Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor many other Republicans want to slash—or even kill–Medicaid, food stamps, Head Start, Social Security and other programs that help poor Americans. They want us to believe that nobody is truly poor around here, and that people who qualify for safety-net programs are just lazy folks who want to game the system, get something they haven’t worked for, and bankrupt America with their undeserved entitlements.
Romney and the guys at the country club are wrong. Unfortunately, they’re getting away with their distorted talking points because the rest of us aren’t doing a good enough job of telling it as it really is.
Myth busters
In the real world, people living in poverty include seniors who’ve retired from a lifetime of work, new moms, students, and job searchers still pounding the pavement.
In fact, low-income working families, contrary to right-wing myth, work hard: Adults in low-income working families worked on average 2,500 hours per year in 2006, the equivalent of almost one and a quarter full-time workers. One out of four working families in the U.S. is low-income, and virtually all of those families, or 96%, work at least half-time and over 70% work full-time or more. They’re also eager to acquire new skills and improve their jobs and work conditions. More than 7 million Americans are working two or more jobs just to make ends meet.
And, by the way, poor people can’t afford to be lazy. They’re skipping sleep to work long hours at multiple jobs and still falling further behind. Like any hardworking parent, they’re more than willing to take that extra shift so they can put food on the table.
But the less money you have, the less time you have to get ahead. Without a reliable car, taking the bus to work can take hours. No reliable child care means less time to find a better paying job. And when you have less money, every day is full of hard choices with harder consequences: which basic needs will you meet today — food, winter clothes, medicine — and which ones will you just have to go without?
Facts about low-income families
According to Media Matters Action Network:
One out of five American adults who have jobs are earning only $10.65 an hour or less. Even at 40 hours a week, that’s less than $22,000 per year — the poverty level for a family of four.
Over 80% of Americans believe it’s almost impossible to survive on minimum wage, which is only $7.25 per hour (federal) right now.
It’s expensive and time-consuming to be poor in America, too. The less money you make, the more you are probably paying extra banking, credit card, and lending fees, living in “food deserts” without accessible supermarkets that sell cheap fresh food, paying jacked-up health care prices, and paying as much as 40% of your income on child care while you’re at work.
All Americans pay taxes. Even those who don’t make enough money to pay taxes on their income still pay taxes like payroll, property or sales tax, or taxes on everyday things like gasoline.
Unfortunately, for many in our know-nothing political culture, facts don’t matter. By repeating the same myths and misinformation over and over again, right-wing opinion-shapers have been very effective in upending the truth. People who actually care about economically disadvantaged families and individuals need to do a much better job of making the case for reality–before it’s too late.