[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 56 (Tuesday, May 3, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E843-E844]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    VERMONT'S COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAMS: FORTY YEARS OF SUSTAINING 
                               COMMUNITY

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. BERNARD SANDERS

                               of vermont

                    in the house of representatives

                          Tuesday, May 3, 2005

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, in Vermont we are celebrating the fortieth 
anniversary of the Community Action Programs which have transformed the 
lives of thousands and thousands of people in our state. These CAP 
agencies provide citizens with assistance: the young and the elderly, 
rural residents and urban residents, homeowners and renters and the 
homeless, those with jobs and those without. These are not programs 
created to give handouts; instead, they work to develop comprehensive 
approaches to addressing the root causes of poverty, and to alleviating 
the consequences of poverty. Nor are they spinoffs of some far-distant 
Washington bureaucracy: the CAP agencies are locally staffed and their 
programs result from collaborative efforts with the lower-income people 
they are meant to serve.
  Vermont's Community Action Programs are community-based networks for 
social and economic development. There are five of them: Southeast 
Vermont Community Action (SEVCA), Central Vermont Community Action 
Council (CVCAC), Community Action in Southwestern Vermont (BROC), 
Northeast Kingdom Community Action Agency (NEKCA) and Champlain Valley 
Office of Economic Opportunity (CVOEO). Nearly 3,000 individuals (in 
1165 families) were provided services through the SEVCA's Community 
Services department last year. NEKCA serves more than 6,000 moderate-
to-low income families. Over 8,000 individuals obtained early childhood 
education, crisis fuel assistance, meals, and household insulation 
through CVCAC. CVOEO provides a wide variety of vital services to 
approximately 8,000 households (just over 19,000 individuals) every 
year.
  But numbers alone, as impressive as they are, do not tell the whole 
story. From child care to fuel assistance in cold weather, the CAP 
agencies are always there when people have needs. CAP agencies not only 
help hard-pressed families find food, they support family farms through 
the Farm to Family coupon redemption program. They help retrain workers 
who have lost their jobs, and they provide a sound basis for a lifetime 
of learning through Head Start. They run micro-business development 
programs--and help citizens with their tax returns.
  In SEVCA's building there is a wonderful version of the Washington 
mural of men waiting in a breadline in the 1930's, a reminder that 
economic need is--unhappily--always among us. That mural reminds us too 
of Franklin Roosevelt's eloquent words, which are painted on the mural 
itself: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the 
abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for 
those who have little.'' Those words ring, today, with truth.
  Too often the glowing colors of our television and the bold headlines 
of our newspapers ignore the actuality of life in America: that in the 
midst of the richest Nation in the history of the world, many go 
hungry, or are without health insurance, or lack adequate

[[Page E844]]

education, or search fruitlessly for decent-paying jobs. The CAP 
agencies of Vermont never forget the realities in which we all live. 
They know that there are people who can benefit from the help of the 
government programs established by Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, 
programs begun in times when it was the purpose of government to serve 
all Americans--and not just wealthy Americans. The CAP agencies, and 
those who work for them, do much to help tens of thousands of 
Vermonters live the life that should be theirs, a life free from 
hunger, homelessness, hopelessness and want.
  So after 40 years of hard and extraordinarily important work by those 
who work for and sustain the CAP agencies, let me say on behalf of all 
the citizens of my state: Congratulations on what you have done! All of 
us in Vermont are richer for the community you have built and 
sustained.

                          ____________________