but i was born in a family. and i was having a father who was a teacher and human rights activist. so when i was a child, he used to bring us storybooks which taugt about general equality. he brought newsletters from different organizations. my father wanted all of us sisters to get education. so i had the support of the father and all of these things need to speak up gechbs the issues and to establish awareness at a very young age. >> when you did this at the beginning, were you speaking with other girls your age or were you immediately interacting?

>> well, we started in 2002. initially, the girls, we were engaged in child rights movement and we were meeting different women leaders. we were six or seven young girls and all of the age range was from 14-16. so when we saw no women or girl leadership in a civil society, as well, some of the organizations that claim to work for women's rights, but there is no representation. mostly, the women and girls were either the receptionist or the material level but not at the decision-making. so we started work with the young girls. first, we volunteered because all of us had no experience

working in an organization working for women's rights. so we volunteered with other women who were already working on women's rights. we volunteered with them for a few years and then we started our own work and started to work empowering young women in the communities. >> your organization is expanding from pakistan to afghanistan. a different set of issues, a different set of culture, a different set of challenges. what is this going to be like moving into afghan tan? >> i would like to share, like, the situation in afghanistan has a very direct effect on the situation on the area where i live. i live very close to the bottom of afghanistan. if there is any incident or issue in that side of pakistan, it has an effect on afghanistan. both the cultures are the same.

they share the same cultures, the same values, the same traditions. if you want to have sustainable peace and you want to bring the change, we have to engage people at both sides. recently, i spent one month in the same hotel which was once the torture house and the he headquarter of taliban. i stayed with almost 300 young people. he joined our peace group and it was the first time for him to obtain any such program. he saw for the first time in his life that women and girls can actually lead in organization and can lead the world program. he was so much inspired that he

went back to the community and said, you know, the people who are studying in the religious school, they do not have enough space in the community because they're not taught about religion, but they're taught about science and math. in the first year, he wrote agt students about the use of come pulter, about e-mails about internet. and in the second year, then he e enrolled 20 young people in that resource center. so we are actually expanding this network to afghanistan in which afghanistan is working with more than 200 young people we will be working with them on conflict resolution skills. and this will define people with the risk of extremism and the am terntive of islam and trying to

dissuade them from balance. they will also work with them engaging in dialogues through conflict resolution skills like mediation. the program already started and will end this month in march. >> are there boys with whom you deal in this organization? >> yeah. so actually, there are certain programs where we're engaging voices. it's really important. in this program, we always have a gender-balanced group. we have another program where we engage young boys in the organized debate competitions in boys' colleges on the role of young boys. so this debate competitions and the first time for the boys to

have extracurricular activity and speaking for women's rights. it was really, you know, changing a situation for them, as well, because most of them never knew that there were women's rights and girl's rights. some of them were, like, okay, now, as we now now that we are equal, we will make sure that we give the right to our own sisters. even after that, he then, again, enrolled her in school. so we do engage boys in our different programs. >> i understand that you have had some experience monitoring elections in pakistan. would you talk a little bit about that? >> yeah, so, actually, in may, 2013, there were elections in pakistan and it was for the first time in pakistan that one democratic government was handing over to another democratic government.

so it was, in itself, a huge victory. we observed the only female polling stations in the area. it was like they were women, saw a huge crowd of women and all politicians and they were there instead of the humiliation and heat and mismanagement, they were there to bring the change and bring an effort in -- in shaping the democratic structure and history of the country. actually, the female turnout was very low. one of the districts among the 21 polling stations, the turnout was the water turnout was as low as 24%. and, in another district among the 20 polling stations, it was as low as 20%.

even one of the polling stations was closed. it was shut down because of the argument of the elders from the community. in the third station, there were 25 polling stations. also, there was another female polling station which was completely shut down because of the aggressiveness of the community and because they thought that self expression of women is -- like they were not allowing the women to express themselves for the award. but there was a positive side, as well. many of the observers, for the first time, as well, to come forward and to observe all of the political -- the polling process and to be involved in the counting and all the process. so it was very empowering for them as well.

they were to contribute in that process. although there were some observers whose families are not allowing them to go because there were many threats of -- by the terrorists on the female polling stations in these communities. i remember when all the team was leaving in the morning and they said good-bye to each other. they were not sure whether they will be meeting each other or not. but these young women, they were still very much determined. and they said to dear families, no, it's time to bring change in pakistan. we have to play our role. so it was positive side, as well and the other side. also, there was a few problems, you know. they were taken for a specific party. there were certain challenges, as well. there were numerous challenges, but, still, the women were here

to bring the change in the community. >> i wonder if you'd be willing to talk about the efficacy rights for women? >> it's a very, very complicated issue. it's assumed that girl s under 18 years old, they should not have access to information on sexual and reproductive health and rights. we thought it's very important to work on this issue. every year in pakistan, 890,000 abortions are happening. we are working, actually, to the

sexual reproduction rights. hiv aids program are engaging the young girls in schools. these trained, young girls replicate this information through organizing road plays, debate competitions into the communities and neighborhoods. it was a female friend and we are giving information about a bill and registered in pakistan and used to induce safe medical abortion until nine weeks of pregnancy. a girl can use it without the supervision of a doctor. we give this information according to the guidelines of the world organization.

all of this information has been given into the local languages. they have borders with afghanistan and we also expanded this very recently. we're giving information about this. about this -- about safe medical abortion. it's actually not necessary for us -- we're not advocating for or against abortion, whether it should be given or not. for us, the most important thing is to safe the lives of the women who are dying each year because of these issues. >> you've recently done some research on the role of young women in democracies. could you share some of the issues that you are researching? maybe some conclusions that you've arrived at? >> yeah, so i actually conducted this research in washington, d.c. over the support for democracy.

and i think that engagement is very important because women constitute more than half the population of the world. if women are excluded in these processes, then it's not a true democracy. it's not awe thent kated. it's really important to engage women at the decision-making level and the political parties and not just to the numbers of women in these parties, but to actually engage them at the decision-making levels. there has been, like, the engagement of women in politics has been very insignificant all around the world. until now, there are only 32 countries who have representation of work in politics. that really needs to be changed.

