Paul Ryan Won’t Let Poor People Testify At Hearing About Poverty

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/04/30/3432697/paul-ryan-poverty-hearing-poor-people/

BY BRYCE COVERT APRIL 30, 2014

On Wednesday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will hold a hearing on poverty called “A Progress Report on the War on Poverty: Lessons from the Frontlines.” While it will feature three experts, none of them are actually low-income Americans who struggle to get by.
But that’s not for lack of trying from some poor people themselves. Witnesses to Hunger, an advocacy project that shares the stories of low-income Americans, has tried and failed twice to have some of their members who live in poverty speak at Ryan’s poverty hearings. “When Ryan had his first hearing last July,” Director Mariana Chilton told ThinkProgress, “we wrote to his office to see if we could testify, but they weren’t interested.” While Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) tried to get one of their low-income members to speak, it was too late. They were asked to submit written testimony instead.

Chilton’s organization stayed in touch with his office and immediately called his press team when they saw the announcement for Wednesday’s hearing. “They said, ‘It’s too late, we’ve already chosen our people.’” There was one slot left to be filled by Democrats, but that went to Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund. “I think Marian Wright Edelman is a great choice,” Chilton said. But “they had a stronger interest in having a more well-known person to testify.” That means that once again, the hearing won’t feature anyone who really is on the frontlines of poverty. “None of the people who are testifying today are currently living in poverty and it’s unclear if they really know what’s going on from the perspective of people living in it,” she said.

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Those who wanted to testify aren’t happy about being excluded. “I think that’s just another poor excuse,” Gaines-Turner, married mother of three struggling to make ends meet, said. “You say you want to speak to someone who’s experienced frontline poverty, but you have no one there who’s actually experienced poverty first hand.” She said that she’s grateful for the opportunity to submit written testimony, but she said, “On the panel you have experts on hunger and poverty, but I’m the true expert. I’m the one who lives these daily struggles every day, who runs out of money at the end of the month every month, has faced homelessness, hunger, poverty.” And she added, “Not to knock the people that are there, but if you want to really understand, you need to speak to the people themselves firsthand. We’re real people, not just numbers.”

Gaines-Turner has certainly experienced these things. “I know what it’s like to use your stove to heat your home,” she said. She knows how dangerous that can be. But she also has young children — six-year-old twins and a son who is nine — who all have medical disabilities and need to be kept warm in winter.

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