[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
FIELD HEARING ON THE DIGNITY OF WORK:
LIFTING INDIVIDUALS OUT OF POVERTY
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON WORK AND WELFARE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 9, 2024
__________
Serial No. 118-WW07
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Ways and Means
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__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
56-477 WASHINGTON : 2024
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COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
JASON SMITH, Missouri, Chairman
VERN BUCHANAN, Florida RICHARD E. NEAL, Massachusetts
ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania MIKE THOMPSON, California
DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
DARIN LAHOOD, Illinois EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
BRAD WENSTRUP, Ohio BILL PASCRELL, Jr., New Jersey
JODEY ARRINGTON, Texas DANNY DAVIS, Illinois
DREW FERGUSON, Georgia LINDA SANCHEZ, California
RON ESTES, Kansas TERRI SEWELL, Alabama
LLOYD SMUCKER, Pennsylvania SUZAN DELBENE, Washington
KEVIN HERN, Oklahoma JUDY CHU, California
CAROL MILLER, West Virginia GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin
GREG MURPHY, North Carolina DAN KILDEE, Michigan
DAVID KUSTOFF, Tennessee DON BEYER, Virginia
BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania DWIGHT EVANS, Pennsylvania
GREG STEUBE, Florida BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois
CLAUDIA TENNEY, New York JIMMY PANETTA, California
MICHELLE FISCHBACH, Minnesota JIMMY GOMEZ, California
BLAKE MOORE, Utah
MICHELLE STEEL, California
BETH VAN DUYNE, Texas
RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS, New York
MIKE CAREY, Ohio
Mark Roman, Staff Director
Brandon Casey, Minority Chief Counsel
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON WORK AND WELFARE
DARIN LAHOOD, Illinois, Chairman
BRAD WENSTRUP, Ohio DANNY DAVIS, Illinois
MIKE CAREY, Ohio JUDY CHU, California
BLAKE MOORE, Utah GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin
MICHELLE STEEL, California DWIGHT EVANS, Pennsylvania
LLOYD SMUCKER, Pennsylvania TERRI SEWELL, Alabama
ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska
CLAUDIA TENNEY, New York
C O N T E N T S
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OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Hon. Darin LaHood, Illinois, Chairman............................ 1
Hon. Danny Davis, Illinois, Ranking Member....................... 3
Advisory of April 9, 2024 announcing the hearing................. V
WITNESSES
Matt Paprocki, President and CEO, Illinois Policy Institute...... 6
Nathan Montgomery, Executive Director, Salt & Light.............. 13
Brian Butler, Director of Residential Ministries, Pathway
Ministries..................................................... 22
Kristy Schofield, Director of Homelessness & Housing, Dream
Center Peoria.................................................. 29
Gianno Caldwell, Founder, Caldwell Strategic Consulting.......... 33
Sodiqa Williams, Senior Vice President, Safer Foundation......... 39
LOCAL SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Local Submissions................................................ 67
PUBLIC SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Public Submissions............................................... 81
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THE DIGNITY OF WORK: LIFTING INDIVIDUALS OUT OF POVERTY
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TUESDAY, APRIL 9, 2024
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Work and Welfare,
Committee on Ways and Means,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:01 a.m. at the
Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago, Illinois, Hon. Darin LaHood
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Chairman LaHOOD. The subcommittee will come to order, and I
am Congressman Darin LaHood, the chair of the Work and Welfare
Subcommittee. And I want to welcome everybody to this Work and
Welfare Subcommittee hearing today in the city of Chicago. And
we are so proud to have the members of the Ways and Means
Committee here today for this important hearing.
Before we begin, let me just acknowledge Pastor Phil and
the folks here at Pacific Garden Mission for the work they have
done to make this hearing come about. Let's give them a round
of applause. [Applause.]
Chairman LaHOOD. A lot of work went into putting this
together, and so we are thrilled to have a wonderful venue to
have our hearing today. And it is not often that we get 10
Members of Congress outside of Washington, D.C. to come out to
Chicago, but today's field hearing is reflective of that, in a
bipartisan way, to have members of the Ways and Means Committee
here, and specifically the Work and Welfare Subcommittee.
I also want to acknowledge Congressman Danny Davis. We are
in his district here. Yes----
[Applause.]
Chairman LaHOOD [continuing]. And for him to welcome us
here. I am proud to represent the 16th district of Illinois,
which is a little south and west of here. My home is Peoria. I
also represent Bloomington-Normal and the city of Rockford, and
then I extend out into DeKalb County, McHenry County, and
Grundy County. And so it is an honor and a privilege to
represent the constituents of the 16th district and to be here
today for this important hearing.
So we, Congressman Davis and I, work on the Work and
Welfare Subcommittee, which has responsibility of overseeing
several important Federal anti-poverty programs that provide
assistance to vulnerable children and families. And we are very
lucky, obviously, to be here today at Pacific Garden Mission,
and to see the work here to uplift and restore the lives of
homeless individuals and families here in Chicago.
Yesterday we had the opportunity to visit Project HOOD and
Pastor Corey Brooks. We did a field--a site hearing, or a site
visit yesterday at in Englewood, and we learned about the
important work that Pastor Brooks and his team are doing to
uplift and transform lives in Englewood and Woodlawn, including
building a new community center there.
One of the things that has stood out to me about both of
these organizations is their philosophy of uplifting and
equipping individuals in crisis with skills and tools to find
stability and transform their lives through faith and work.
How we define ``help'' matters. Whether it is through
churches, non-profits, private foundations, or government
programs, when providing relief and assistance to those in need
we should be exploring every possibility to promote work as a--
as the surest pathway out of poverty. No amount of handouts or
government assistance, no matter how well intentioned, can
substitute for the intangible benefits and dignity that work
brings to individuals and their families, and the ripple effect
it has on our communities.
All of our government programs need to be oriented to
provide every opportunity for individuals to grow their
capacity and be connected to meaningful work. At the most
fundamental level, work provides income and greatly reduces the
likelihood of being in poverty. Simply working even part-time
dramatically reduces the chances of living below the poverty
line.
In 2021 the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that
only 4.1 of individuals who worked part-time over a period of
at least 27 weeks had incomes below the poverty line, and only
2.6 of those who worked full-time.
Beyond providing a reliable source of income, work also
provides countless intangible benefits to individuals. Research
has shown that work is associated with improved physical and
mental health, social well-being, and higher degrees of human
connectedness and social capital. Conversely, studies have
linked joblessness with increased social isolation, depression,
anxiety, and feelings of hopelessness. Joblessness can even
affect physical health. One study found that unemployment
lasting longer than six months can reduce life expectancy by as
much as a year-and-a-half for a 40-year-old worker.
Tying Federal benefits to the expectation of work is not
punishment. Work in exchange for benefits represents society's
commitment to helping individuals and families in crisis. In
fact, most Americans support work as a condition of welfare. A
2023 Axios poll found nearly two-thirds of Americans, including
half of Democrats, support work requirements for welfare
programs.
As part of this committee's ongoing efforts to restore work
requirements to Federal programs in 2023, we secured a major
victory by strengthening work requirements for families
receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, known as
TANF, cash assistance as part of the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
The bipartisan law closed loopholes to hold states accountable
for engaging TANF work-eligible individuals in work, and
established pilot programs to measure recipient employment and
earnings outcomes to test alternative measures of performance.
But more can be done. Conducting these field hearings, like
we are doing today, gives us an opportunity to hear directly
from people who have overcome the odds to escape poverty, and
the organization and leaders that do the hard work every day to
help individuals transform their lives. And we will hear from
some of those remarkable individuals today as our witnesses.
I want to again thank our witnesses for being here today,
and for the Pacific Garden Mission, and I look forward to the
testimony we will hear.
Chairman LaHOOD. With that I am pleased now to recognize
Mr. Davis, our ranking member, for his opening statement.
Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank you
for holding this field hearing. I am delighted to welcome all
of you to my home city of Chicago. There was a time when we
would say it has Wrigley Field, Soldier Field, Marshall Field,
and it sits by a lake of some size. But I am pleased to be here
with all of you at the Pacific Garden Mission, and to have
visited Project HOOD yesterday. Both organizations serve people
in need so well.
Democrats and President Biden have put helping workers
overcome barriers to sustainable, quality employment at the
heart of our policies. Even in this time of economic growth,
where wages have risen and unemployment has been cut in half,
too many people are left out not because they prefer needing
government help, but because they face significant barriers to
quality employment. Some don't have childcare or need paid
leave to deal with an illness or care for an elderly parent.
Some lack the skills or education needed for good jobs. Some
have jobs, but don't earn enough to make ends meet, like the
6.4 million working poor. Some made mistakes in the past and
can't get a second chance.
I am proud that Democrats provided emergency aid to
preserve childcare centers and permanently increased Federal
child care investment by over 600 million a year, about 20
million of it right here in Illinois.
I am proud that Democrats expanded the child tax credit
that slashed child poverty to just 5.2 percent in Illinois.
Unfortunately, that poverty cut in child tax credit expired due
to Republican inaction, and child poverty is back up to 12.4
percent, an unacceptable outcome.
If our goal is to support work to help people escape
poverty, then people don't need more penalties, requirements,
and paperwork. Parents need guaranteed childcare and paid
family and medical leave that we know substantially increase
workforce participation among women. People need a safe place
to live, food to eat, reliable transportation, good education,
and health care to sustain the stability needed to work
successfully.
I strongly disagree with those that blame people for their
poverty and suggest that the solution is low or no-wage jobs
with work requirements to make sure they don't develop a
dependency mentality. Denying people food, housing, enough
money to pay the rent, and making them work for free doesn't
give them dignity.
I am proud to showcase the work done at the Safer
Foundation to overcome the systemic barriers faced by justice-
involved individuals so they can get good jobs and turn their
lives around. I worked with Safer to set up an amazing program
to help people with records obtain careers in health care. The
program involves intensive training coupled with legal
services, support services, technical assistance for
businesses, and job placement services. Over three years the
initiative placed 113 clients with 71 employers and achieved a
93 percent retention rate over 2 years. Our subcommittee should
support programs like Safer that methodically address the
multiple barriers struggling workers face.
As we sit in the Mission I am reminded of 2017, when the
Republican Congress enacted a bill to tax faith-based
organizations on the value of their parking and benefits
provided to employees to pay for tax cuts for wealthy
individuals and corporations. I heard a lot from faith-based
organizations in Illinois about the church parking tax.
Democrats repealed this tax in 2019, but the wealthy who
benefitted from those tax breaks will soon ask Congress to
extend their tax cuts. My hope is that my Republican colleagues
will protect the programs that help people live with dignity,
and not make them subsidize tax cuts for the wealthy again.
As a Black American who grew up in the segregated South and
who came to Chicago for the opportunities that were not as
available in the South, I know firsthand how systemic barriers
limit opportunities. It has been my honor to devote my
congressional career to work, like we do in this subcommittee,
to help those who are struggling to overcome systemic barriers
with the education, jobs, child care, paid family and medical
leave, and other supports so that they can thrive.
I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to
talk about our work and thank you very much.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Mr. Davis. It is now----
[Applause.]
Chairman LaHOOD. It is now my pleasure to introduce the
chairman of the full Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Smith of
Missouri.
And when Mr. Smith took over as our leader on the
committee, he talked about doing a number of field hearings.
And I think this is our ninth or tenth field hearing that we
have done over the last year-and-a-half, getting out across
America to hear from individuals on what we can do better in
Washington, D.C. And so it wasn't just rhetoric; it is the
reality that we are doing these field hearings.