>> women in politics is not a lurks r luxury, it's a requirement. >> thank you. i'd like to turn to steve elkins in a completely different topic which is life ranging and light technology or litor. and i'd like to, if you can, summarize, what is this, first? how does this work? >> well, first of all, i'm not a litor engineer, so i'll do the best i can. >> we are not, ooirlt. either. so that's okay. >> basically, it's a machine that sends out millions of pulses of laser light per second to scan an area. you can scan this room. you can scan the ground. you can scan the clouds, whatever you want.

it works much like radar does. with airborne litor, which is what we use, a moving airplane, each data point that we get back has an x, y and a z coordinate. so we get three dimensions. the reason that happens is the plane is moving and we also get signals from gps transreceivers that we plant on the ground certain distances away from our target that allows the computer and the litor machine to know exactly what position in space the litor device is when the returns come back. by sending out these millions and millions of pulses every second and we're flying over the jungle, most of them get reflected back by the leaves and the tree canopy or whatever. and enough of them, fortunately, made it to the ground. and they make it back to the plane. and, in our case, we're

interested in the returns that come back from the ground. it gives us an elevation model. in fact, it's called an elevation model. it shows us if the ground is smooth or does it have bumps on it. when you see bumps in geometric shapes and in a certain pattern, you can pretty much conclude this must be a village or a city or a pyramid or a closet or something else. >> so it's not ground-penetrating? >> no, it's not ground-pen trating. that's radar. however, the resolution is much larger than that of litor. you can't detect the really small objects. we've tried radar. it didn't work so well. >> we're looking for patterns. when we find the patterns, the engineers can, with their software tools, measure the height of the mounds, the length

of the mound, the width of the mound. and based on previous experience, the archaeologists can go yes, if it looks like this, it probably is this. >> so moving from that method, that tool, how does that preserve cultural heritage? you're not just flying around looking for odd patterns. how is this linked up to archaeological research? >> with if airborne litor, we can scan anywhere on the earth quickly. previously, it might have taken decades to walk back and forth and back and forth in whatever terrain they're in hoping to stumble upon something. now, you can quickly fly the

plane and in a day or two, you've got a hundred years of trekking over the terrain. so we're able to categoryize and discover new ones. pretty soon, lost cities iv be a dime a dozen. they're all over the place. this is a new revelation. secondarily, litor doesn't always have to be used from an airplane. there are people that go around with little hand-held litors. i call them bobble heads. they look like one. you can walk around this room, turn on the litor unit and in a minute or two, have a complete digital archive of everything in this room. every person, every feature on their face and every architectural detail. you can store that on a hard drive and it's there forever. you can distribute it any way

you want, you can recreate it. it's a great way to preserve cultural heritage in perfect detail very quickly. >> and your linkages to the archaeologists, do you then turn it over? what is your linkage between you as a film maker and you as an archaeologist. >> well, the linkage is -- i'm not an archaeologist. no one is going to believe me if i say that pattern is a city. we have to have scientists on the team to vet everything question do. that's what happens. so before we even started to protect -- when we started 2 project at first, we didn't have archaeologists. we didn't have the money. i didn't want to pay archaeologists unless we have some patterns worth looking at.

>> could you tell us a little bit about the legend of blanco? >> as i said earlier -- or during lunch, in about 1586 or so, a famous conquistador from the indigenous tribes at the time that tlfgs this fabled great city with gold, they were really wealthy and it was fab louts. fabulous. it was out there in the lands of the jungles which are now called the mescedia jungle. considered to be one of the toughest jungles in the world. a lot of people try to prove or disprove this legend. mainly, treasure hunters hoping to find all of the gold, including conquistadors.

and in academics, through the last hundred years, they've been trying to find it. this legend has become part of the cultural patrimony of hon durs. most hondurans grow up with some legend of blanco. they've had some metaphysical experience out in the jungle or whatever. everybody knows asht it. it's just like george washington and the cherry tree here became a legend. nobody could prove or disprove it. the academics argue back and forth. yes, it exists. no, it doesn't exist. so part of what i want to do is prove it one way or the other. it could be covered with dirt and trees. but with litor, you can see it very quickly.

so, now, we're hoping to go there on the ground with a team of scientists to find out who this culture really belonged to. nobody really knows. the government declared the area that we found these sites in as a cultural heritage preserve. you need a special permit to go in there. and they are also adjoining a fire reserve. news pla these places are all protected on paper. unfortunately, over the last couple years, we see that the area -- protected areas are shrinking due to illegal logging, narco trafficking, just clearing the land for cows, whatever.

palm oil plantations. the problem being that the government of honduras might have good intentions, but they don't have the money or the resources to protect it. so consequently, from the publicity we've gotten, i went to washington in december, i was approached by the world bank. and the world bank said we think this is a worthwhile project. of course, they're under a little bit of heat themselves. so we're looking to get an international directive, get funding from the world bank and put this area on the world spotlight. it's a real jewel of a place.

the reserve is wonderful. we have scientists around the world who will be able to study the land kind of like people do in antarctic. and by doing this, this area would become protected. there would be people from all over the world coming there all of the time. it would be very difficult for people to go in and start deforesting it without getting a lot of global attention. >> do you have another project in front of you? >> no, this is it. >> thank you, steve. let's turn to michael ash.

we've had a bit of conversation about this article already. before we start with some of the broader questions, i'd like to start with the use of fact. >> first, thank you for having us and for the question. a stylized fact is a theory. it's supposed to be a fact that is true in a wide variety of cases.

yes you can see this in the 200 year history of growth for the advanced economies. so that's a stylized fact. and what incorrect means is it's not so. >> what has been the fallout from this piece? obviously, it's had an extraordinary impact. could you lead us through some of the responses that you you've gotten from all different sides here. >> i don't want to take credit for setting off the storm. i don't think that they've reopened -- all of the sudden, pointed out that there were problems.

i think there was a ready audience for austerity. similarly, i think by the time 2013 rolled around, you have a breakdown of a social contract that's been in place for roughly 60 years. i think people wanted to ask why has this gone so badly? i think there's a ready audience for our pher.

it turns out that there's no cliff at all. it turns out there's a cliff really as far as the eye can see. i think that opened up ground to talk about. what's really the relationship here? is public debt reflecting growth? when you have a recession, tax collections fall, public spending rises. i think we're able to have that conversation again. and i hope that our paper contributed to it. >>. >> one of the thing that is we, as academics, struggle with is being heard. i think economists can do extraordinarily good work and it's sometimes very difficult to translate that into public policy, language, public policy

debate for ordinary citizens. not that you should speak for your discipline, but could there be some benefit in getting economies to participate in some of these debates. not just in the journals, but as public intellectuals. >> one of the things i found very powerful is it dices countries and asks how do they grow during those years.

