Anti-poverty programs in the pandemic worked! Let’s learn fr om success.

The pandemic had a lot to teach us when it comes to fighting poverty. We had to innovate and activate our nation’s resources to ensure that millions of people could afford a place to live, food to eat, and find work to be self-sufficient.

Expanding the Child Tax Credit and increasing programs to support nutrition and housing helped families and individuals survive as the economy went into shutdown, and as social isolation made many kinds of work much harder to find.

Pandemic-era public assistance programs expired two years ago, at the end of 2021, and now again we see poverty increasing again in vulnerable populations.

Sign the petition and tell Congress to protect all families. Renew pandemic-era public assistance programs now!

According to a new report, following the expiration of pandemic-era supports, including the expanded Child Tax Credit and housing and nutrition assistance, there has been a huge increase in poverty rates, overall, for children, and for people of color. In just one year between 2021 and 2022:

• Overall poverty increased from 7.8% to 12.4%
• Black poverty rates jumped from 11.2% to 17.2%
• Hispanic poverty rates climbed from 11.2% to 19.3%, and
• Child poverty rates more than doubled, from 5.2% to 12.4%

Allowing these programs to expire is a policy choice, and it can be reversed! These crucial supports should not be dropped as families struggle to survive. When we can decrease the poverty rate, families experience greater stability, and are able to invest in building skills, going to school, or getting further training for work, all of which contribute to big improvements in their quality of life and strengthen the economy.

Expanding the Child Tax Credit program enabled us to cut child poverty in half. This was the largest drop ever recorded! Let’s continue our successes, rather than giving up.

Sign the petition today! Congress must renew these anti-poverty programs and help families thrive again!

Thank you for helping to reduce poverty and racial inequity.

– The HollywoodDemocrats.com team