And so, with that, it is my pleasure to introduce our
chairman, Mr. Smith of Missouri.
Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Chairman LaHood and Ranking
Member Davis.
It is not often that a subcommittee is led by the chair and
the ranking member from the same state, and so I am glad we
could visit Illinois to hear from folks that you both
represent. So thanks for the hospitality of hosting us, Ranking
Member Davis.
I also want to thank Pastor Phil. Thank you all so much,
and your entire team here at Pacific Garden Mission for hosting
our committee.
Today we are----
[Applause.]
Chairman SMITH. Today we are actually making history. This
is the first time in congressional history that a standing
House committee has held a hearing in a homeless shelter. Way
overdue. [Applause.]
Chairman SMITH. Pacific Garden Mission is the oldest faith-
based homeless shelter in the country, providing help to men
and women across Chicago since 1877. The work you do is
critically important to helping those in need transform their
lives. Most importantly, what you do here is about not giving
up on people. That is why we are having the hearing today. We
are in Chicago to listen to the real stories of individuals
whose lives were transformed by work, and what it takes to
shepherd those in crisis from poverty to independence.
Taxpayers fund a fragmented and often confusing safety net
system that spans more than 80 different Federal programs at a
cost of more than $1 trillion every year. These programs
provide important food, housing, health care, and cash
assistance to help those in poverty. However, as Federal
support has grown, programs have largely failed to focus on how
to help lift people back into full self-sufficiency. Instead,
success is measured by how many new people are added to the
rolls of these programs.
This approach discourages people from seeking a path to
work. As a result, more people are receiving welfare benefits
today than at any time in our nation's history. In 2023, 85
million people were enrolled in Medicaid, an increase of 20
percent since 2019. This represents 25 percent of the U.S.
population. One-fourth of the U.S. population is on Medicaid.
In 2023, 41 million people received food assistance through
SNAP, an increase of 18 percent since 2019. This represents 12
percent of the entire population.
What we have lost sight of is that a job is the best anti-
poverty program that exists. Work is more than a paycheck.
Every person has skills and abilities they can offer to their
community. Often it is just connecting those skills with the
right job. When people are not able to apply their talents,
they miss out on the dignity that comes from work, and their
communities are denied their contributions.
Relying on a government check can weaken an individual's
ability to use and grow their skills. Instead of climbing out
of poverty, families find themselves without hope and trapped
with fewer options for their future. Children with parents who
are unable to find meaningful employment often struggle in
school, and they face more severe mental health issues,
contributing to a generational cycle of poverty. In fact, one
in every three children who grow up in poverty will raise their
own children in poverty.
We must break the cycle. Clearly, the path from welfare to
work is not easy or straightforward. Folks often must first
overcome the barriers that contribute to poverty, like mental
health or educational challenges, substance abuse, health
problems, neglect. Too often, however, community leaders find
themselves battling against so-called solutions from Washington
that make it harder for individuals to escape poverty.
We know as much from recent history. Under the American
Rescue Plan Act, the child tax credit was transformed from a
program that rewards work to one that does not, and Democrats
extended unemployment benefits that paid people more not to
work. As a consequence, a government check was worth more than
a paycheck, and millions of families sat on the sidelines. It
is not the fault of those families; they were just responding
to the incentives of Washington, which they provided.
There is more that we can and we should do. Last year, as
part of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, Republicans led changes
to strengthen work requirements and the Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families and supplemental nutrition assistance
programs. Last month Republican members on our committee
introduced legislation that would protect taxpayer dollars
provided through TANF from being lost to waste, fraud, and
abuse.
We are here because we want to hear from those on the front
lines of this crisis. There will be clipboards that our team--
will be passed out for anyone in the audience to share any
concerns or ideas. We will enter those into the official record
and take them back with us to Washington as we consider how
policies can better connect people to work and lift more
Americans out of poverty.
Thank you all for joining us today. We look forward to your
testimony.
Chairman SMITH. And thank you, Chairman LaHood.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Chairman Smith, for that.
It is now my pleasure to introduce our witnesses here
today. We have six of them, and we will start off with Mr. Matt
Paprocki, who is the president and CEO of the Illinois Policy
Institute. He is also the CEO of the Center for Poverty
Solutions, and a real thought leader here in Chicago.
Next we will hear from Nathan Montgomery, who is the
executive director of Salt and Light in Urbana, Illinois.
Our next witness will be Brian Butler, who is from my
hometown of Peoria, Illinois, and is the director of
residential ministries at Pathway in Peoria.
And then next we will hear from Kristy Schofield, also from
Peoria, and is the director of homelessness and housing at the
Dream Center in Peoria, Illinois.
Next we will hear from Gianno Caldwell, who is the founder
of Caldwell Strategic Consulting in Washington, D.C., but a
native of Chicago, and proud of his Chicago heritage.
And lastly we will hear from Sodiqa Williams, who is the
vice--senior vice president of the Safer Foundation here in
Chicago.
You will all be recognized for five minutes.
And we will begin with you, Mr. Paprocki.
STATEMENT OF MATT PAPROCKI, PRESIDENT AND CEO, ILLINOIS POLICY
INSTITUTE
Mr. PAPROCKI. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Chairman LaHood,
and Ranking Member Davis, and the distinguished members of this
committee. My name is Matt Paprocki. I am the founder of the
Center for Poverty Solutions, a project created from the
Illinois Policy Institute, where I serve as president and CEO.
Today in my testimony I want to demonstrate why work is the
best pathway out of poverty and to give people dignity. And I
want to end by giving three solutions that this committee can
do to enact that.
But first, let me give you some background. The Center for
Poverty Solutions was created to look at the research behind
what are the biggest drivers to eradicate poverty. And we work
with direct service agencies, partner together, and we pass
bipartisan legislation to reduce poverty and increase
opportunities. Our goal is to eliminate poverty starting here,
in the City of Chicago.
And I have good news. We have one single factor that can
reduce poverty by 87 percent. It is work. In fact, those people
who are working a full-time job, only 2 percent of them are
currently in poverty.
Take, for example, my friend Steven Blake. Steven was a
homeless veteran, but thanks to this place here, Pacific Garden
Mission, he was given shelter and job training. Today Steven is
an entrepreneur who sells fresh fruits to commuters on their
way to work. Two months ago I walked by Steven on this cold,
freezing day. It is raining outside, and I saw Steven there. I
said, ``Steven, what are you doing out here today?''
And Steven points to a man a few feet away from us, and he
is holding a sign, and the cardboard sign says, please help.
And he said, ``Matt, that used to be me.'' He said, ``I stood
out here every single day, and every person who walked by, I
would ask them, How can you help me?'' He said, ``Today I do
the opposite. Every single person who walks by I say, How can I
help you?'' A huge smile comes across his face. He said,
``Matt, I got to be out here. People need me.'' That is
dignity. That is a dignity that is enshrined in our
Constitution in the phrase ``in the pursuit of happiness.''
That is a dignity that lifts people closer to the image and the
likeness of God. That is a dignity that lifts people out of
mental illness, out of abuse, and out of dependency.
Quite frankly, this is what is missing in our society
today, a society which often tells people you can't do it.
Because poverty today is less about food and housing and
security, and it is becoming more about hopelessness,
independence. Meaningful work can solve all of these problems.
I know because I have lived it.
When I was 24 years old I was a professional staffer, and I
got a call from my mom. She said, ``Matt, I am at the hospital,
and I have just been diagnosed with cancer.'' So I left the job
that I loved because my mom needed me. And for the next eight
months I stayed at home with her. And one cold December day she
died in my arms and I lost my purpose. I had no job. I had no
money. I had no parents. Nobody needed me. For the next few
months I qualified for just about every welfare benefit there
was, and I thank God that I never took them. Because for too
many Americans, welfare is not a temporary safety net; it is a
snare net. And generations get stuck inside of this. In fact, a
Pew study shows that 70 percent of people who are currently on
government assistance will never escape, and that extends to
their children and their grandchildren.
My escape from poverty was the same as Steven's and
millions of others. We found a job. More importantly, we found
dignity in work. And from there we built our families, we
became more active in our community. We volunteered. We can
help millions of Americans, lift them up out of poverty, and
bring them closer to that dignity of work. And this committee
here can do three things to help drive that home.
The first is stop the benefits cliff. Right now we have
created this impossible structure, where families are forced
with the decision of either cut back on their hours or don't
take a promotion or receive additional government funding. We
are stopping that, and we need to change the benefits cliff.
The second is expand tax credits for apprenticeships. The
average apprenticeship starting salary is $77,000 a year.
And finally, institute work requirements similar to the
successful bipartisan reform that was passed in 1996 which
lifted millions of people out of poverty.
Today I ask all of you to create a better America, an
America which tells all people, ``We need you,'' an America
that creates limitless opportunities, an America that allows
all people to pursue happiness. And that pursuit begins with
the dignity of work.
Thank you, Chairman LaHood. Thank you, Chairman Smith,
Ranking Member Davis, and all the members of this committee for
the opportunity to testify today.
[The statement of Mr. Paprocki follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Mr. Paprocki. We will next
recognize Mr. Montgomery.
STATEMENT OF NATHAN MONTGOMERY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SALT AND
LIGHT
Mr. MONTGOMERY. Good morning, Chairman Smith, Subcommittee
Chairman LaHood, Ranking Member Davis, and distinguished
members of the subcommittee. I want to thank you for the
opportunity to testify here today on the dignity of work.
I am the co-founder and executive director of Salt and
Light, located in Champaign, Urbana, Illinois. The Salt and
Light opened its doors in January 2004, with a focus on sharing
the good news of the gospel by helping those in need through a
food pantry and clothing closet. Very quickly, we grew into the
largest emergency food program in our area and a leader for
providing access to basic resources.
As Salt and Light's reach and influence expanded, I grew
disillusioned with what we were doing. Most of the situations I
encountered never seemed to change, and the lines only got
longer. I had even begun seeing young adults standing in line
who, as children, stood in line with their parents. The
generational cycle of poverty was playing out right before my
eyes. I began asking myself, were we contributing to it?
It was at this time I was introduced to the book, ``When
Helping Hurts,'' our small staff and board began a journey of
wrestling with what it had to say and what it might mean for us
to embrace its ideologies. As 2013 ended, I presented the board
with a vision for what change might look like.
As we moved forward we acknowledged how much we still
didn't know, and how important it was to be willing to listen
and learn along the way. The primary guiding principle during
this time was we knew we had to stop doing for and start doing
with. We recognized that by doing for individuals what they
could or had the potential to do for themselves, we caused
harm.
The result is a unique and innovative approach for
addressing chronic food insecurity and access to other basic
resources, where individuals can acquire what their family
needs, learn practical job skills, and generate revenue to fund
the programing at the same time. In our model participants earn
store credit at minimum wage by volunteering at either of our
locations for up to a maximum of four hours each week. This
credit can be used to purchase groceries, clothing, or other
household items.
Both of our locations operate a retail storefront offering
second-hand items, and our Urbana location has a grocery
department comparable to an Aldi in the number and types of
items that it carries. Inventory is purchased from a variety of
vendors, just like any other independent grocery store. Both
stores are open to the public and are staffed by regular, full
and part-time employees and volunteers, with participants
working alongside. Accepted forms of payment include cash,
credit and debit cards, participant store credit. Urbana also
accepts SNAP and WIC for qualifying grocery items. One hundred
percent of the net proceeds from the stores support the store
credit participants earn, and the other programs and services
we offer.
The last year of the old model, we had a budget of just
under $370,000 that was 100 percent funded through donations.