so i give it a lot of credit. these are pictures that i think are easy to interpret and divide countries in very natural ways for having a discussion. i think economists have really improved a lot. >> it probably looks like you're out there, which is not to say you're not. what we need, i think what we saw in our last -- in our panel, in the first group is

that we need access. >> i agree very strongly. i have to say, i'm disappointed in my global students. this has been a disappointing six years for an educator. when we go through and look at the forgotten lessons of the past century, it's really quite remarkable to have basic lessons of canescanesianism, the insis that every private debt be paid. these are really poisonous ideas that we learned very clearly during the great depression and guided economic policy for the

seceding 30 or 40 years. it's very discouraging to see those lessons. >> if we could maybe broaden the conversation a little bit from austerity to economic inequality which has gotten a lot of attention, certainly by pundits. can you talk a little bit about that issue? >> yes, thank you for having. a very important sentence is that it was not always us that we spend a greater part of the

century with greatly reduced inequality. the university of california, berkley economists and his french colleague have done a beautiful job documenting the u-shape u-shaped inequality because of the new deal and the labor movement and similar movements in other developing countries. it stayed low until about 1980 and i won't say relentless, because i think it can relent. things can be done about inequality. the movement was very effective at bringing 1% inequality to the forefront. it's important to understand the

dimensions of inequality, the distance to the top, the amoubt of room at the top and the amount of room near the top and the pathways from the bottom to the middle. i think there are things very malleable. things that you'd expect when you share a widely infrastructure. i've seen those institutions wear away and inequality has reared its ugly head. i do think it would take a lot of organizing and a lot of policy. >> what are those policy sns. >> let me begin with i think we need a prime mover. i think it's very difficult to picture doing something with inequality without reworking the institutions of the capital and labor balance in this country

that the deunionization of the country. and i don't know what the next set of institutions will look like. they may be based on other -- on other movements that are yet to be envisioned. but i think reworking that basic balance is at the core. another policy is at the broad level, and i'll go to some narrower ones, is the role of finance in our economy. finance desperately needs taming. a good first start would be to induce dodd-frank. the error of fngs, and i don't just mean the mortgage-backed security that is got us into the absolute pit in 2007 and 2008. but the increasing financialization of nonfinancial kompgss, you know, like make

things like tires and cars, instead now make loans and shift assets very profitably. i think taming finance is a key ingredient to controlling inequality. some practical policies, i think we should be looking at an increased social wage, you know, that the united states has finally cracked open the universal health insurance question. we're not quite there, but it's quite clear that our pensions need another look into education, particularly higher education is going to need serious help over time. i think the minimum wage and wage subsidy is playing an important role. again, for that core in the middle with an association of how people work. >> you didn't say anything about

taxation? >> i'm certainly in favor of progressive taxation. i think more effective redistribution will happen if the reinstitutions of the labor market are redesigned. they're kind of right at the point of contact. you do good work. you should expected to have a career in front of you that can support a household without, you know, two people working, both working 50 hours a week. so, again, i'm not opposed to a highly redistributive taxation. don't get me wrong or right or left. but i don't think that's where the main engine needs to come from. >> you just said that of one way of tackling inequality. could you expand on that a little bit? >> i come from a large, public university. there are some similarities and some differences.

system. >> there's been a very large subsidy for higher education in this country over the last generation. that's shifted the burden on the families who do this through saving or through debt. >> i can picture free public higher education as one direction we might talk about going. >> i wish we could picture that here a little bit more clearly.

it is an extraordinarily difficult nut to crack. i think it's time for some questions. we've got three very, very different presentations here. would anyone like to start? >> this question is for michael. you mentioned a fundamental redistribution between how labor relates to capital in this country as the fundamental way to change inequality. i agree, but i don't see how that happens. what are the steps whereby that power difference for labor and capital can be shifted. >> thank you. that's a great question.

it's very hard to see. on the eve of the great depression, labor was about 2% organized. you might think that the great depression was not the best time to go asking your boss for a raise. i don't know, call me crazy. nonetheless, virtually overnight, labor went from 2% to about a quarter unionized. i don't know if the traditional labor movement is going to be the engine, but i do want to suggest that these shift cans happen very quickly. we're seeing a lot of frustration with the degree of inequality and stagnation. maybe the capitalists may find themselves unable to live with the current configuration. the current crisis will have a good moment for settling scores.

shifting a little bit of the pie this way. over the long run, there has to be some model of a growing, sustainable -- a sustainablely growing economy. we may see forms of experimentation that we don't expected from the cooperative movemented, for example. maybe developments of the labor movement. i do think we're coming to a crisis of the engine. >> the university of denver has a very nice slogan. it's more than a slogan. it's working for the public good.

i think the idea of a public or educational system has eroded the fact in a way that i found shocking. it's not transferred into something that's easily paid back. i was wondering if there's a way -- if you could comment on the issue of how to present this debt crisis. this dealt slavery. in a way that seems to me to be natural to talk about it as a democratic crisis. that is why that the bank should draw the money out of individuals and there shouldn't be some kind of public education. at a higher level.

>> i think that the question speaks for itself. i'm a little bit at a loss to say it anymore clearly than you have. one way is to make sure that they have an education that doesn't shackle them to a very narrow set of opportunities. i think it has to be somebody who has sort of set loose from certainly worries about ill health ruining their lives or student debt ruining their lives.

we can do much better that will build supports that will further humanize us. i don't know if that addresses your question. >> some of it. would you like to comment at all on education. >> well, like working in pakistan, i do not strongly advocate for education in pakistan. the reason that it teaches about traditional values and teaches that the girls to be, you know, to be in specific boxes, it

teaches about hatred. they're not being directed in a certain sdrex. but they're open to many new ideas. the people who are college students or university students, they have the closed mind. they have already grown up in this mentality, you know, this kind of perceptions about a society that is very difficult to learn about. i do add vvocate for quality education. >> so are you suggesting that the institutions of education are the issues? that once people start participating in those institutions, as currently structured?

