Ann Jones
People often ask me why I spend so much energy on children in Zambia, when so much need exists right in my own hometown. The fact is, as a taxpayer, I DO help right here at home. And so do you. The question is, are we doing enough?
After President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, I see room for improvement — mostly in areas he didn’t talk about much.
As many of my neighbors in Columbus know, I help raise money for a community-based, pediatric AIDS program in Zambia. Power of Love helps people like my adolescent friend Noah — orphaned by AIDS, living HIV-positive since birth — focus on math instead of meds; football instead of finding food. Noah can dream of the future because these programs are ensuring he will have one.
Power of Love supports 500 families mostly headed by grandparents as a generation younger was lost to AIDS. Granny Connection in Columbus is only one of several organizations that kept Power of Love operating when COVID — the second pandemic for these families – threatened stability.
Sadly, many Hoosier children have much more in common with Noah than most of us realize. More than 3.7 million U.S. children are being reared by grandparents, thanks to rising incarceration rates, the opioid crisis, or the 2008 economic recession. COVID is the second pandemic in their young lives, as well.
The difference is, U.S. taxpayers support programs such as the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) and school lunch programs to help bridge the gap between what families have and what they need. So, when COVID hit, exposing the vulnerability of so many, our government also used taxpayer funds for the food and emergency assistance.
Sadly, many of these programs expired. But the need is not gone. Almost 4 million American children fell back into poverty last month after the expanded CTC expired, according to a study by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. The child poverty rate rose from 12.1 percent in December to 17 percent in January – an increase of 41 percent. It is expected to continue to climb.
My faith tells me we are responsible for “the least of these” – people whose futures are tied to ours as equally loved, equally deserving children of the same Creator, but who don’t seem to have the same opportunities to live into their fullest potential.
But in government terms, we can also recognize the economic value of these people – folks who not only feel the benefit of support, but who outgrow the need for support to become productive members of our economy; people who add benefit to our economy.
That’s why I was disheartened to learn that – even as fallout from opioids and the COVID pandemic continue to create hurdles for our children – our nation’s leaders appear to have given up on promising programs that might have lifted more than half of them out of poverty.
Senator Todd Young and Rep. Greg Pence both supported the American Rescue Plan allowing for a one-year expansion of the Child Tax Credit. That was a heartening step. Our President mentioned in his SOTU address that we should expand the Child Tax Credit, but neither he nor any of our local legislators have recommended the Child Tax Credit be permanent.
So, I call on grandparents — and parents — in this community to do something. Write to your members of Congress today. Ask them to make the Child Tax Credit permanent and available to all children in this country.
The CTC expansion would move millions of children out of poverty, as well as help reduce hunger and narrow the racial wealth gap. Ask them to expand the summer-EBT, to provide monthly benefits to eligible low-income families, and reduce child hunger by 30 percent.
Ask your members of Congress to be like caring grandparents all over the world: Invest in the lives of our children like the future depends on it — because it does.