Transitioning to a retail storefront with all the programmatic
changes meant an increase in staffing to 14 employees, and an
almost 200 percent increase to the budget. But because of the
revenues generated by the retail operations, we only needed to
raise six percent more in donations than we had previously.
This year our operating budget is 3.6 million, and is about 85
percent self-funded through our retail operations, with the
remaining 15 percent coming from donations. We have 51
employees and 150 participant households who are earning store
credit.
I do not believe simply ensuring work requirements are
fulfilled and loopholes are closed for TANF will provide the
kind of transformation desired. I do believe, however, not
doing so is a disservice to the people we seek to help.
Reasonable and appropriate expectations based on the capacity
of the individual is not punitive or onerous. It is loving and
affirming.
It has been said people rise or fall to the level of the
expectations you have for them. To have no expectations is to
communicate you do not believe they have anything to offer,
anything to contribute, not only in their situation but to the
community they are a part of. I can think of nothing more
diminishing and disempowering to the very spirit, the very
dignity of a person.
Regardless of the changes made to TANF, however, I have
little faith any widespread transformation will occur in the
lives of those struggling in poverty if the states are the
administrators of this or any other welfare program. The one-
size-fits-all approach most state and Federal programs take do
not allow for the kind of flexibility needed to effectively
work with families whose situations and obstacles vary from one
neighbor to the next, let alone from one end of the state to
the other. From the Federal perspective, I can understand where
administration through the states may be more efficient, but
clearly it has been programmatically ineffective.
It is time we stop doing what is easy and start doing what
is right.
Thank you, Chairman Smith, Subcommittee Chairman LaHood,
Ranking Member Davis, and members of the committee for the
opportunity to testify here today.
[The statement of Mr. Montgomery follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Mr. Montgomery. I next
recognize Mr. Butler.
STATEMENT OF BRIAN BUTLER, DIRECTOR OF RESIDENTIAL MINISTRIES,
PATHWAY MINISTRIES
Mr. BUTLER. Thank you, Chairman LaHood, Chairman Smith, and
Ranking Member Mr. Davis, and the rest of the distinguished
committee for having us here today.
I will give you a little history of Pathway Ministries. We
were founded in 1955 after 2 ladies visited right here at the
Pacific Garden Mission. They came back to Peoria and started
serving coffee and donuts and sharing the gospel of Christ with
men who were experiencing homelessness.
The ministry now operates across 7 different facilities,
serving nearly 2,000 individuals each year. We average more
than 160 men and women staying in our facilities every night.
In 2023 we served more than 100,000 meals, provided over 50,000
nights of shelter, and graduated 151 men and women from our
residential programs. Those programs include varying aspects of
education, counseling, life skills, and work readiness
training.
Our Pathway Works provides critical job readiness
opportunities for our students within commercial enterprises,
and our ministries of Empower Life and Barnabas Counseling
serve our community by offering life-affirming assistance,
parenting classes, and clinical counseling.
Our mission is to create pathways out of poverty through
Jesus with our neighbors in need. That mission begins with the
different view of poverty than most. We don't view poverty as
simply a lack of material things or even housing. We believe
poverty is more complex, and is the result of brokenness in the
four fundamental relationships of life: our relationship with
God, with ourselves, with others, and with creation or our
work.
We believe that Jesus came to restore not just our
relationship with God, but to renew all four of these
relationships. And we all need renewal because at some level we
are all poor. Poverty will look different for each of us, and
most of the men and women we serve are experiencing devastating
effects from their brokenness in one or more of these
relationships. They not only seek to seek shelter, but a
pathway to stability. And one of the most important aspects of
that path will be the dignity and sustainability that work
provides.
I have personally experienced the value of this approach,
as my own pathway out of poverty includes a lifestyle of drug
addiction and alcoholism, trying to be a gangster, and
eventually prison. But Jesus restored and renewed my
relationships with Himself, with myself, with others, and with
my ability to work. We believe this pathway begins with
compassionate crisis care, meeting people where they are at
with love and support, and that path includes two programs or
avenues our guests can choose from.
Our Next Step program focuses primarily on vocation. Our
advisors assist guests as they learn to take their next step
towards spiritual freedom, personal responsibility, and self-
sufficiency.
The Second Avenue is our renewal program, which is a
residential recovery-based program. This opportunity is nine
months long, is Jesus-centered, and allows students time to dig
deep and focus on repairing those relationships I just spoke
about.
All of our programing, from crisis care to renewal, has
some form of work included. It might be just getting up in the
morning and making your bed, doing daily chores, or
participating in our job readiness training programs.
Finally, we also offer our students who graduate from our
programs the option of joining our graduate society, where they
can live up to three years in an affordable and accountable
environment.
In regards to our work readiness classes and on-the-job
training, we focus on the skills everyone needs to be
successful. We have partnered with Caterpillar for over 25
years, recycling their wood waste and teaching students those
various skills. We also partner with other work readiness
programs such as Illinois Central College's Workforce
Certification Program to support students in finding work that
they love.
One of our students, TJ, just completed the ICC's truck
driver training program, and now drives for PepsiCo, and makes
a really good wage. Erica also graduated from ICC, and she is
now employed as a second-year carpenter, helping to install one
of the largest solar fields in Illinois. And more importantly,
Erica has been reunited with her five-year-old son, Michael.
Both of these former students are now living on their own,
earning living-wage incomes, and have a renewed sense of
purpose and dignity. And there are many more like TJ and Erica,
because in the past four years we have helped more than 600 men
and women find jobs, and we have assisted more than 400 men and
women in securing permanent housing.
We have learned that when people grasp the dignity of work
and the value of providing for themselves financially, they are
empowered to live lives that bring life to the Peoria
community. These folks are moving from costing our community to
contributing to our community. We are putting people to work
who pay taxes and spend their money in Peoria. We are adding
members to local churches. We are able to experience with our
students that joy when they get their first paycheck. We see
the freedom that comes from people paying off debt when they
thought they never could.
But the most rewarding time comes when we are able to see
the power of God in our students to see themselves correctly,
and to live with the dignity that comes from work. It is not an
easy path, but by working on those four fundamental
relationships with Christ we see Him not only bring eternal
life, but a renewed life now. We watch Him provide that pathway
out of poverty.
Thanks again, Chairmen Smith, LaHood, and Ranking Member
Davis, and the rest of you. God bless you.
[The statement of Mr. Butler follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Mr. Butler. I now recognize Ms.
Schofield.
STATEMENT OF KRISTY SCHOFIELD, DIRECTOR OF HOMELESSNESS AND
HOUSING, DREAM CENTER PEORIA
Ms. SCHOFIELD. Good morning, Chairman Smith, Chairman
LaHood, and Ranking Member Davis, members of the committee. My
name is Kristy Schofield, and I am director of homeless and
housing for the Dream Center Peoria. But 27 years ago I was a
homeless mother, sleeping in my car with my four-year-old son
and my three-year-old daughter. I had run from a marriage
filled with domestic violence and was suffering from a
depression so deep, so dark I was not functional as a person or
a parent.
I know the pain of having your children hungry but having
nothing to give them, having them cry because they are scared
and not being able to make them feel safe. But God had a bigger
purpose with this, and I found the very shelter and housing
programs that I now direct, and I got what I needed to become
self-sustaining. And I was so grateful that I have spent the
last 25 years working with these programs as the director.
The work that I do, the accomplishments have given back the
self-esteem that I lost through the homelessness. At the Dream
Center Peoria, women, children, and families are receiving
life-changing services, and I am so blessed to work for an
organization that gives our guests the second chance of life,
and works so hard to help them become self-sustaining. I am
also so honored to be able to give those the gift that I was
given.
At DCP I see so many broken and homeless. Even though they
become homeless for a myriad of reasons--unemployment,
underemployment, substance abuse, mental health--the common
thread in so many cases is the lack of self-esteem and self
belief in what they can achieve. That self-esteem and belief
can be rebuilt through accomplishment and achievement.
We partner with programs such as workforce development,
Illinois Central College adult education, and more. We offer
trades program on site for those interested in culinary, auto,
small engine repair, screen printing, coding, and a complete
coffee program that allows students to learn the coffee world
from roasting the beans, packaging, marketing, and sales.
These programs give our guests an opportunity to work and,
with that, accomplish and achieve, thereby gaining that self-
esteem and belief in themselves and lowering the chance that
they will live in poverty.
We also partner with the Department of Children and Family
Services, our programs being an opportunity to keep families
together, which is the goal, to bring safety and stability to
the household.
One family in our program is a single mother household,
lost her children to DCFS a little over a year-and-a-half ago.
She had been unsuccessful at managing employment due to
substance abuse issues, and her children were placed in foster
care. She began counseling, treatment, and a workforce
initiative we partner with. She has secured full-time
employment, and has even worked her way into shift management.
These achievements have given her a greater sense of belief in
herself, and she is on the path to return of her children
within the next three months.
It is our belief that work builds self-esteem, provides
families that have struggled to sustain a better chance at
long-term success.
So many years of working in these programs have given me a
sense of accomplishment, pride, and self worth. I know
firsthand the difference work and becoming self-sustaining
makes in someone's lives. You see, 27 years ago, when I was in
my car with my kids, I lowered my pride and I called my ex to
beg for help. And he said to me, ``I told you when you left
that you would have nothing.'' Well, 27 years later, a lot of
hard work, myself, my children, and now my grandchildren, we
have everything.
Chairman Smith, Chairman LaHood, and Ranking Member Davis,
members of the committee, thank you so much for the opportunity
to share my story, my life as well, and all that the Dream
Center Peoria does for our area's most vulnerable.
[The statement of Ms. Schofield follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Ms. Schofield. We will now
recognize Mr. Caldwell.
STATEMENT OF GIANNO CALDWELL, FOUNDER, CALDWELL STRATEGIC
CONSULTING
Mr. CALDWELL. Good morning, Chairman LaHood, Chairman
Smith, Ranking Member Davis, and all the members of the
committee. Thank you, Chairman, for giving me the time to speak
before your committee regarding both my professional experience
and personal experience growing up within the welfare system.
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago. During that time,
for many years, my mother was addicted to crack cocaine, and
our family only endured via government housing and welfare. But
a government check can only do so much.
In my experience, there are two kinds of people who get on
government assistance. The first is those who really don't have
a choice. They see government assistance as a temporary measure
to help them get through a rough patch to get back on their
feet, which is how the system was originally created. But in
the last 50 years it has become a way of life for many
Americans, a permanent solution. And the promise of the so-
called Great Society became a trap for millions of Americans.
In many cases, those who get on government assistance too often
get comfortable and figure out how to manipulate the system as
much as possible so they can continue on the same pathway going
forward. I have seen such thinking take down even the strongest
of people.
For years my grandmother was our family's saving grace. She
would visit us in our apartment in a government housing project
on the South Side, where drugs and gangs were in every hallway,
and she would come in with bags of groceries and shoes that she
bought us from Payless Shoe Store. She tried to take care of us
from afar, but eventually she had seen enough, and my siblings
and I moved in with her.
She was a no-nonsense woman of faith and industry. Nana, as
we called her, worked 10 hours a day as a private duty nurse,
and we were doing okay for a while until our Nana's car was
struck by a habitual drunk driver. And this woman, who worked
hard her entire life, could no longer do her job. Her back
brought agony with every step. She tried to work a reduced
schedule, and was now doing overnight shifts, harder on her
life and well-being, but easier on her body. But then she
couldn't even do that anymore.