>> exactly. i think that -- actually t structures of the institutions in pakistan, they need to be reformed. one is that there's a lot of work that needs to be done on obtaining 2 curriculum of the institute. so i think it's the responsibility of the universities to go through and screen all the things which are not good or not able to teach to students. they should teach on the basis of humanism, not on the basis of religion or gender. >> thank you. >> thank you very much for all of the information and thinking you've shared with us.

this is a question for saba and it's going to seem like an aggressive question, but it's not meant to be. here, i'm involved in a group that's dedicated to electing women. we have the idea that things will be better if more women are involved in running the country. i was thinking, saba, when you said that's one of your goals, too, and you think that that will lead to better conditions and i was thinking is there any empirical evidence to support that? i was thinking about buto in gandhi, about thatcher, i mean, i don't know that we have any evidence that having women in positions of power has made things better and i would like

to know if you have any empirical evidence? >> well, when when are in power, nobody questioned them what are the results 1234 nobody questioned what they did. but whenever it comes to women, okay, what change will you bring? i think it might not -- it might be that the situation would be the same or the results would be the same. it's the expectations on women. you know, i think these are certain restrictions that, okay, if women are at the decision-making levels, then

they have to show. they have to show some progress, otherwise, they don't deserve we see throughout the world that there's less representation. that's why women might not be in that position to bring certain in something. when i work with the communities, recently, we organized a seven-days training program for the girls and among the 35, only one knew about the reserve seats. of four women. now, 70% of them are running for e lektss. and the local elections. the local elections have not yet been announced, but it will be soon. so we can see the change that if women, they demand for the rights to speak up for the rights, you know, i think it's the change.

it's not okay to have these expectations from women that if you are the leaders, you have to show something. we should question this. the majority already. >> i have a question for you as well. what indict look like originally when you founded this organization, what kind of setting were you working out of and then since you founded aware girls, where and how were you able to find training and female empowerment and who influenced you. >> when we started in 2002 we were a group of young girls like students. we started voluntarily and we worked with other -- we actually wanted network with other women's reits activists and there was the case of a woman from a rural area in pakistan

and she was actually the local, the tribal people, actually the elders, she was actually gang raped and it was a decision of the community. then we were engaged in that process in speaking for her and in passing the laws for sexual harassment in pakistan. initially we were not a very well organized group but all students having no experience just our passion and we wanted to bring that. that's the only thing. with the passage of time most of us -- it was not a full time work. and as we were considering our studies as well and doing this work mostly on weekends and engaging in holidays, and then like -- then after almost in 2009 then we started, we were very much organized. we registered with the government of pakistan and

started working as more like an organized structure, just like any other organization. and regarding the inspiration, i shared my story as well. one of the things that led me to start this process and this whole initiative. the most, i think, the good point is that my father and my family supported us very well and actually another sister, we co-founded the organization. so our father was there with us and our father and mother both supported us. they mentored us in the women's rights work. our father used to bring us -- like when we were young, when we were children he used to bring us toys built when we grew up he started teaching us about the conventions. he asked us to study the constitution because it's not, you know, it's not well-known pakistan, even people do not read the constitution.

so he encouraged us to read. used different strategies organizing a small workshop in our home after he was back from college and we were back from school. he taught us about not only about human rights but about geography, about english. he taught us english as well. he groomed us and our mother was always there to support. it's very common in pakistan that girls, when they come back from school, they perform the duties with their mothers, you know, do the household work. but our mother never allowed us to do. no, you have to -- i really want you to be changed and to be empowered and we want us to see you very different from the rest of the world. so both of them supported us and mentored us at every stage and we got inspiration, i think, from our father. >> i just had two quick

questions. i was curious about lidar its effects in water. you said there were concerns that it wouldn't work in the jungle area because the jungle was so dense it couldn't penetrate. i was wondering if it would be effective. my second question when you were describing the bobble headed ones how they can come in and document this entire room. if there's been any mention of any kind of privacy or security issues about that. >> good questions. first the one about water, lidar engineers are trying to get it to work in water. it doesn't work well. when you do airborne lidar you can't do it in rain because the rain drops will scatter the beams. but there's one that works well in water and penetrate about 60 feet, maybe 80 feet in clearwater.

so if you have turbid water that's another issue. privacy issues, privacy doesn't exist with all the new technologies. get over it. that's the way it is. secondly, the only things identify heard about some people were concerned whether or not if planes are flying around and shooting laser beams will it cause damage to people or animals. and actually the designers of the lidar equipment use i say laser. so it's not an issue. i suppose there are always an accident. nothing is fail safe. >> steve, could you say a couple of words about funding for preservation of these sites. i think there's a little tongue and cheek about the world bank, but how do we preserve these things that you guys are

discovering? >> well, it's a very good question, and there are a lot of people around the world, there are organizations trying, that are raising money and trying to raise more money to do it. there's no question that with the advent, particularly of using lidar from the airplane, we'll discover so many sites, not all of them will be preserved. just impossible. too many. so some will get preserved. some will receive funding from private foundations. from sovereign nations. from individuals. some won't. in our case, our project to date has been privately funded by wealthy individuals that believe in the cause, believe in doing this. and it wasn't so tongue in cheek about world bank. they actually -- i've been talking to them for a month and a half and they are very interested in the idea of funding this project. the issues now -- >> i was not suggesting they weren't interested i was talking

about their motives. >> the motives. well, you know, the motives are interesting. if you go on their websites and you look at their mandates it's very clear that they want to fund projects that enhance a country, not just economically but also indigenous rights. they have taken some flack in honduras because they fund ad project with a wealthy landowner to plant palm oil plantations and it turned out -- i don't know 100% but what i read and hear is that in expanding these palm oil plantations land was stolen from farmers who had rights to the land and well over 100 people were murdered. which is not an unusual situation in some parts of the

world. so, the world bank had to make an apology. it was in the press. you can look it up on the internet. in the last month. and they rescinded the financing to this particular corporation or i think they have. not really sure. and there's no question that when they learned of my project, all this was blowing up, and even though they have a world bank has a lot of morgan invested in honduras and they believe it's a diamond in the rough and i agree with them. there's a lot of potential in that country. screwed up as political as it may be there's a lot that can happen. they would like to see it work. they also know they need to be very careful about what they invest in. does that answer it? >> do you have any other questions from the floor? all right. i would like to thank our panelists for a wonderful second

session of this event here at the corvell school. this is an extraordinary thing for the university to host. we are opening our doors more and more, i think, to, to the public. i can't think of a better means of doing that than to bring these influential thinkers, foreign policy thinkers to campus. so thank you very much. thanks for coming. [ applause ] >> thank you.

