telling me that she doesn't need cereal (allowed 3 boxes that day) because the children get that at school breakfast (where they also get lunch and after school snacks too, and are fed in the summer when school isn't in session), or it's a grandmother raising her daughter's babies while she's in Marysville Reformatory for kiting checks saying no to applesauce or peanut butter because she has too much of that at home. I can tell from the brands that they were purchased in bulk from huge storage facilities that buy from companies that depend on government contracts to keep their business going. After years of misguided farm surplus to buoy up farmers, the government now supports food overproduction by agribusiness.

Why are food pantries short right now? It's not just that more people are unemployed and running short a few days of the month. There's an actual food shortage worldwide due to our ill advised biofuels policies and environmental regulations, and our regulators of herbicides, pesticides and improved agricultural methods are actually causing real hunger, causing real children to starve, or causing riots in very poor countries. Food banks now need to be "green" with squirrely light bulbs and solar panels--imagine the retro-fitting just so you can store food for the poor. So American food companies can now make more shipping their taxpayer supported surplus abroad than they can selling it to American food banks which redistribute it to our "food insecure" citizens who also have become dependent on TEFAP, WIC and food stamps (SNAP). The Columbus Mid-Ohio Food Bank has an operating budget of about $8 million and distributes about $22 million in food annually and is in the midst of an $16 million capital campaign to expand and remodel.

Behind the food banks and food pantries there are teams of academics--entomologists, plant pathologists, crop managers, ag economists, horticulturalists, small business developer, food retail specialists, agronomists and soil scientists, community developers, nutritionists, registered dietitians, educators, and biosystems engineers all sifting data and publishing results to assure no child gets left behind, or no child gets a fat behind, or no child sits on his behind. There are banks set up to loan farmers money to focus on locally grown food (to help the poor make smart choices), and training programs to employ staff to teach staff of non-profits how to get more government grants for food for the "food insecure."

The government also props up a variety of non-profits such as Children's Hunger Alliance, which in the same year received about $10.5 million from the Ohio Department of Education, over half a million from Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services, and over $36,000 in federal grants, with the remainder of its $13,762,098 coming from foundations and contributions. This is not to say that CHA, and others like it, don't do meaningful work, but that's a huge food chain of salaries, production and distribution that are totally dependant on "hunger," who would all be out of business if hunger miraculously ended next month. Of course, we know that won't happen. The definition of hunger will most certainly be expanded in the next administration as child care block grants are expanded, affordable housing grants are expanded (convenient access to food sources), health care is expanded to ensure low fat, or low cholesterol diets, services to children of imprisoned are expanded (already in the family services budget), and all the various senior programs expanded to be sure the elderly who are taking care of grandchildren are also well fed.

There are so many jobs dependent on the poor and "food insecure", that new poor must be recruited for each one who manages to slip through the barrier to the next quintile and into a good job, self-sufficiency and pride.

Do not blame the poor. They didn't set up this system. They are the victims.

How much for child care and development?

Obama's concern for children (who make it through the birth canal and aren't a product of a botched abortion) is evident on his web page under "Education." I can't find details on the proposed costs, but here's the bare bones for early childhood education.

1. Zero to Five Plan: The Obama-Biden comprehensive "Zero to Five" plan will provide critical support to young children and their parents. Unlike other early childhood education plans, the Obama-Biden plan places key emphasis at early care and education for infants, which is essential for children to be ready to enter kindergarten. Obama and Biden will create Early Learning Challenge Grants to promote state "zero to five" efforts and help states move toward voluntary, universal pre-school.
2. Expand Early Head Start and Head Start: Obama and Biden will quadruple Early Head Start, increase Head Start funding and improve quality for both.
3. Affordable, High-Quality Child Care: Obama and Biden will also provide affordable and high-quality child care to ease the burden on working families.

Would you like to take a guess at what we've been spending under mean old President Bush, those heartless Republicans? Would you believe ELEVEN BILLION in FY 2004 and FY 2005?

For both Fiscal Years (FY) 2004 and 2005, $4.8 billion in Federal CCDF funding was available through block grants to all 50 States, the District of Columbia,5 Territories, and 261 Tribal grantees in FY 2004 and 265 Tribal grantees in FY 2005 (representing over 500 Indian Tribes). Through CCDF and other funding streams available for child care––including State Matching and Maintenance of Effort (MOE) funds, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) dollars transferred to CCDF or spent directly by States on child care services, and Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) funds––over $11 billion was available for child care in FY 2004 and FY 2005. Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF)Report to Congress for FY 2004-2005

To hear Obama tell, you'd think America's poor children have been left on street corners and with great grandmothers while their mothers go to work in sweat shops. These huge block grants to the states began back in the mid-90s under "welfare reform" so that mothers who needed to work had safe and reliable child care. I've looked through hundreds of these alphabet soup programs. I do have concerns about their effectiveness, however, lack of funding and pie-in-the-sky goals aren't it.

Keep in mind there's no hard evidence that Head Start type programs, even after 40 years, have any long term affect, because these youngsters will continue to compete their entire lives with children who have come from enriched environments, with two parents who value education. True, they would be even further behind if they hadn't learned to sit still, follow instructions, the names of colors, how to stand in line, etc., but they won't catch up no matter how many billions Obama or Bush throws their way.

Marriage is now the great divide in social class, education and wealth, and our government programs have been discouraging marriage for decades giving women with children money and keeping the fathers out of the home. The government "helps" discourage achievement, because benefits might be lost as one moves up the social and salary scale. A few hours a day in even the best enriched program cannot balance or play catch up--its a fairy tale that liberals, conservatives and religious people want to believe, in part I think, because there is so much government money waiting for those who do. Whatever gains they achieve by attending even good pre-schools are lost by second or third grade. There is some evidence that keeping mainstream kids in universal child care environments holds them back and creates more problems for their families, so perhaps thats the BO-Biden plan for fairness.