Urban Exile: Do We Care More About Starving Kids in Africa Than Starving Kids in Michigan?

by Erika McNamara

Sometimes I wonder if needy people in Africa get more of our attention then people right here in our own state and town.

Almost a month ago a judge put a halt to the state of Michigan’s new cap on cash assistance for individuals who’ve been on assistance for 48-months. The decision was not due to the fact that there was a problem with throwing over 30,000 people out of the program, but due to a technical issue involved with the amount of notice individuals received before being cut off from the benefits. The Michigan legislature moved so quickly on this issue that required due diligence to inform recipients was totally left out of the picture. What was also left out of the Legislature’s entire plan to jettison tens of thousands of children and their families from the cash assistance program was a plan for some kind of safety net for those same 30,000 people.

The people of Michigan yawned, rolled over and went back to sleep.

Perhaps they believe Governor Snyder who claims that one of his major initiatives is to keep kids out of poverty. Snyder’s spokeswoman Sara Wurfel recently emailed A2Politico in response to another piece about poverty in Michigan posted to the site on November 16, 2011: “Gov. Snyder finds it unacceptable that Michigan’s families “are among the poorest in the nation.” I’m not sure how throwing 30,000 people off state assistance is going to achieve success on the goal of decreasing the state’s rising childhood poverty. Over the past 10 months, A2Politico has documented significant increases in Michigan’s childhood poverty, hunger and infant mortality rates.

The obvious conclusion is that Michigan’s Governor is living in another world, and not here in Michigan where the current unemployment rate is just a tad over 11 percent. Again, according to the November 16, 2011 A2Politico piece, “Over the past 10 months Rick Snyder has been in office, Michigan’s jobs picture has worsened significantly, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. When Snyder assumed office in January 2010, the state’s unemployment rate was 10.7 percent; it has since risen to 11.1 percent. Over the past 10 months 255,000 additional people have become unemployed.”

How are those 30,000 people going to make up the extra money they would have received through the cash assistance program? It is just not realistic to believe that faith-based food pantries and non-profit organizations are going to be able to keep up the pace with such a huge influx of people that require assistance.

Then again, one could argue that 48 months is a long time to be receiving assistance from the state, and that this kind of assistance is a total drain on the state’s battered budget. I agree that four years is a long time to assist a family in need, but the question remains: what are the 30,000 children and their families tossed out of the program supposed to do? Without the cash assistance tens of thousands more people in Michigan will be living on the streets. Imagine tens of thousands more panhandlers on the streets in our communities. People are already complaining that there are too many homeless individuals on the street asking for spare change. As I wrote on November 10, 2011, the owner of a boutique in Ann Arbor blamed a sharp rise in the city’s homeless for the demise of her business (“Urban Exile: Homeless Blamed For of Downtown Ann Arbor Boutique Named, Yes, Poshh.”)

The real problem is obvious: Michigan has a tattered safety net for many of these people.  As a result of tossing these people off of assistance, even more people are going to slip through the cracks of society.  Millionaire Governor Rick Snyder and the Michigan Republican-controlled legislature are, effectively, creating a divide between rich and poor in Michigan worthy of a Dickens novel—Michigan’s poverty class. The results of cutting these families off of assistance may haunt Michigan for generations as the ramifications of growing hunger, childhood poverty and educational achievement gaps play out.

Ok. Let’s just say the questions out loud. You know the questions. Let’s start with this one: So why should we care? Why should I care about people who are too lazy to go out and get a job? This is the land of opportunity, and people can pull themselves up by the bootstraps and make something of themselves. As Rick Snyder told A2Politico through his spokeswoman: Raising taxes on some of the country’s poorest families is “about a level playing field for all industries and sectors. It’s about creating a structurally balanced budget that could be a building block for the future.”

There’s just one problem with Governor Ebenezer Snyder’s particular brand of early-19th century economics. The largest sector of the state’s population that will suffer thanks to these cuts in the state’s safety net are children.

So I will ask again: Why should we care?

Maybe we should all care because these are citizens of a state that our politicos extol as one of the greatest in the nation. Legislators allocated millions of dollars in the state’s budget to Pure Michigan marketing. Come to Michigan, where elected officials treat the poor as though they were a dirty little secret. The reality is that 1.8 million people in Michigan don’t have enough food to eat. Results recently released from a new national study on hunger in the United States reveal that Michigan ranks third in the United States in the percentage of its residents, including children, who face food insecurity. Food insecurity is living without consistent access to enough nutritious food to live a healthy life, according to the study. In our state, 1.8 million people wake up hungry, go to bed hungry and face the consequences of malnutrition. Those consequences can be severe. Several studies have shown that food insecurity affects cognitive development among young children. With respect to older children, school performance is adversely impacted. Additional research shows that with hunger comes more frequent sickness and higher healthcare costs.

Vicki Escarra is the president and CEO of Feeding America. She had this to say: ”The consequences and costs of child hunger make addressing this issue an economic and societal imperative, in addition to an obvious moral obligation.”

Those words have fallen on deaf ears in Michigan’s capitol. Escarra went on to say, “As we deal with all the financial issues facing our nation, we can’t balance our budget on the backs of poor and hungry children.”

However, as Republican Governor Rick Snyder has said often, “Michigan! Yes, we can.”