tonight on c-span 3 a house hearing on poverty and income inequality. a hearing on proposed epa changes to the clean water act. and a discussion about mexico opening its oil and gas industry to foreign investment. at a house budget committee hearing advocates for the poor discussed what governments and charities are doing to raise people out of poverty and how they can be more economically self-sufficient. congressman paul ryan of wisconsin chairs this two hour hearing. >> committee will come to order.

a number of our members on our side aisle will be a little late our conference is still ongoing but in the interest of time i want to get started. welcome everybody. good to see you. a great full capacity crowd. this is our fifth hearing on the war on poverty. over the past year we've heard from a number of voice, policy voices, community groups and today we'll hear from people in the middle. people in the private-sector who work with the public sector. people who coordinate state programs with private charity. we're also going to hear from an especially important voice, miss tianna gaines-turner. i was happy to meet tianna at the raburn building. i'm excited to here her testimony. i want to quote from her previously written testimony because she hits the nail on the head. quote, poverty is not just one issue that can be solved at one time. it's not just an issue of jobs

or food or housing or energy assistance and safety. it's a people issue. you can't slice people up into issues. we are whole human beings. poverty has to do with a whole person who is in a family, in a neighborhood, in a community. i couldn't have said it better myself. i think that's exactly right. for too long the federal government has treated people as numbers. instead of whole people with wholly connected needs. that's why i'm excited to hear from heather reynolds president of catholic charities of fort worth. miss reynolds is doing great work in fort worth. she's putting together a pilot project to test how case management can expand opportunities for working families and as miss gaines-turner urge, miss reynolds program sees people as whole human beings who deserve time and care not just another client to usher through the door. and the results speak for themselves. in 2013, 90% of the people in

the refugee program became self-sufficient within six months. i want to welcome jennifer untiller from american works. american works has pioneered two key concepts that are crucial to real reform. workforce and accountability. america works gets paid only if they succeed. i can't find a better definition of success than their own definition. they say success is an individual moving towards employment and maintaining a self-sufficient lifestyle. we should insist the same kind of accountability from our federal programs. at a previous hearing some of my colleagues kept asking our witnesses if they had received federal aid as if that would undercut their testimony. the point of these hearings is not to question whether the federal government should help. the point is to figure out the best way it can help and with that i hope we can listen and

learn from our witnesses today because i think each of these three ladies have so much to offer us. i would like to recognize the ranking member for his opening remarks. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and i want to thank all the witnesses for being here today as the chairman said. this is our fifth hearing on the question of how we can better address poverty in america. and as i have in the past i want to begin on two points of agreement. the first is that the best anti-poverty measure is a job. in fact, a job that pay as living wage, a job that can support individuals and a family. and second, if there are better ways to channel resources, to get better results in terms of our fight on poverty, we welcome that conversation. and case management may be a very successful way of doing that. but while it's our fifth hearing, we've still got a huge

disconnect between the goal cited by many of our republican colleagues of reducing poverty and the republican budget that passed out of this committee and passed out of this house that dramatically cuts funding for programs that help people climb out of poverty. and, mr. chairman, the fact remains that the budget that you presented would cut the areas of the budget that would help provide the kind of case management we're talking about today. dramatic cuts in what we call the discretionary part of the budget, funded at lower than two times of the sequester cuts and deep cuts in programs like food and nutrition. so, we want to have a discussion here about how to better use existing resources to help people climb out of poverty. we welcome that conversation. what we don't welcome is using that conversation as a pretext

or a means to dramatically cut funding for those programs whether it's medicaid or food and nutrition programs. and as the chairman indicated, we've had witnesses who have received important federal funding. there's apparently no disagreement here that the federal government can play an important role in helping people climb out of poverty. but it's hard to do that at the same time that you have a budget that dramatically cuts funding for those programs. so reform, better use of existing resources to help more people and have more effective results, yes. but a conversation that doesn't answer the question about how deep cuts to anti-poverty programs will advance that goal is something we'll continue to ask about. finally, as i also join the chairman in welcoming all the

witnesses, i'm pleased that miss gaines-turner is here today. i think she's the first witness in this series of five hearings who herself has experienced the struggles of poverty and the effort to climb out of poverty so i think personal testimony is especially important in that regard, and as you state in your testimony, one of the keys there is making sure that work pays. that when you have a job, you can at least have a job that supports a family. and one of the things we've been trying to do here in the house is at least raise the minimum wage from its current $7.25 an hour, which is lower purchasing power than when harry truman was president, we would like to raise that to $10.10 an hour which still doesn't in many cases provide a living wage but provides greater opportunities for people working to take care of themselves and their

families. we're still hoping to have a vote on that and many other issues that support work but really pleased to have all these witnesses here today to talk about how we can, you know, tackle this important challenge that's before us. so thank you, mr. chairman, and i look forward to the conversation. >> thank you. to make sure that every witness knows it's against the law to provide false witness to the committee we've begun a new practice. swearing in all of our witnesses. this does not reflect any distrust that we have on any particular witness. we're taking this step because of recent legal guidance we've been given from the department of justice. i would like to ask the three of you if you wouldn't mind standing so we can swear in our witnesses. please raise your right hand. do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you are about to give the whole truth and nothing but truth. let the record reflect the

witnesses answered in the affirmative. please take your seats. it's a formality we have to engaging. heather, let's start with you and move this way. >> thank you. chairman ryan, ranking member van holland and members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. my name is heather reynolds and i'm president, ceo of catholic charities fort worth. let me tell you poverty is complex and often cyclical. poor parents have poor children and poor children often become poor parents. the cycle continues unless it is broken. case management is the critical element in moving someone from government dependency to self-sufficiency. that is why we believe that case management has got be a part in

