State of Alabama Archives: on Welfare & Poverty

Kay Ivey: Build public movement to end childhood hunger

ECHA focuses to increase Alabama families' economic stability, cultivate a strong regional food system, build public will to end childhood hunger, improve the food assistance safety net for Alabama's children, support community action, and enhance children's health and prevent obesity.

Child hunger in America has increased significantly since the great recession of 2008. Of the one million plus children who live in Alabama, more than one in four live in families that experience food hardships. Child hunger is not just a food problem but health problem, education problem and work force problem.

Hunger is preventable in our State, but we must work together. Together we can start a public movement to combat childhood hunger in Alabama.

Robert Bentley: We are poorest state, but government just causes dependency

The statistics are sobering. The facts are indisputable. Never-ending cycles of a need for jobs, better job skills and better education, plague our communities. We resolve to reverse the trends that have troubled our state for decades.

We will never see an end to the plague of poverty by offering a deeper dependence on a flawed government system. We will never help our poorest citizens, or our future generations, by casting over them the net of federal government giveaway programs. We can break the cycle of poverty, but not with programs that drag our communities and our people into the downward spiral of dependence.

Ron Crumpton: Increase SNAP & unemployment benefits by 25%

We need to increase the benefit of the SNAP program and the unemployment benefit by 25%. The current benefits are just not realistic. With current SNAP benefits, the average beneficiary receives about $5 per day, which is not enough for a healthy diet. The cost of these changes would require an increase in funding of $43.5 billion, but it is something that we must do.

Without these changes, the programs will not be able to meet the needs of the American people. As stated earlier, this does not just benefit the poor, more than 70% of Americans will use these programs at some point in their lives. It is important that when Americans need these programs, these programs meet the needs of Americans.

Ron Crumpton: Stop fighting war on people in poverty: Fight poverty!

Study after study shows that states that have a high poverty rate also have lower test scores in education, while having higher rates of drug use and crime. Unfortunately, this is one of the many issues that the Republican Party refuses to address; instead, they support policies that conflict and make the problem worse.

Ron Crumpton: Fight poverty instead of fighting people in poverty

A: Strongly agree. Raise the minimum wage to a living wage & save $7.6B: Stop fighting war on people in poverty: Fight poverty!

Roy Moore: Let churches & charities help the needy

Yolanda Flowers: Support Medicaid expansion for working poor, rural hospitals