The government checks began to arrive again. Not for my mom
anymore, but for my grandmother. When you get into this
dependency mentality, it changes everything. Your focus can
change. Your thoughts too quickly becomes how can I get more,
more housing, more food stamps, more cash from the government.
My grandmother's desire to work the system all too quickly took
on a life of its own. People in my community would come around
and say, ``Listen, these are the kinds of things that I have
been pulling off to get more of this or more of that,'' and my
grandmother would lean into it.
One can completely lose their pride as they try to figure
out how to survive by working the system. Even more tragically,
you begin to pass down these tactics to your family and those
around you.
I got into public service volunteering for my local
alderman at 14, and my first job working part-time for the
Social Security Administration by 16. But there were times in
my teens I was told not to work because it could jeopardize the
government assistance our family was receiving. Even then, the
idea was both astonishing and horrifying to me.
But I don't necessarily blame my grandmother for that.
Poverty and government dependance don't just affect your bank
account. Eventually, it begins to affect your mind. You see
nothing but what is in front of you. And when what is in front
of you is a politician with another handout, watch out. How
many Americans have accepted the narrative that only government
handouts are the answer to all that ails? Too many.
More often than not, the people around me weren't simply
deciding to give up, they were living in a culture of
dependency that they passed down from birth. Both my
grandmother and my mother gave in to that culture, and they
expected me to figure out the best way to live on that same
track, for in neighborhoods like the one I grew up in there is
no perceived incentive to advance. After all, the checks for
housing and food stamps and other assistance arrive every
month.
This is why the system must be reformed. Welfare should
only exist for a certain period of time, unless you are totally
disabled and can't physically work. It should not last for a
generation. The government should instead provide more
incentives for real-world training and education to recipients
about a life beyond government dependance.
I believe reforms to welfare should be approached with the
same bipartisan spirit that Speaker Newt Gingrich and President
Bill Clinton had during the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, a
bipartisan compromise, an overhaul that significantly changed
our nation's welfare system to require work in exchange for
time-limited assistance and supports. Its official name was the
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation
Act.
Personal responsibility. It has been almost 20 years since
we revisited and recommitted to this idea. Many will point to
institutional racism or generations of poverty that have been--
that have made it tougher for many, particularly Blacks in the
inner cities, to succeed. Truthfully, racism has had an impact
on many people. However, citing racism as the sole reason for a
lack of success is merely another trap meant to keep
underprivileged people dependent. People have to want the power
that comes with personal responsibility. But first they need to
even know such capability and power exist.
There is not one government handout that can pour into you
the desire to better your own life. As Ronald Reagan once
warned, we should measure welfare success by how many people
leave welfare, not by how many are added. He understood, as I
do from firsthand experience, that those trapped within
government assistance will eventually devalue their own lives,
so much so that life itself would take on little meaning. Thus,
the shootings and teenagers ready to murder without hesitation
as easily as grabbing a bite to eat.
Morally, throwing more money at the problem is clearly not
the answer. Until we have the courage to articulate and address
the issues of personal responsibility, or better parenting,
schooling, accountability, then whatever welfare we pander will
only make things worse. There is no doubt that our cities are
crying out for help, as my family did many years ago. But we
answer that--by how we answer that cry will determine the level
of dependency or success for future millions of Americans.
Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Caldwell follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Mr. Caldwell. We will now
recognize Ms. Williams as our last witness.
STATEMENT OF SODIQA WILLIAMS, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SAFER
FOUNDATION
Ms. WILLIAMS. Good morning. Thank you, Chairman Smith,
Chairman LaHood, and Ranking Member Davis, and all the members
of the committee. My name is Sodiqa Williams, and I am senior
vice president of reentry services for the Safer Foundation.
Thank you for providing this time and space to give
testimony. It is especially appropriate, given April is Second
Chance Month, the time when Congress and our nation raise
awareness about the successes and challenges faced by formerly
incarcerated individuals in our society. During Second Chance
Month, we promote policies, programs, and opportunities that
support rehabilitation and reintegration for the one in three
Americans who carry the lifetime burden of an arrest and
conviction record.
The Safer Foundation was launched in 1972 by two men of the
cloth, Bernie Curran and Gus Wilhelmy, to provide non-sectarian
mentoring and workforce development services to people
returning to the community from jail and prison. For 52 years
Safer Foundation has provided a full spectrum of reentry,
workforce development, and rehabilitation services for men and
women, youth and adults in Iowa and Illinois. Today we are a
national leader in supporting the efforts of people with arrest
and conviction records to become employed and productive
members of the community.
Since 1972 our work has expanded to include academic and
vocational career education, community corrections, and
education services inside of Cook County Jail, the nation's
largest single-site detention center. More recently, Safer has
been the lead agency in the Innovative Supportive Reentry
Network Collaborative. This is a holistic, comprehensive
reentry navigation model providing stable housing, substance
use and mental health treatment, physical health care services,
job readiness, documentation assistance, and job placement
services.
I want to speak a few moments to the issue of high-quality,
living-wage work. People with arrest and conviction records
need high-quality living-wage employment opportunities to
defeat recidivism. Several years ago, Safer partnered with
JPMorgan Chase on the JPMorgan Second Chance Hiring pilot. That
program connected individuals with arrest and conviction
records to substantive living-wage careers in the financial
services sector, where demand for skilled labor is high.
Research suggests that post-prison, high-quality, higher-
wage employment results in fewer arrests or returns to prison
when compared to low-wage, low-job-quality employment. The
pilot's success was demonstrated by JPMorgan Chase's increase
in the hiring of people with arrest and conviction records, and
contributed to the launch of the Second Chance Business
Coalition, highlighting a broader shift towards inclusive
employment practices within the financial industry.
High-quality, living-wage work is pro-social and improves
self-esteem, and is a positive use of time. Knowing your work
will provide for your way of life makes a difference that gives
you self-esteem and confidence.
High-quality, living-wage work through reentry is critical
to the success of the nation's economy. People with arrest and
conviction records are one of the largest untapped pools of
labor available to U.S. businesses. The current demand for
qualified workers is high and, according to the National
Federation of Independent Businesses, many unemployed
individuals do not meet the qualifications for industries that
are hiring. Fifty-five percent of business owners reported
hiring or trying to hire. Eighty-nine percent of those hiring
or trying to hire reported few or no qualified applicants for
available positions.
What can Congress do? We urge the Congress to fund $135
million for the Reentry Employment Opportunities, RIO, program
at the Department of Labor's Employment and Training
Administration, which provides workforce development and
reentry services to people with criminal legal histories, while
helping employers identify trained and credentialed employees
to hire for their open positions.
We urge the Congress to fund $125 million for the Second
Chance Act program at the Department of Justice, Bureau of
Justice Assistance to provide reentry services and supports
nationwide.
Finally, we urge that Congress create new legislation that
removes the more than 44,000 state and Federal legal collateral
consequences creating lifetime barriers that impede the social
development of individuals and their families from the pursuit
of life, liberty, and happiness.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. When we make
nominal investments in people's efforts to secure private-
sector employment through reentry, the beneficiaries include
all of us: taxpayers, government, families, and communities.
Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Williams follows:]
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Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Ms. Williams. I want to thank
all of our witnesses for your valuable and substantive
testimony here today. We are now going to move to our question-
and-answer period from the Members of Congress. We will begin
with Chairman Smith.
Chairman SMITH. Thank you. I thank each and every one of
you for your testimony.
Mr. Caldwell, your story is one of victory over adversity.
Your experience surely has taught you valuable lessons about
what does help individuals escape poverty, including the value
of work and the positive ripple effects it can have in our
communities.
That being said, could you share some insight into what
policies, in your view, create a direct impediment in lifting
more Americans out of poverty?
Mr. CALDWELL. Yes, there is a number of things that I think
that block that. And I have got to tell you, with the Welfare
Reform Act of 1996, which I thought was incredibly important
because it did allow for individuals--like myself, for example,
I worked for the Social Security Administration. I only could
get that part-time job based on experience and the fact that I
was receiving--when my family was receiving benefits at the
time. That was a gate that opened wide open for many, many
Americans, I think.
Now, the truth of the matter is, for those who want to
reform the system, which is a good thing, those who want to say
if you earn, you know, a particular dollar amount, we are going
to pull the rug from under you and we are going to ensure that
the door closes right behind you, I think that is where the
problem comes for a lot of folks in communities like the South
Side of Chicago. They want to certainly know that there is
certainty in the fact that they can go out and work and earn as
much as they possibly can, and then gradually come off the
system. And I think that, in and of itself, is an opportunity
for those who may be a little fearful of going out there. That
gives them a bit of peace to try to get that dignity of work
and lift out of poverty.
Chairman SMITH. I noticed that when you were giving your
testimony, you had, it looked like, maybe not hit all the
points that you want. Is there anything additional that you
would like to share?
Mr. CALDWELL. No. You know, I think for many of us it has
become the boogeyman that you say someone has to work to earn
benefits or, rather, to be able to have benefits. I think that
is a boogeyman. I think it is wrong.
I think, for a lot of individuals, they want to work. The
people in the communities that I grew up in, they wanted to
work. They didn't know the processes in some ways, and then
some others just would rather stay at home. But when you stay
home, things like depression happen. You have domestic abuse
that could happen. And then there is criminality that can come
right after, nefarious activities to try to earn money and
continue to receive your welfare at the same time. And I think
those are some of the issues that need to be closely looked at.
Chairman SMITH. Thank you.
Mr. Montgomery, I appreciate the unique approach that your
organization takes in providing the assistance through real-
world experiences that empower individuals and demonstrate the
importance of work and independence. Based on your experience
and the transformation you have seen in those you have
assisted, how might state and Federal-level welfare programs do
more to provide that sense of empowerment to folks?
Mr. MONTGOMERY. Yes, thank you. Good question. Thank you,
Chairman Smith.
You know, I think that one thing that I have heard
mentioned is the benefit cliff. Certainly, I think that is a
huge obstacle for a lot of folks in trying to move forward. I
don't know how many different people I have spoken with who
reached that point of decision where, okay, now if I am going
to move forward, my benefits are going to be cut, but the wages
I am going to earn are not going to make up the difference. So
now I can either choose to retreat or I can choose to
persevere.
And the reality of it is, especially when you have grown up
in a generational cycle of poverty, where all you have known
and been conditioned to is the idea of standing in line, the
ability to see down the road is almost impossible. And so I
think that certainly is a huge part of really being able to
implement programs that work with folks, because at the end of
the day the people have to have the autonomy and capacity to
make those decisions to really move forward as a part of that.
That is--the bottom line for us is we acknowledge that all
of us are broken, and we want to walk alongside one another as
we all grow into who it is we have been created to be. But we
have to create space and opportunity for that to happen over
time.
Chairman SMITH. Thank you. Thank you all for being here.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Mr. Smith. We will now yield to
Mr. Davis for his questions.
Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to all of
the witnesses.
I certainly would agree that work is one of the best
programs that could exist to reduce poverty. As a matter of
fact, I am reminded that in ``The Prophet,'' Gibran said that
when you work, it is love made visible; that when you work, it
binds you to your dreams, hopes, and aspirations.
Vice President Williams, let me thank you for spending time
with us. And I know that Safer has refined its programs over
time, and that often times you have had to adjust and readjust.
Can you talk a bit about what supports you have found necessary
to help your clients overcome barriers to long-term work,
productive work that they enjoy and can feel good about?
Ms. WILLIAMS. Thank you, Ranking Member Davis.
