It seems so wrong to me that people here in America are allowed to live in such squalor. I have witnessed situations similar to these in my work as a nanny for foster children. Cases in which the living conditions were so vile and parents were so reckless and dangerous that children were better off in the counterproductive foster care system. The hard questions are, "What caused this situation for this family?" and "Why is this family stuck in this cycle?"
The responsibilities of our government to their people is to help provide the education and the tools for success. Too little of the federal budget is spent on education. And President Bush has suggested changes to the federal budget in 2008 to decrease the amount of funding for education by 12%! Check out this chart that I found at http://www.citizenjoe.org/node/418:
Function | 2007 | 2008 | Pct. change |
| Veterans benefits and services | $72.4 | $83.4 | 15.1% |
| General government | 18.8 | 20.7 | 10.5% |
| Net interest | 239.2 | 261.3 | 9.3% |
| General science, space and technology | 24.9 | 26.6 | 7.1% |
| Transportation | 74.6 | 79.3 | 6.3% |
| National defense | 571.9 | 606.5 | 6.1% |
| Medicare | 372.3 | 391.6 | 5.2% |
| Health | 268.5 | 280.6 | 4.5% |
| Social Security | 586.5 | 612.5 | 4.4% |
| Income security | 365.4 | 380.8 | 4.2% |
| Administration of justice | 45.3 | 47.0 | 3.7% |
| International affairs | 35.1 | 36.1 | 3.1% |
| Agriculture | 20.1 | 19.9 | -1.2% |
| Natural resources and environment | 35.2 | 32.9 | -6.5% |
| Education, training, employment, and social services | 94.0 | 82.7 | -12.0% |
| Energy | 1.8 | 1.4 | -23.5% |
| Community and regional development | 32.6 | 24.7 | -24.4% |
| Commerce and housing credit | .210 | -2.0 | -1,071.4% |
Since the government is supposed to be "of the people, by the people, and for the people," I feel it is my current responsibility to write to Senators Clinton and Schumer to request that the budget for Education and Community not be decreased and if they must change, that it instead be increased. After all, we want what we are paying so much money to defend to be worth defending.
The even harder questions are, "What on Earth do we do to help these families out of the situation they're in currently?" Possible solutions to this systemic poverty and its lasting and cyclic affect on families are difficult to formulate. If they weren't difficult, then someone would have already devised a plan and fixed this mess. Through compassionate communication, i.e. really listening to understand, we might be able to better understand what we can do to help people living in poverty overcome their circumstances. Through education we should be able to help break the cycle from continuing throughout multiple generations.
