Dear United States Government,  

What follows is an open letter to you, from me, a novice social worker.  I expect you to know more of the following statistics than I do, based on the sheer volume of professional thinkers available to you compared to myself.  I also expect that you have a lot of reading of your own to do, so I have condensed my letter to a few short paragraphs to facilitate understanding.  That said, please continue. 

How dare you cut funding to programs that tens of thousands, if not millions of Americans use every day to survive?  How dare you cut funding to the Federal Heating Assistance Budget, which keeps families from living in homeless shelters in the midst of the coldest part of winter?  Why are you constantly worried about the Middle Class, the class that can afford to have multiple cars at home, Xboxes and Wii games?  Just because they happen to be the loudest and best at chanting slogans at the moment, does not mean they are the class that deserves all of the attention and consideration when considering what programs to eliminate. 

The protests heard from all around the country are defending the Middle Class, seemingly the majority of people.  Can I remind you that at 100% of the Federal Poverty Guideline, the yearly household income holds at $22, 350?  I would hardly call that Middle Class.   The Federal Poverty Guideline is calculated using an antiquated equation from 1967, and only calculates for the cost of food.  It is not adjusted for inflation.  As of last year, 19.3% of the households in the US had incomes BELOW that poverty guideline (USDA, 2010).  To measure poverty, many organizations use food security measures.  In 2008, there were 6.7 MILLION households that had what is classified as ‘Very Low Food Security’, a 39% increase from the previous year.  This means that 6.7 million families were at high risk of not being able to eat. 

According to the US Census, there were 43.6 million people who were classified as impoverished in 2009.  19 million of those termed ‘poor’ are classified as living in ‘extreme poverty’, which means that the cash income is less than HALF the Federal Poverty Guideline. 

How many millions of Americans have to go without food and now heat because of the ridiculous war budget and debt that has been pushed into the trillions of dollars since the start of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan?  World-renowned economist Joseph Stiglitz hypothesized in 2008 that the US will have spent $3 TRILLION on these wars before they are over.  As of 2010, the United States has been spending upwards of $3 billion PER WEEK on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Bilmes, 2010). 

The House just passed the emergency short-term legislation in order to compromise with Republicans in favor of cutting federal spending by $4 billion.  If the US government stopped funding the wars in the Middle East for a little over one week, that $4 billion could have been spent on internal domestic programs funding.  In comparison, just last month, the House approved the Republican plan to cut $61 billion in federal government spending.  Democrats called that ‘going too far’ and decreased the cuts to the measly $4 billion. 

Where exactly is this ‘small’ amount of $4 billion coming from?  Even Senator Reid doesn’t understand who will be hit the hardest from these spending cuts.  When talking to reporters, Reid included the Middle Class in who he thought would be hit the hardest by these cuts in spending.  The Middle Class families are not the ones using the majority of government-funded programs.  The majority of those programs exist to only help those who are at or below the Federal Poverty Guideline. 

While there are many millions of Americans who do indeed fit into the category labeled “Middle Class”, they are not the population who will suffer most from these federal spending cuts.  Those that will suffer most are those who can’t protest all day long for fear of getting fired because they don’t have a union; because they are making minimum wage (if employed at all); and because they are classified as the ‘working poor’ or homeless.   44% of all homeless individuals are employed (NCH, 2007).  The Urban Institute estimates that there are at least 3.5 million people who experience homelessness, with almost 40% of that number being children.  Perhaps instead of funding never-ending and unecessary wars overseas, you should spend your citizens' tax dollars the way they should have been spent in the first place; on programs for ALL of your citizens instead of just the upper and middle classes.

In closing, I wish to say thank you for at least holding onto some semblance of the healthcare reform we have so badly needed for decades.   In the future, I sincerely hope that you take into account those who don’t have time to spend all day calling their legislators because they are working multiple jobs, trying desperately to hold their families together while putting food on the table, and now struggling to heat their homes.

With Love,

Wisconsinite.

References

http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/How_Many.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/14/us-usa-budget-wars-idUSTRE71D3WG20110214

http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.htm

http://www.familiesusa.org/resources/tools-for-advocates/guides/federal-poverty-guidelines.html

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-02/u-s-congress-set-to-approve-bill-preventing-government-shutdown.html