We have been--and our mission remains the same when it
comes to providing work for the individuals we serve. But over
time we realized that people want to work, but they have so
many barriers in between them and that job. And they could be
collateral consequences, so statutory, legal barriers that
stand before them--and I have to tell you, I have done a lot of
work in advocacy, and it is like ripping off layers to an onion
in terms of how many barriers exist in front of them.
But also it is the supports they need from--they need
wraparound services. So over time we have had to become a
wraparound holistic service shop, a one-stop-shop because they
need housing, they need transportation in order to get to work.
They have to have education in order to have skills for certain
training so that they can get that living-wage employment.
They--when they are stabilized, when they do receive
housing, when they can go to a job, then they can start opening
up about other issues that impact their life, including if they
have any kind of substance use or mental health needs,
behavioral health needs that we can treat.
And now, now we are at a point where we can start talking
to them about their health, because we had to start to
stabilize them to get to them to a point of thriving to talk
about their health. And so I am very honored that now we have
the opportunity to talk about how can we improve your health so
that you can go to job--to your job, so that you can not only
get it but maintain it?
Mr. DAVIS. I know that you have had great success in the
health arena. Could you talk a little bit about how that came
about and who you worked with?
Ms. WILLIAMS. Well, we worked with you, and many, many
thanks that we could make that happen, because if it had not
been for you to call the forum with health care employers, I
don't know if we would have been able to do the work.
We had to have a formal--we invited health care employers,
including FQHCs and hospital systems and all the chairmen and
all the CEOs, and they came because of your help. And they gave
us an audience to listen. We had Johns Hopkins Hospital come
and talk about their program, hiring people with records, where
they had been hiring people with records for over a decade and
had very low turnover, high retention. And they had close to no
levels of, like, violent incidents that happened when they
hired people with records. The Chicago area employers heard it.
And by the end of that pilot, we had health care employers
knocking at our door: ``We need to hire everybody. We need to
hire, you know, we have frontline, we have nursing, we have all
these positions available.''
But what we found in that forum is that employers had this
perception that they couldn't, per the law, hire people with
records, and they didn't know how. So they had a whole process,
background check policies that were outdated. They hadn't
looked at the recent law. They didn't have them updated, they
didn't know how to hire. And then there was the implicit bias
that was attached as well, not for the executive leadership
that came to the forum, but from their hiring managers who, if
they were informed that a person had a record, they would not
hire that person.
So we had to navigate through all of those barriers, and we
had to change the law, as well. We led occupational licensing
reform. I see Matt from the Illinois Policy Institute there. We
worked with the Illinois Policy Institute, and we created a
bipartisan coalition to pass occupational licensing reform. The
health care work is the reason why we did that, because we knew
if we wanted people to get into health care, we had to knock
down those barriers and ensure that it was a fair process for
them to have a fair chance.
Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Mr. Davis. I will now recognize
myself for a number of questions.
I first want to just point out today we have about seven
million unfilled jobs in the country. And everywhere that I
travel in my district--and I think probably my colleagues feel
the same way--it is finding qualified workers: truck drivers,
nurses, mechanics, machinists. Throughout our society we are
looking for a qualified workforce. And there is, again, no
better topic than we are talking about today in transitioning
people into the workforce to get a number of these good-paying
jobs through apprenticeships, skills training, and workforce
development.
Mr. Paprocki, I want to start with you. We have heard a lot
today about the bipartisan nature of going back to 1996, when
Speaker Newt Gingrich and President Clinton worked together on
bipartisan welfare reform and the benefits. As a result of
those reforms, under TANF, the Temporary Assistance of Needy
Families, caseloads dropped by 80 percent between 1994 and
2023. Over time, these successes, though, have been chipped
away by policies at the state level that cut or eliminate work
requirements under the guise of compassion. While
characterizing these efforts to link welfare benefits, some
people have called that mean or unfair.
I am wondering if you could comment on linking welfare
benefits to the expectation of work as being mean or unfair in
some way. And instead of reducing these requirements, do you
think it would be good to expand them to other Federal means-
tested programs?
Mr. PAPROCKI. You know what I think is mean? How we treat
poor people in this country. We treat them like they are
liabilities and they are not assets, right?
They are raising their hand and they are saying, ``I want
help,'' right? But instead we go give them a little bit of
money on a plastic card, and we tell them to go away. That is
mean. Right?
We tell them that their jobs don't have purpose, that just
because it is low-wage, meaning it is low-value, and we whisper
these little lies inside of it as if dignity is commensurate
with pay. It is not, right? Jobs have value. Humans have value.
Poor people have value, and they are some of the greatest
assets we have in this country.
I think a great example of this is this woman, Claudia
Perez. She is over in the Pilsen neighborhood. And every
morning she gets up and she sells tamales to her neighbors in
her community. But pushing a food cart was illegal in the City
of Chicago. So government officials came by, they took her food
cart, they dumped out all of her food. They stomped it on the
ground, and they said, ``This is garbage.'' Right? To me, that
is mean.
And I think we need to restore this idea of all work has
dignity, and we need to promote this, and we need to shift the
framework that we have on poor people in this country. Instead
of treating them like liabilities, we should have work
requirements. We should say, ``We know what value that you can
provide for this country because we believe in you,'' and we
should expand more of that and allow more people to see that
dignity in their work.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you.
Mr. Butler, thank you for your testimony. Thank you for
being here, and thanks for sharing your story of success and
how you achieved that. You talked about the Pathway
organization on the success you have had, building the capacity
and the skill sets for your residents through work so that they
can earn higher wages. Can you talk about the specific
partnerships that you have in Peoria, specifically with
Illinois Central College and the workforce and certificate
programs that they offer?
Mr. BUTLER. Yes, sure. So we partner with Illinois Central
College, and we have--first I would like to just say that the
folks coming through our door need a moment to breathe and to
become stable. I am sure with Pacific Garden Mission and Dream
Center and everywhere else in our community, folks come in and
they need a moment to breathe, to be stabilized, and to get
ready.
So we use an asset-based approach at Pathway Ministries
when folks come into our doors. What is it that they want to
do? And when they have expressed interest to further their
education, to further job readiness training, to get out of
this cycle of poverty, not to get my SSI check because I can
make way more--which is a mindset that just blows me away, that
people come in for $735 a month and don't want a job making
$2,000 a month, they are afraid to lose that check, it is an
anomaly, it is awful to deal with.
But we partner with ICC. Our folks are able to get funded
through ICC. That is free to them to go to school. They
actually will earn a stipend to go to school and learn that
trade. It has been absolutely awesome throughout our community,
as well.
Our Pathway Works enterprise programs, we also pay folks a
stipend as they stay in the shelter or they are in our renewal
programs to learn those soft skills, what employers are looking
for: being dependable, coming to work with a good attitude, how
to have conflict resolution so that they can further their
lives outside of Pathway Ministries.
Homelessness is typically just a symptom of the real
problem. And when we address homelessness as an individual,
rather than this great big problem, we can have more success at
solving the problem when we do it on an individual level.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you for that.
Ms. Schofield, I am going to ask you the same question. I
also want to just acknowledge you sharing your story and the
struggles you have gone through, and what you have been able to
do to better your life, thank you for sharing that here today.
Can you talk a little bit about the Dream Center and the
similar partnerships you have with workforce agencies and the
community college?
Ms. SCHOFIELD. We would not be able to do what we do with
people without the great partnerships in our community. We are
partnered with Illinois Central College on the same types of
programs as Pathway's. We are partnered with education with
several trade schools, the apprenticeship program through the
electrical. That is what it is, it is the apprenticeship
program. All those programs we partner with because we found
that so few people actually want to go back and get a degree;
they wanted to get something that they could start working
right now. And these programs would offer stipends while they
were training so they could afford to live and be a part of the
program and learn a new trade.
And these people have been very, very successful, and so it
has been a great program for us.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you for that. We will next recognize
Mr. Smucker of Pennsylvania for his questions.
Mr. SMUCKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate each of
you being here to share your stories and share the way you are
meeting the needs in your communities. It is really inspiring.
And I appreciate the opportunity for us, on a bipartisan
basis, to be discussing these. And I think this is most helpful
when we look together at what is working and what is not, and
do not have the partisan bickering that I think is not helpful,
not helpful at all.
I want to start with reconciling a few statements that were
made today. And I have got a great deal of respect for Ranking
Member Davis, but I am going to pick out just one statement he
made. He said he strongly disagrees with those who blame people
for their poverty. He strongly disagrees with those who blame
people for their poverty.
Mr. Montgomery, you said people rise or fall to the level
of expectations you have of them. And Ms. Schofield, you said a
common thread in so many cases is the lack of self-esteem or
belief. And I would like to ask--maybe we will start with Mr.
Montgomery--how do you reconcile the idea--we know individuals
you are serving have things stacked against them. They may not
have the family support that is needed. They may have
generational poverty. They may not know how--Mr. Caldwell, you
said, to get off of government assistance, how to enter the
workforce. They may have been incarcerated. There may be drugs.
There are a lot of things. They may have a poor education
system. There are a lot of things stacked against them.
But yet we have to expect that they somehow rise to the
level of accepting responsibility for their own path forward.
And so I think, you know, saying we strongly disagree with
those who blame people for their poverty may not fully capture
how we need to think about this.
I heard another member of the Ways and Means Committee at
one of our hearings say a statement that shocked me, and that
was that we were holding that hearing that day to dispel the
notion--she was glad we were holding the hearing, because it
dispelled the notion that many members had that work ethic has
anything to do with success or failure. And so--and this was a
teacher who talked about the classroom, where students were
coming with very--you know, things stacked against them. But I
just thought what a sad thing, to think that we would be
telling people that you can't pull yourself up because of the
condition you are in.
So Mr. Montgomery, how do you balance that? How do you get
to the point that Mr. Caldwell was talking about, where you can
change your own life?
Mr. MONTGOMERY. Sure. Yes, sir. Thank you for the question.
Certainly, poverty is complex, right? We know that there
are systems at play. We know that there are choices at play. In
my experience, everyone's situation and position in life boils
down to two things: opportunity and choices.
The opportunity often--systems are involved in that: where
I am born, the color of my skin, the type of education I am
afforded, the opportunities that are in front of me. Right?
Everyone, it is different.
With that we all have choices to make. You know, in my
experience, certainly, the less opportunity you have, the less
margin you have to make bad choices for sure, no doubt. But it
does not remove the personal responsibility of making choices.
And so I think that the idea that it is somehow punitive
and otherwise blaming the individuals, it is a matter of
perspective. I think that was something we encountered when we
first changed our model. There were folks who looked at what we
were doing--and quite frankly, a few referred to it as the
Republican model, which is somewhat fitting today, given the
conversation. But the reality was we were not changing how we
were doing what we were doing in order to punish or blame those
individuals. We were changing our model because we believed in
them. We believed in their capacity. We believed that they had
something more to offer than what they were experiencing in
this poverty situation that they were dealing with on a day-to-
day basis.
And I think it is important how we look at it. Certainly,
you can approach it from a punitive perspective and how you
basically administer or implement those sorts of things. But
for us, that is not how we look at it at all.
Mr. SMUCKER. We need, as a society, their energy, their
work.
Mr. MONTGOMERY. A hundred and ten percent. We talk about
that every day, that we are co-laborers. And what that means is
that I have as much to gain from you as you do from me in this
relationship as we work alongside one another.
Mr. SMUCKER. One of the things that strikes me--and I only
have a few seconds here--is that most of your programs, you are
doing it without any government assistance. And in fact, Mr.
Caldwell said the government programs we have perhaps make it
worse.
Mr. MONTGOMERY. Yes.