how we approach our reform poverty. first case management allows us to work with a client in an individualized way. every day in fort worth, texas we have over 300 people coming to our organization for help. each individual's poverty looks very different but we typically see three main types of poverty. chronic poverty from age, significant disability or mental illness. people who will need safety net surfaces throughout the course of their life. the second type of poverty is situational poverty caused by divorce, unexpected health care expenses, and the loss of a job. this type of poverty is often the most temporary and with a quick intervention families can be put back on track. the third type of poverty is generational poverty. people in generational poverty are those who have had two or more people living in poverty. it is passed down from parent to

child. it is the mindset of living in the moment. being pro active. setting goals and planning ahead are not in the frame of reference. understanding these types of poverty is critical for understanding how combat it. case management is most needed for those in situational and generational poverty. and those in generational poverty need a deeper level of case management because it requires a mindset change. second, case management allows us to serve in a way that's holistic. in most cases people who come to catholic charities fort worth face very complex challenges. the way the federal system is designed clients receive services for each of their needs independently from other problems they are facing. case management helps transform interventions from an array of standalone services to a comprehensive plan to get families to achieve their fullest potential. effective case management is a

process in which the client and case manager work to holistically move a family forward and out of poverty permanently. third, case management gets results. for example, the matching grant program for refugees which we participate in fort worth is a successfully federally funded anti-poverty program. in fort worth our success rate of moving individuals from poverty to self-sufficiency is high because of case management. in 2013, 90% of our clients became self-sufficient within six months. in my experience many federal programs are not designed and measured for the end goal impact. how can we set our goal of ending homelessness and measure our success by how many shelter beds we can fill. that's why it's my firm belief research and a focus on results

has got to be paired with services. at catholic charities our main partner in this effort is the lab for economic opportunities at notre dame. one of the initiatives being evaluated is our stay the course program aimed at increasing persistent by reducing the chance that events outside of school derail a college education. this is acleehieved through financial assistance. pilot is tracking outcomes for randomly assigned students receiving services and a control group of students not receiving support. in order to measure the true impact of these services on academic performance, educational attainment, employment and earnings. the results from the first year of this pilot indicate that students receiving case management services not only average more credit hours in the treatment group but they were more likely to persist in their education. case management was the

difference. and there is not a better way to get someone out of poverty than to help ensure they graduate with the degree that can get them a job that pays them not enough just to survive, but enough to actually thrive. poor parents have poor kids. and more often than not, poor kids become poor parents. the cycle continues unless it's truly and purposefully broken. case management is the critical item to moving a family out of poverty for good. thank you for your time today. and thank you for what you are doing to bring attention to the important issue of ending poverty. >> thank you. miss tiller. >> chairman ryan, ranking member van hollen. america works and its companies has successfully managed performance based employment and retention programs throughout the united states since 1984. under the mission of changing people's lives by lifting them

from dependence into the productive world of employment america works and its network of companies have placed over 400,000 people into jobs nationwide. america works rapid attachment to work program allows individuals to be placed quickly into the workforce. america works believes that work should be the central focus. wraparound services including not limited to mental health, substance abuse service, child care and educational endeavors are addressed simultaneously. over the years america works has taken on tough social problems which cost taxpayers billions of dollars with the belief that if a job is provided dependency on the government diminishes and disappears. to that end we have rapidly attached ex-offenders to work therefore reducing recidivism. we have taken people with life long social security benefits and moved them to employment. america works took people out of homeless shelters and showed by

providing jobs we decreased the cost of homelessness. america works pioneered the work first model which rapidly transitions welfare recipients in to employment while simultaneously providing them with supportive service asne as necessary. when the regulations were being written for reform states were limited to a very small percentage of people allowed to be in education and training. this forced employment first and training later or simultaneously for upgrading an improving your prospects. america works also pioneered performance based government contracting a business model that's still not commonly used in the social services field. states and cities pay only when people move from dependency into employment. most other contractors are paid

when clients may enroll in their program. the "wall street journal" wrote it's the responsibility of government to ensure some semblance of fairness and equity in our society. while this was written in contoesht the obesity epidemic it holds true for welfare programs. government involvement should not stop with the management of funding or programs it should champion personal responsibility. the personal responsibility and work opportunity act aimed to encourage rather than discourage employment. in order to successfully and move into independence from dependence we must review the act accountability. what is the definition of success for a recipient? for the government? success is an individual moving to employment. maintaining a self-sufficient lifestyle. progressing in their desired career trajectory.

charlene, shares her success and i would like to share it with members of the committee. my name is charlene and i've bean part of america works for the past two years. when i first started the program i was not focused on my employment goals or the steps that i needed to take to work towards self-sufficiency. after several months of messing around i came to the realization that i had enough. i finally realized that it would be cut and i couldn't rely on this to support me or my children. i got tired of my lifestyle of dependency and after speaking with the director jennifer tiller decided to start taking the program more seriously. i began network closely with the staff and put all of my energy into gaining employment. within one week i had a job. i started working as a cashier. when i was searching for employment food service was my last resort. but after working for only a few months i realized i loved my

job. and that i had the potential to grow within the company. i've been working there for nine months now and currently in the training program to become a manager at my location. i love my supervisors and the staff that i work with and i really enjoy getting up and going to work each day. even though food service was not the field of work that i was initially interested in i came to the realization that working was better than relying on taniff and i could provide a much better lifestyle for myself and my children by keeping the job i have. i'm happy at my job and looking forward to all the opportunities i'll have to advance my career. i'm grateful for the assistance that the staff at america works gave me. they were patient. they helped me. they provide case management services. miss dorsey has not received benefits since october of 2013 and she's near completion of her management training program. america works recommends continued emphasis on work requirements for those receiving

transfer payments and public subsidies as long as they are deemed eligible for employment. thank you again for your invitation to speak. >> miss gaines-turner. >> good morning chairman ryan and distinguished members of the house budget committee. thank you for inviting me here. my name is tianna gaines-turner i'm a member of witnesses to hunger. i would like to get down to business. i will be talking about a large array of different things. let's talk about jobs and wages. the fact that we even call it minimum wage is a problem. we need to invest where people cannot have a minimum wage but a living wage. we need to make sure we have paid sick leave so that a mother and a father or a person taking care of a caregiver can take off of work and not worry about losing their job. we need address the fact about affordable child care for those who have children with disabilities and those entering into the workforce.