Mr. SMUCKER. Which is amazing to hear.
But one thing we can all agree on, I think everyone here
and everyone there, is the value of work. So perhaps we ought
to be thinking about our government programs and investing more
in that career and technical training.
There is a program called WIOA. I have a bill that would
reenergize that program, incentivize employees [sic] to help
individuals get to the workforce. Also, we could potentially be
providing a tax credit to employers who invest in
apprenticeship programs, who invest in career and technical
training, having those kind of connections because, as Chairman
LaHood said, millions of jobs available, yet millions of people
not participating in the workforce. And I think we ought to be
focusing our efforts on how we can better connect those two
facts of life that we have here today.
So this was very, very helpful. Sorry I am a little bit
over time here, Mr. Chairman, but thank you.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Mr. Smucker. I now recognize
Ms. Moore of Wisconsin.
Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman,
Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Ranking Member. I want to thank all of
our witnesses for very profound, insightful testimony.
I really appreciate my colleagues for being so candid about
their beliefs. And so I may as well be candid, as well. I do
think that when we start talking about blaming people for their
poverty, I kind of agree with you, Mr. Montgomery. People have
opportunity and choices, as well. And I thought that was very
profound, the way you put it.
But I would say that there are economic schemes that
maximize profit over people, and that that is what traps people
into low-wage work. So when we start hearing about Ms. Williams
and the type of opportunity she is talking about, and the kind
of opportunities that my colleagues here often talk about, you
often want to talk about forcing people to go to work, saying
that, you know, you can't eat dignity, you can't pay your rent
with dignity. You need money. You need enough money. And I
would think that these low-wage jobs create problems.
I agree with you, Mr. Paprocki, that benefit cliffs really
continue to keep people subjected to these low-wage jobs,
forces them to remain in them if they want to continue to get
Medicaid and other kinds of support. Welfare deliberately
limits the education and training that you can get so that you
can never get out of poverty. And of course, poor health is a
major barrier, and mental health.
And domestic violence, Ms. Schofield, is a huge risk factor
for being poor.
Mr. Paprocki, you didn't mention what your level of
education was at the time your mother was sick, and whether or
not you had any children. Would you share that with the
committee?
Mr. PAPROCKI. I did not have children. I had a bachelor's
degree.
Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. And you have a bachelor's degree.
So you didn't have a lot of barriers. You went to get yourself
together when your mother died. I mean, you were a good White
man in America with no kids. You didn't need childcare. Thank
you for that.
Mr. PAPROCKI. Well, I did----
Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. You had a bachelor's degree. I
don't have much time.
Mr. Montgomery, I am so happy that you are engaged in
finding the root causes of poverty, that you are more data-
driven, and you have really demonstrated it by your amazing
testimony here today.
Mr. Butler, you are a sermon in shoes. I thought you were
going to pass the collection plate there for a minute. You are
a role model. I really love your analysis about building the
kinds of spiritual and human and cultural relationships. And
again, Ms. Schofield, really, your happily ever after wasn't.
But it turned out happily ever after anyway for you. Domestic
violence is a real risk factor for women. You have a baby, and
you think things are going to work out, and when they don't it
is the woman who becomes the welfare queen and the problem, and
not the man. I appreciate your testimony.
Mr. Caldwell, I hope you go and kiss your grandmother 20
times on her feet everywhere for raising you. Any assistance
that she got from anybody, she deserved it, and it looks like
you turned out pretty good.
Ms. Williams, I do have a number of questions for you. You
talk a lot about the quality of jobs that people get as
delivering them from poverty. And not just this notion, you
know, some of these oxymorons that we hear. Let me just--a
couple of them I think I kind of wrote down. Yes, giving people
assistance locks people in poverty.
I mean, you know, that is an oxymoron. You are helping
somebody, and that is what locks them into poverty. I just want
you to comment a little bit on particular one program that the
ranking member didn't mention, the Health Profession and
Opportunity Grant, which the Republicans on this committee
refused to reauthorize, which would have provided--I still got
time, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Chairman LaHOOD. No, no, it wasn't me.
Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Oh, okay. Reclaiming my time, they,
you know, they refused to renew it.
But given the fact that there is 65,000 people turning 65
every single day, wouldn't it have been helpful to develop
stackable kinds of credentials with people in the health care
industry, considering that all of these people here, except for
me, are getting old every day?
I would yield to you for your answer.
Ms. WILLIAMS. I will say that it would not only benefit the
individuals that would participate in the credentialing and
program, it would help the employers that desperately need the
workers.
Poor people don't just want to be stable, they want to
thrive like everyone else. So that means that we have to
provide living-wage employment and credentialing opportunities
to get them trained for the skills that they need. Healthy
people equals healthy communities, and everyone will benefit
from that.
So I just wanted to say when we--you know, I want to thank
the members of this subcommittee and Ranking Member Davis for
supporting programs like RIO and Second Chance Program, because
I would say that they have done an immense service to our
participants to get them out of poverty.
When we look at Medicaid, when we look at insurance, when
we look at food benefits, that is crisis stabilization, that is
getting them on a footing so we can even talk about a job.
Because if we can't get those things, if we can't get them into
housing if there is a need because there is domestic violence,
then we can't talk to them about work. We can't talk to them
about training because they are worried about how they are
going to eat, they are worried about how they are going to
live. So we have to address those things first before we can
even talk about a job, before we can even--and we have to talk
about transportation. That is one thing I haven't heard anybody
talk about. How are they going to get to the job?
We have situations where we are, like, we have a job, but
people are like, it is so expensive on your bus card to get to
the job. So it is like by the time they get done with their
transportation costs, it is not even worth getting to the job
because it is too expensive. So we need employers that are near
the individual.
Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I yield back, and
thank you for your indulgence.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you. I am going to next recognize
Mr. Carey. Before I do that, I do want--Mr. Paprocki, you were
asked a question. If you could, just respond quickly.
Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, was that my time?
Well, that is one reason why I was really happy about your
indulgence because, you know, when your point of view is on the
table, then the clock doesn't even move. And so he responded to
my question adequate to my satisfaction. He answered it.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Ms. Moore.
Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. And the witnesses have had time to
give their testimony. Thank you.
And of course, you are the chairman, so you can have as
much time as you might consume.
Chairman LaHOOD. Yes.
Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Until our planes leave. [Laughter.]
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Ms. Moore, for that.
Mr. Paprocki, if you could, respond quickly.
Mr. PAPROCKI. Well, Ms. Moore, first let me say, as a young
man----
Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Do I get a chance to respond to
whatever he is saying?
Chairman LaHOOD. So we are going to let Mr. Paprocki
respond.
Go ahead.
Mr. PAPROCKI. Who is from Wisconsin. Thank you for your
service. I am grateful for that.
You know, it was a struggle. The truth is I didn't make any
money for eight months. When I came home here to Chicago, my
power had been cut off because I couldn't pay my electricity
bill. I opened the door, I tried to turn on the light, it
didn't flip. And I smelled the rotting food that was coming out
of my refrigerator. So I understand what it is like not to have
food. I went to go try to ride on the bus. I didn't have $2 to
go take a train ride in the City of Chicago. And I sat there
and I begged, right? And I begged for money, and I begged for
help to try to get that step.
My point is not to say that the struggle doesn't exist. I
fully understand it, and I have lived part of that struggle.
But what I have also seen, not only through the data but
through life experience, is that work can pull people up, and
it can. We can tell individuals that what you do matters, and
that is intrinsically what is happening in work. It is a
conversation. It is saying, I need you, right?
Right now you are sitting here in front of me because we
need you, right? And that is what I want to tell more of the
people in our society is that your work matters. It has value,
and we need you. Thank you.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you.
Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Their work matters, but they need
enough money. And it looks like--I just repeat what I said. You
didn't have any barriers. You didn't have children to take care
of. You didn't need daycare. You are a White man in America.
You are articulate beyond comparison to 90 percent of the
population.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Ms. Moore.
Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. And I congratulate you for pulling
yourself out of that situation under those circumstances, and I
yield back.
Chairman LaHOOD. We will now recognize Mr. Carey of Ohio.
Mr. CAREY. I want to thank the chairman. I also want to
thank the Ranking Member Davis, and I want to thank all of you
for being here today.
I had an opportunity to look at all of your bios because
the flight from Washington, D.C. to here took less time than
the cab ride from O'Hare to here. [Laughter.]
Mr. CAREY. So I was able to read most of your testimony.
And Matthew, because I cannot read your name from here, but
I am going to call you Matt, Matthew, you know, both you and
Ms. Williams laid out some very, very--you laid out three
things. And I always ask any person that comes into my office,
``Give me the three things that we can do in Congress.'' So,
Matthew, I am going to start with you. Ms. Williams, I am going
to go to you next.
Expand upon those three things. Keep it within 40 seconds,
if you can, because I only have 4 minutes. Matthew, you are up.
Mr. PAPROCKI. For the first, we have talked about benefits
cliffs. And the problems of incentives is that for a lot of
Americans they have to decide, should I take this promotion?
And we hear this all the time.
I have a woman, Ahey, who works at i.c.stars. She said, ``I
have a lot of friends I know from back when I was poor. They
won't go for bigger jobs.''
Mr. CAREY. That is right.
Mr. PAPROCKI. They purposely go for minimum wage jobs
because Section 8 is on the line, food stamps are on the line,
and insurance are on the line. We need to fix that.
Mr. CAREY. Okay, go to the next.
Mr. PAPROCKI. The second one is about expanding
apprenticeship opportunities.
Mr. CAREY. Absolutely.
Mr. PAPROCKI. Look, there is a great way to lift people up.
This same woman, Ahey, learned coding from one of our friends,
i.c.stars. Her first job was $56,000 a year. She immediately
got promoted to $87,000 in a year. Now she is an entrepreneur
making more money than that. She was homeless with three
children, and she was able to pull herself out.
Mr. CAREY. And to that, you have my colleague from the
other side of the aisle, Nikki Budzinski, who is here in
Illinois, a dear friend of mine, we have co-introduced the LEAP
Act together, which is an apprenticeship program. So if you
haven't taken a look at it, please do. I think it is a good
bipartisan measure that can move forward. Go to your number
three.
Mr. PAPROCKI. The third is work requirements, similar to
what we saw in the year 1996. That was just for TANF.
Mr. CAREY. Yes.
Mr. PAPROCKI. I think there is a huge opportunity for this
committee to expand it beyond that.
I do want to say a quick quote from a Senator.
Mr. CAREY. Make it quick.
Mr. PAPROCKI. It said the culture of welfare must be
replaced----
Mr. CAREY. I need Ms. Williams.
Mr. PAPROCKI [continuing]. By the culture of work. The
culture of dependance must be replaced by a culture of self-
sufficiency.
Mr. CAREY. Okay.
Mr. PAPROCKI. That came from our current President, Joe
Biden.
Mr. CAREY. Okay, good deal. All right, Ms. Williams, give
me those three things real quick. I wrote them down quickly. I
really like the 40--you just go, okay. Give me give me 1, 2, 3,
give it in 40 seconds, please.
Ms. WILLIAMS. All right. Thank you so much.
I would say first continue to support grants or
opportunities like the Health Opportunity Grant.
Mr. CAREY. And tell me why.
Ms. WILLIAMS. Because we serve all industries, right?
Mr. CAREY. Yes.
Ms. WILLIAMS. Or a lot of them. Health care was one of the
top-performing, where the retention numbers were very high
because when people have a real opportunity as a frontline
position, there is an opportunity for growth to be promoted
within the institution in the hospitals. They have massive
problems with frontline----
Mr. CAREY. Got you, got you, yes, absolutely.
Ms. WILLIAMS. So they want to promote people.
Mr. CAREY. Okay, go to number two.
Ms. WILLIAMS. But also RIO, as well as Second Chance Act,
because we are seeing the same kind of results in those
industries, as well.
I would say the second thing is legislation for collateral
consequences. I mentioned before how we work with Illinois
Policy Institute----
Mr. CAREY. Yes.
Ms. WILLIAMS [continuing]. In a bipartisan coalition within
the house and the senate in Illinois, because everyone
understood all these statutory barriers that are, in fact--that
make no sense. It is the industries that were pushing them just
to exclude, you know, have exclusive markets.
Mr. CAREY. Okay.
Ms. WILLIAMS. But the person, you know, doesn't have an
opportunity. There are real barriers just stopping people from
going into living wage opportunities, where they can make a
career, not a job.
Mr. CAREY. I got you.
Ms. WILLIAMS. The----
Mr. CAREY. Give me your last one.
Ms. WILLIAMS. And the third one is care coordination,
support for care coordination services.
Mr. CAREY. Tell me about that real quick.
Ms. WILLIAMS. So----
Mr. CAREY. Give me about 20 seconds, okay?
Ms. WILLIAMS. People want to work, but they have problems
navigating all the various systems. And the systems, none of
them, are speaking to each other. The training, the job, the
workforce development, housing, health care, behavioral health,
none of the systems are talking to each other, none of the
correctional systems in terms of Illinois Department of
Corrections or any other state agencies, no one is kind of
doing this care coordination, where you have one person who is
doing the navigation for a person----
Mr. CAREY. Got you. So it is a coordination issue, and I
appreciate that.
Ms. WILLIAMS. Bringing all the resources together to get
the best return on investment.
Mr. CAREY. And I would encourage my colleagues, since we
are all going to take that two-hour drive to the airport today,
to read through your testimony. It was very insightful.
Mr. Caldwell, I am not sure everything that you are doing
right now, but when you do decide to run for office, and I
don't care what side of the aisle it is, I will be knocking on
doors for you.
Mr. CALDWELL. All right. Thank you so much.
Mr. CAREY. Ms. Schofield, I will tell you, this story about
you living in the car, inspirational. Really happy. Where are
your children today? You have got, like, three seconds. I am
sorry. [Laughter.]
Ms. SCHOFIELD. My son works at the Dream Center. My
daughter works for OSF.
Mr. CAREY. I am sure you are very proud.
Ms. SCHOFIELD. I am.
Mr. CAREY. I want to thank you all. I want to thank the
chairman and the ranking member. And again, thank you all for
coming out today. Thanks so much.
I yield back.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Mr. Carey. I now recognize Mr.
Hern of Oklahoma.
Mr. HERN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the
witnesses for your testimony today and this meeting today.
This hearing is the very reason I am in Congress today. I
spent 35 years creating jobs from entry level to executive
level for across all kinds of businesses, quite frankly, 35
years as a McDonald's franchisee, as a person who went through
career tech, vo tech when I was in high school. But more
importantly, it is the foundation, the journey of life.
A person who grew up in extraordinary poverty--my stepdad
was the first-generation welfare recipient, he figured out how
to work the system. My mother had been married to an Air Force
guy, my dad, and they got divorced after he went to Vietnam for
the third time, and she ended up having three more kids with
the two that she had, my brother and I, with my dad. But he
figured out how to go get checks from the mailbox. And every
program out there you can think of, I have looked at these, I
have seen them.
I can tell you that the only reason I am at where I am at
today is not the welfare, it kept our lights on. We had no
running water, no indoor plumbing until I was in the eighth
grade. And I can tell you right now the thing that is really
nice about America is we try to take care of our people because
when you don't care about your people, you don't care as a
nation.
And, you know, it is sad that this issue in America is
partisan at all. It should be bipartisan. We should all agree
that every person should deserve a job and the opportunity to
work. I am not politicizing this. This is a fact.
But I can also tell you, Ms. Schofield and Ms. Williams, it
is different for a mom with a child than it is a single guy
that can just go. And I saw this because my mother found out
that her husband, my stepdad, had three other kids per three
other wives, nine other kids, and he had figured out how to get
all kinds of checks. So he figured out the system. And his
parents were hardworking individuals. I can still remember my
mother telling me to go take stuff back because food stamps
wouldn't pay for it. I was the oldest of five kids.
So I promised myself when I went to Congress, when I ran
for office, never ran for anything else before, that I was
going to go work to do my best to protect the opportunities
that gave a guy like me that came from absolutely nothing to
succeed in life. And I will never take that back.
Nobody can ever--you can be critical all you want to from a
political standpoint, but you just don't know. And every one of
you out there have a story, and you have been telling your
story, and it is very important.
But as we look, as we go forward here, we have got to
figure out the programs that really work. What Congress is
really good about is stacking programs on programs without ever
understanding whether they work or not. Last year, when I was
on this subcommittee--I am not on the subcommittee any more,
but it is a passion of mine. That is why I am here. Today is my
30th anniversary, and I am here because this is really
important to me. And I can tell you right now that we have
almost 90 programs that we pay out over $1 trillion a year. The
last number I saw was 1.2 trillion a year of federally-
supported programs. And the Government Accountability Office
can't tell us which programs really work or not.
So we are up here talking about adding other programs. What
we should do is our Accountability Office should tell us what
is working and what is not, and we should redeploy those
dollars, not new dollars, but those dollars to programs that
actually work, modernize our assistance today because we should
be helping those who had a bad spot in life. We are blessed to
be the wealthiest nation in the world. We need to act like
that. We need to make sure our people rise out of poverty.
And yes, there is a narrative out there that the least of
us is better than the, you know, the best of the rest of the
world. So what? So what? The reason we do what we do and we go
protect democracy around the world is so people can have the
opportunities that we have in the United States of America.
So I just want to say I want to thank you again for each of
you being here. I am not asking--I mean, you guys have done a
phenomenal job.
But Ms. Schofield, I have got all kinds of questions here
for everybody, but I really wanted to just go to you, because
your story is pretty powerful. And I would like for you to tell
us more about the Dream Center, about what you do for people
that had the hardships you had. Because those are really where
the hardships are, because there is really binary choices. You
let your kids go somewhere else, which is really hard as a mom,
or you figure out how to take care of them.
Ms. SCHOFIELD. We work very hard at the Dream Center at
creating self-sustaining families. So we bring families in, and
we spend a lot of time assessing them. You know, what do they
want to do? Trade, school, you know, finding the best fit for
that family.
A lot of time in homeless services, there is just a quick
fix. Let's throw somebody in an apartment. We want to spend
time with people to find out what will keep their family above
water, what will----
Mr. HERN. Can I get the last two seconds, one second of my
time to say to all of you all, I think that you all would
agree, and you have all said this, and I think everybody on
this panel hopefully would agree, is we have got to solve this
issue, the benefits cliff, once and for all across all of these
programs so that people have the ability to work themselves out
of this support. That is the only way it is going to work.
Because at the end of the day, people are smart. If I can make
more money not working and provide more for my family not
working, why wouldn't I do that?
And shame on us, as the United States Congress, for
allowing that to happen. That is what we need to be working.
I yield back.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Mr. Hern. Thanks for spending
your 30th anniversary with us. Happy anniversary.
With that I recognize Mr. Panetta of California.
Mr. PANETTA. Thank you. You better be thanking his wife,
not just him. [Laughter.]
Mr. PANETTA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Ranking
Member Davis. And, of course, thanks to the Pacific Garden
Mission for hosting us.
And yes, thank you to all of our witnesses who are here
today, and who are willing to share their personal and
professional background and what they hope for the future. So
thanks to all of you.
Again, I am Jimmy Panetta. I represent the 19th
congressional district out in California. It is not Chicago, it
is not Milwaukee, it is not Oklahoma. It is the coast of
California, okay? My district stretches from South San Jose,
Santa Cruz, Monterey, Big Sur, all the way down to northern San
Luis Obispo. Very proud of that district, exactly.
Now, it is diverse. As dynamic as it is, it is still pretty
diverse, especially with these communities of interest. But I
can tell you, the one thing that really brings my district
together is affordability, or the lack of affordability and the
lack of affordable housing, the cost of owning, the cost of
renting, the cost of living. And yes, that does lead to
homelessness. Clearly, we are seeing that from Silicon Valley
to the wine country of northern San Luis Obispo. That is the
number-one issue.
Now, some of the things that we are doing to address that,
especially in South San Jose, is sort of the--one project, a
couple of them that are around South San Jose because, like I
said, like you can imagine, South San Jose does have the
resources to create these types of things that the Federal
Government is helping them out with, as well, are these
emergency interim housing sites, places where individuals can
get their own room, their own bathroom, which can lead to
privacy, safety, and ultimately, dignity. And ultimately,
stability upon which they can have the training necessary to
not just get off the street, but to get back on their feet.
And so I would like to ask Ms. Williams if, in her line of
work, seeing this type of emergency housing, the sort of
interim housing prior to permanent housing, prior to the
training, what are the benefits of that?
Ms. WILLIAMS. Thank you so much.
We have seen firsthand the importance of having emergency
housing through the work we are doing with the support of
Reentry Network Collaborative, we were actually asked by the
state to step in during COVID-19 because people were getting
released early, and they had nowhere to live, among all the
other needs that they had.
And so in those situations we--I mean, I remember times
when I was on the phone, and I had to stop at a gas station to
try to use my credit card to get people into housing. We had a
woman right during Christmas, when all the homeless shelters
had shut down, she came in our office. She had a four-day-old
child and her four-year-old, and she had nowhere to go. We
couldn't get her into a shelter anywhere, and no one could live
with that we--that she would be in her car. She was running
from a domestic violence situation. She had actually went to a
baby shower and started going into labor.
And so situations like that show you have to have emergency
housing as part of your housing solution so that you can
provide the temporary supports that will lead to permanent
housing.
Mr. PANETTA. And kind of moving forward, how can that
emergency interim housing lead to what we all want for people
in that position, permanent housing?
Ms. WILLIAMS. Well, having that immediate solution will
help stabilize that individual, right, so that they can make
sure that they have what they need. Because we don't just
provide that temporary housing, we also give them any kind of
furnishings they need, we give them toiletries. In that case,
for this young woman, we made sure she had formula for her
child and any other services that she needed, but it got her in
a mental state of mind where she was ready to hear us, right?
Because we--the way we work in terms of empowerment is we
work down--we sit down with them, we ask them what their
interests are and what their goals are. And together we work
out a service plan, assessing their needs, and help come up
with goals for them to achieve. And so housing, you have
subsidized funding through the government, we are able to get
them into housing, six months--and then it could be longer--
which will help them. Our goal is to move them to private pay,
but we have to subsidize it up front sometimes to help them get
stable so that they can get the job so that they can then
transition.
Mr. PANETTA. Okay, great. Look, I think in my time of
leaning into--because I do think this is an all-hands-on-deck
issue, especially when it comes to homelessness or the
unhoused, whatever you want to call it, we all know the issue.
And I think what we can all acknowledge is that, yes, we
understand work ethic. I am an Italian American. I came from a
family of immigrants. I appreciate people who work hard and
what that provides them. But I just don't think there is a
silver bullet to solving this issue.
And I think one of the issues that we failed to address in
this hearing is the mental health aspect, because I think all
of your programs are very beneficial, but the problem is that,
when you have people who have mental health issues,
unfortunately it takes more than just hard work, it takes more
than housing. And I think that is something that we really need
to lean into a little bit more at this level. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Mr. Panetta.