safety net. where do i begin? food stamps. the food stamp program is very important to me and to my family. no one wakes up in the morning and say went to in poverty. we want to stay in a two hour line to get to the front to be told there's no food. i would like to say i know food stamps is very important part of my life. it helps me and my husband to make sure we can feed our children three of them with medical disabilities, nutritious and adequate ft. hood. wic is another important program. for having twins myself who were born premature, my twin son was, he had open heart surgery when he was two weeks old. i was able to breastfeed and get a pump which is something i would not be able to afford through the wic program. health care. as you look on the screen right now that's my son. i took this photograph because i thought it was very important for people to understand the

many struggles families have to go through every day. i took this photograph minutes after my son suffered his second seizure. when you are a parent and you have children with disabilities it's very difficult. it is not easy to wake up every day and not know do you pay the phone bill or do you pay for medical -- do you not -- you have constant challenges. i would like to be proud to sit here and say that my mother was never on food stamps when i was a child. i watched her struggle every day working sometimes one or two jobs. i feel like right now we need have a conversation on the things that are wrong. the cliff effect. why it is that when a person does enter the job force and make just 50 cents or a quarter over they are cut. their food stamps are cut dramatically. their medical may be cut. technology. why is it that when i go the county assistance office and i give them a receipt and a stamped receipt and they tell me they got my paper work, someone

is scanning familier work putting it in a document why a month later i talk to my case worker and she has no knowledge of it. it's sitting somewhere on her desk. we need to make sure we get the case workers in the welfare office that we're not treated like unhuman, we're treated as individuals. we need to make sure they understand we're here for a moment not for a lifetime. educational programs. we need to make sure that we don't push people into these ready to work programs that simply don't work. we need to make sure we don't put people into four week or 12 week nursing programs to become a senior aide and then can't compete with others in that category. savings. let's make sure that it's okay for me and other people on public assistance to be able to open up a savings and banking account, to be able to save money to own our own homes. to be able to save for our children's college fund without a case worker telling us because you have a savings account

you're not eligible for certain programs. i feel like right now in america that there should be no child that goes to sleep hungry. that there should be no one that will have to face the troubles every day of not knowing -- photo, please. this photograph right here is a photo of my children. my children are tofrg me. i would like to say that we need to break the cycle. we need to make sure that we all remember what the american dream is. values. family values. i'm not a number. i'm not a statistic. i'm not a food stamp recipient. i am an individual who lives in the inner-city, who just so happens to be right now struggling just as so many americans are struggling. we need to get back to the core values. remembering that we're people. we do not don't looked at as someone who is on lazy and wants to collect benefits. my day starts at 7:00 a.m. in

the morning and say that i want to be on public assistance. this is a picture of my husband and my children on father's day. as you see behind me my husband is sitting right behind me. he's a strong african-american man who can relate torch in this room as i can. he gets up every day, goes to work. he makes sure he wants the same thing that you want for your children as we want for our children. safe and affordable house. equal pay. i want to be brought to the table when there's a decision made. there should be no decision made without someone sitting at the table who are going through these struggles. thank you so much for having me. >> how old are you kids? >> my twins are 6 and my son is ten. >> great phase. let me get started. why don't i start with you, tianna. the cliff, i'm really interested in what you mean when you talk about the cliff, and you said before you have given this example if you babysit for a

friend for 40 bucks you lose your welfare check. a lot of these are layered on top of each other, so you have this situation where you could have just a cold cut off of benefits if you take a step forward and earn some money. give me a sense of how you see this cliff and what it does to people in kind of the wrong incentives it gives but more importantly do you have any ideas about a better way of coordinating or do you think we should better coordinate these things and have a smoother system so people aren't faced with these cliffs. what kind of decisions is this forcing upon people? >> it's strenuous. it doesn't encourage people to have savings accounts. they stuff it under the mattress. an example of a cliff effect i was getting $793 in food stamps which is for my whole family to feed. once i began working, when the first cut went through i went down from $793 to $220.

when the second cut went through i went from $220 to $200. >> you see that with your paycheck or not? >> i'm sorry. >> did you make more with your paycheck or were you worse off? >> no i feel like i was doing a good thing because i was working. i didn't don't on cash benefits. i wanted to get out there in the workforce and work. the point i'm making as soon as i got right there to start being abling to put a little bit away or be able to do some things with my children and put them in camp i was cut just like that. i feel we need to make sure that we make sure just because a person makes ten cents over the amount they shouldn't lose everything right away and there should be measurements. we should measure the different programs and see where a person is and not push them, to you know, get a jobs get a job. once you get a job you lose your child care, you know.

your food stamps are cut off. i want seems like everything is wiped underneath you. our safety net is deplenished. >> miss reynolds i'm very fond of the catholic charities model. what's the relationship between the case manager the clients the recipient. what's the ray show you strive for and how could the federal government do a better job at encouraging. it's cookie cutter, it's distance, it's cold, i want treats everybody the same. we need more customized, mr. direct more human-to-human. you're doing that. what does it took like. what can the government do? >> thank you for that question. one of the most critical pieces is making sure that you hire

private nonprofit organizations are hiring case managers who really have a heart for the client and have a deep understanding of how to cognitively work with folks for a mindset change but also creating this idea that you can get out and giving them the encouragement step of the way. to holistically understand the client. then a service plan develops that first takes into account what's your strengths. sometimes we treat clients like they are full of deficits and weaknesses and that's not a healthy way to do things. our folks focus on a strength based model. what are your strengths. what assets do you possess. what assets do you need to gain. the biggest thing we've been moving forward with notre dame. what does success look like. what are we trying achieve. we made a change internally in our organization success looks

like making a wage where you can support your family not on any public benefits or social service benefits, having three months of savings as well as no debt. i think the biggest thing the federal government could do to assist in that is allow us to serve, number one, more holistically by allowing us to pull more together and the other thing is for case management, we need more time. i quoted the refugee success with a six month mark. those folks are very unique population. for us, for people in generational poverty we need time to work with folks. >> like what? >> i would say on average about a two year process. especially those who are in generational poverty. situational poverty might look different. but i would say the cost effectiveness of putting the money into case management and then the back end savings with the decrease in public benefits as you go forward i think makes it a very economically sensible thing. >> it seems the key is to customize.