Mr. HERN. Mr. Chairman, if I may.
Chairman LaHOOD. Yes.
Mr. HERN. For the record, just to prove that I am not a
really bad guy, I just had 30 pink roses delivered to my wife.
[Laughter.]
[Applause.]
Chairman LaHOOD. Hey, good job, Mr. Hern, good job.
We will next recognize Mr. Moore of Utah.
Mr. MOORE of Utah. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Ranking
Member, for hosting us in your great state, and for doing this
here at this really important place.
Every one of your testimonies--to all the witnesses, every
one of your statements just brings an amount of personal
experience that is amazing. It is unprecedented. It is so
important and valuable. But your experience in helping solve
some of these problems and outlining solutions is even more
important than what you have personally gone through.
But also, I would like to just take a quick second to just
say, to express my appreciation to those of you that are in the
audience for living a Christ-like example, working day in and
day out. I know many of you may work at this facility and in
other areas. Thank you for your work to provide for those that
are the most vulnerable, the poor and needy.
I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints, and the work that they do is one of the proudest
aspects that I have of my faith and its ability to find ways to
help people become self-sustaining. It is their number one
focus on all matters of helping the poor and needy. And it is
truly an inspiration to be involved. It is part of the reason
that I wanted to be on this subcommittee. So thank you for all
of your efforts and the way that you serve your fellow
neighbors.
Mr. Paprocki, continuing on with one of--thank you so much
for your focus on the benefits cliff. I mean, it is such a math
problem that we should be able to, in Congress, address this.
Folks involved in this back in my state in Utah, we have
graphed this out, and what it looks like is atrocious on how we
disincentivize work so much in our benefits cliffs. And it
would be the one thing, if I had my magic wand--we should be
able to solve this. And it is the one thing that in this realm
we need to do a better job of addressing. So thank you for your
focus on it.
I just introduced a bill. It is called the Returning
Temporary to TANF Act. And what it is going to do is require
states to just put 25 percent of the resources that they
receive towards workforce-related issues. Can you speak to the
value of keeping--you know, you do it in your second point
about apprenticeship programs. Can you speak to the value of
requiring resources towards workforce-related items to helping
people get out of the poverty situation that they are in?
Mr. PAPROCKI. Well, thank you, Mr. Moore, for your
question.
You know, certainly, the goal is exactly what members of
this committee have said, is how do we move people from poverty
to prosperity? And there is a lot of steps towards that, right?
And one of the difficulties we have, just front-loaded, is
all of the different webs of welfare, right? Federal programs
have Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credit, SNAP, child support,
home energy assistance, supplemental security, and the list
goes on and on and on. Then you throw in state-based
assistance, and it continues to go on even further.
And, you know, when you start looking at what does success
look like, you know, if you go through a theory of change, of,
you know, inputs, activities, outputs, success, well, how do
you measure that on 40 different scales, right? They all
conflict with each other, and that is why you have all of these
cliffs.
So I think actually, first and foremost, what your home
state of Utah has done has been fantastic. They have a one-door
policy where, when you go in, they not only provide you with
food and housing and those other things that are essential, but
the goal is to try to get people to work. I think we got to
expand that outside of the State of Utah into the other 49
states.
But to your question, there is a huge gap. There is a huge
gap with training. Right now, here in the State of Illinois, we
have 390,000 jobs available. We have 300,000 unemployed people,
meaning that we have more than one job for every person right
now. But there is a skills gap. And I think what you are
talking about, making sure that some of the TANF dollars are
dedicated towards training, will go a huge way to make sure
that we can take every one of those unemployed people and put
them in high-quality, high-paying jobs.
Mr. MOORE of Utah. Thank you. I appreciate the comments on
Utah. It is good to hear it from someone outside the state,
because my colleagues are sick and tired of me saying it.
Mr. Butler, last, as I wrap up here, oftentimes we hear
about, well, we just need to put more money in this. We just
need to do--you know, we would provide more funding for these
different types of programs. We can't just write more checks to
this. We have more fundamental issues. Can you speak to the
best way to serve people, other than just money?
Mr. BUTLER. Yes, I think it comes back to getting people to
the place where they can work. Folks coming into the homeless
shelters in the place that I work, it is getting those folks
stable and then using that asset-based approach on how they
want to move forward, and then coming alongside of them and
helping them to achieve that.
Also, Mr. Panetta brought up the fact that the mental
health crisis in the United States of America is atrocious for
the United States of America. When we have folks coming in that
cannot care for themselves mentally, physically, emotionally,
spiritually, and they have to wait seven months or a year for
an appointment to see a psychiatrist, it is absolutely--it is
beyond belief that in the United States of America we have to
put up with that.
So addressing those issues, funding health clinics to
provide more providers and clinicians to care for our mentally
unstable folks, I think, it is vital to getting people--
Mr. MOORE of Utah. You took the closing piece I would like
to say about my colleague from California. I appreciate that.
Ms. Williams, also, the focus on recidivism, it is key to
making sure people are built up to be able to take this on.
Thank you, Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Mr. Moore.
Mrs. Steel of California.
Mrs. STEEL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for all
witnesses for sharing your experiences with us in Chicago. I am
just so grateful.
I am a first-generation Korean American. I was born in
Korea and raised in Japan. So English is my third language, and
I am so grateful to this country. And you know what? We can fix
this broken system, and we can reform it, and we can just fix
this.
I used to serve in Los Angeles for family and children's
services, and we had about 75,000 children inside of the
system. And after they hit 18, half of them become homeless
people and half of them, when they are getting out of the
system, half actually becoming--joining gang members. So it was
very dangerous. And I serve in, actually, Los Angeles, 3
cities, and I serve about 12 cities in Orange County. We have
11 million people in Los Angeles. We have over 85,000 homeless
people living there. In Orange County 3.2 million people, and
we have about 6,800 homeless people. So we really have to fix
this, but I need the transition.
So my question is, Mr. Montgomery, that you have almost a
lifetime of experience helping individuals go from homelessness
and government dependance to a job and self-sufficiency. Based
on your work and experiences, can you describe how getting a
job can transform a person's life, having transitioned from the
government assistance?
And what is it that makes the paycheck so much more
rewarding than government assistance?
Mr. MONTGOMERY. Thank you very much, Congresswoman, for
your question.
You know, the one positive experience we had with TANF over
the years--we had a lot of folks come and go, many of whom, you
know, really didn't last very long. But we had a young man come
in with his girlfriend. Each of them had a child from a prior
relationship, and he actually had an ankle bracelet from his
latest engagement with the judicial system. And they were TANF
earners. And the relationship was volatile. There were issues,
and not the least of which was his alcoholism. And eventually
it imploded.
But he remained, and he kept working. He was a fantastic
volunteer. He had the best attitude. He was the friendliest. He
did whatever you asked him to do. But we really started pouring
into him, more than anything, praise, just affirming who he
was, and what we saw, and the capacity that was there until one
day he came in and he somewhat sheepishly said he had gotten a
job, and it was at a fast food restaurant. And so he felt like
it wasn't that great of a job. But we praised him for that,
right? We praised and celebrated that he had done this for
himself.
He had grown up in an unhealthy environment in which his
inherent value and worth hadn't been affirmed and had never
been celebrated. Within a year he was running that location. He
was a general manager, and he and his son then had their own
home, and he was a more present father. It doesn't mean life
stopped having its challenges, but who he saw himself as
changed.
But what I find, more often than not, for that to happen
someone has to have someone else believe in them before they
can believe in themselves. And unfortunately, the systems that
we have created do the very opposite of that. Thank you.
Mrs. STEEL. Thank you. In California fast food workers are
actually getting paid $20 minimum wage at this point.
Mr. Butler, Pathway Ministries helps thousands of
individuals they serve to obtain and maintain employment before
they help place them in alternative and independent living
arrangement. Pathway Ministries accepts no Federal dollars,
correct?
Mr. BUTLER. Correct.
Mrs. STEEL. And are there Federal restrictions that make it
impossible for you to carry out your work-focused mission?
Mr. BUTLER. Well, first, we are thankful that the
government supplies money and funding for programs and
legislations to address poverty issues that we have in our
country and the oppression, including homelessness. But we are
a faith-based organization, and we are a faith-forward
organization. And we desire to share the love of God and God's
view of life with everyone we serve without restriction.
While we don't ever force or coerce our belief system on
anyone, we are meeting people where they are at, but we do want
to share our beliefs and our perspective that Jesus is the
answer to all of our brokenness. And because of our holistic
approach, we don't want to create a distinction between the
secular and the sacred, because we believe part of our
spiritual life is work, and part of our spiritual life is the
dignity that comes from work.
And so focusing on those physical, spiritual, emotional,
and mental aspects, while we could likely qualify for
government funding for work readiness programs, we just don't
accept it because we want to keep the spirituality part in
place with our work lives.
Mrs. STEEL. Thank you so much.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman LaHOOD. Thank you, Mrs. Steel.
That concludes our questions this morning. I want to just
relay what many of my colleagues have said, and want to thank
you for your testimony here today. You have been genuine, and
sincere, and insightful, and substantive, and have been very
helpful to us as we take the information that we receive from
you today through the questions and answers through our site
visit yesterday with Pastor Brooks at Project HOOD, and being
here today with Pastor Phil. We are grateful.
And I think it also--you know, we live in the greatest
country in the world, and there are people that don't always
see the benefits of living in the greatest country in the
world. And so it is figuring out, from a public policy
standpoint, how do we bring more people into that?
And hearing particularly from you, Mr. Butler, and Ms.
Schofield, on your journey and your path, and you, Mr.
Paprocki, on how you have been able to live that American
dream, and live in the greatest country in the world, and so
that is what we need to think about.
And we have heard some really wonderful things today about
ending the benefits cliff, and talking about tax credits for
apprenticeships, and looking at how we institute work
requirements appropriately, looking at the mental health and
behavioral health crisis, housing crisis, reentry from our
prison population. Now we have a responsibility to go back and
try to work in a bipartisan way to fix many of the problems we
have talked about here today, and bring more people into living
the American dream, which we can do in this country.
So again, Pastor Phil, thank you. Thank you to all of you.
And I would just remind--I know the audience provided
feedback. If you have not provided the feedback on the
clipboards we handed out, please give your suggestions so that
we can have that feedback and take that back to Washington,
D.C.
And lastly, members will be advised that we have two weeks
to submit written questions to be answered later in writing.
Those questions and your answers will be made part of the
formal hearing record.
With that, our committee stands adjourned.
Mr. DAVIS. Chairman?
Chairman LaHOOD. Yes, Mr. Davis.
Mr. DAVIS. Before you hit the gavel, let me thank you and
Chairman Smith for bringing this hearing to Chicago. I know
that you could have gone to Peoria. [Laughter.]
Chairman LaHOOD. I brought Peoria here. [Laughter.]
Mr. DAVIS. The waterway is not quite as large.
But I also want to thank all of the witnesses, all of the
people from the community who have come and been a part of
this. It is indeed a historic setting.
It is also a warmly regarded hearing, where we have been
able to share thoughts, ideas, and information with the
understanding that we will continue to move to bring to the
forefront those solutions, rather than just the questions and
the answers.
So again, thank you and Chairman Smith for being in
Chicago, if not the greatest country but the greatest city in
the United States of America. [Applause.]
Mr. DAVIS. Thank you.
Chairman LaHOOD. Well said, Mr. Davis. And again, I want to
thank all of you for your tremendous testimony here today.
And our hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:01 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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