there's somebody who are situational and that can be quick. that could be -- >> six months. refugee, situational. yeah. >> in generational sense you need more time to be able to walk a person through whether it's getting an associate's degree or ged and then -- when we think customized case management what we ought to be thinking correct me if i'm wrong this person might have transportation and daycare problems that person might have education and food problems. >> right. >> be able to customize the benefit to tailor what their specific needs are, correct >> absolutely. if you're looking at you want to get somebody out of poverty and out of poverty looks like the four things i described your goal then is to figure out a plan, how to leverage someone's asset, figure out where there's opportunities, help them build those things so they accomplish that. many times if it's an associate's degree or certificate program that takes time. >> the problem you have with the federal government is sort of a patch work quilt of programs that are all out there with

different cutoffs, different requirements that you had to spend all this time navigating that. if you could have more of a flexible benefit so you could customize that's basically what you're trying to do. >> so if a family doesn't qualify for something that they need but qualify for something else it does them no good. >> miss tiller, let me ask you a quick question. i visited your facility in d.c. it's really amazing to watch the folks who come in and then leave with a job and then get on that ladder of life. if there's just couple of things could you do to change the federal aid system what would they be. you're already doing this. i you know contract with counties and cities but if there's one or two things you could change to facilitate this transition to work, this escalate out of poverty what are the things you would do? >> well thank you for your compliments, first of all. can you hear me? thank you for your compliments. i think as i mentioned in the

testimony accountability and making sure that's championed from every where. also when it comes to things like perhaps time limits or as heather was saying with, you know, case management ensuring that it is individualized. at america works that's what we do. every person who comes in is looked at individually because everyone who is coming in has a very different skill set, very different educational background, people are from all different walks of life in terms of where they are from in the nation. so we have to make sure that everybody is getting that individualized service and we'll continue to do that. i think championing that plus accountability would be of great benefit. >> miss reynolds let me get back to measurement. that's the big issue here, right? so how do you measure success and we've long complained that we have basically input measurement system on the war on poverty for lack of a better phrase which is we measure inputs. we measure how much money we're spending, how many programs we're creating, how many beds

we're filling versus outcomes. how many people we're getting out of poverty in a lasting way but it's that outcome measurement that's something that's new. you have this institute at notre dame that's doing it not just at notre dame but around the country. what are the keys to measure this successfully. what does success look like as you see it and is it the original design of the program that's key to getting up the right measurement at the end of the day. i want to have a system that truly is outcome base where we're not chasing statistic, not trying to chase metrics and things like this. we see this with other government agencies. we don't want to chase a spreadsheet so if you're correct see my job is done. we want the outcome did this person get out of poverty. are they tapping their potential. are they in a self-sufficient lifestyle that they want to attain. how do you do that? >> one of the most important ideas is not just evaluation and youpt comes but got pair that

with rigorous research. that's why we're partnering with notre dame. in fort worth our stay the course program we have a control group and treatment group. most of us in the public sector are saying no because resources are limited. so we have a control group a random selection we can provide. we bring for example the economists at notre dame what they can do is see did this program matter but because if they didn't have this program then what would have happened? so having a treatment group and an intervention group actually allows you to tell if not for this intervention the families would not have improved. so i think federal investment in more rigorous research and evaluation with large sample sizes if we're seeing something, for example in fort worth that's working how do we scale that up at a national level. so we can see does this work and if it does then let's reform. >> that gets to tianna's point

don't put me in a program that fails. mr. van hollen. >> thank you, mr. chairman. again thank you all for your testimony today. it's been very instructive and i want to start also with miss gaines-turner and thank you again for being here and i want to welcome congresswoman barbara lee. the chairman asked you and you were talking about the disincentives to save, for example, because if you put aside something to save then you might no longer qualify for food nutrition benefits. is that right >> right. >> just for our benefit of our colleagues, reducing those cliffs which is something i think all of us would support, certainly on the democratic side, may end up costing more money, right? because what you're saying is that instead of being cut off from food nutrition programs

when you start saving you could continue to save and also don't receive your food nutrition benefits until you get to a point where your family is truly at a living wage independently. >> exactly. that's exactly what i'm saying. i want to be very clear in what i'm saying. what i'm saying is, i've been hearing a couple of things about generational poverty. i feel like that's wrong. the main reason why i'm sitting here. we want to break the cycle of that. that's number one. number two, the federal government programs that are running right now, they are working. i don't want to put a state -- i don't want a state to be involved to tell me when and where i can't do a certain program. i feel like that is not the way to go. i feel that didn't work before and it won't work now. accountability. we need to hold the big companies like walmart and target and other companies accountability for not paying

their employees enough to where they can have medical benefits. you know, a lot of these big companies only pay their employees a certain amount of hours so they don't have to offer them medical. that's another question that we didn't address. the second thing is that we need to make sure there's paid sick leave. another thing that's very important. i want to make sure i cleared up a couple of thing right there because i didn't want anyone misconstrue in what i was saying pinpointed to make that very clear. >> thank you. again, just on the budget point because we're the budget committee, addressing these issues requires resources. i think all of you would agree with that. and to reduce what chairman referred to as these cliff effects may involve more resources at the same time our colleagues have proposed a budget that deeply cuts a lot of these resource. i just think it's important to take the comprehensive view of this because while it is very important to figure out whether case management is the best

approach or other approaches, all of them require resources and in fact to do some of them better they require more and as miss reynolds suggested it may require more upfront to get savings potentially down the road. miss gaines-turner if you can talk about the affordable care act. in saw it on your written testimony. could you talk about how the affordable care act has helped provide additional help for you and your family? >> the affordable care act has definitely helped me and my husband a great bit. i'm very appreciative. for a long period of time i was paying out of pocket to go to the doctor. you figure if i pay $75 for a doctor's visit and they give me a prescription i don't have any medical coverage. so now i don't have any -- i fade $75 to go see a doctor and now i have to out how to pay for the prescription. so i went months without getting the adequate medical i needed

because i didn't qualify for medical through the public welfare department. only my children qualified. so now me and my husband are working. but working part time jobs. our hours do fluctuate up and down. i was able to get quality medical insurance through obamacare. so i feel that's another thing that's very important. we need obamacare. i know some people want to cut obama care and challenging right now again to look into trying to cut obamacare and i would like for to you look at me and my husband as a prime example that if you cut that program you're taking away to make sure that i'm here to make sure i can do that job that i need to do as a mother for my children. >> thank you. i want to pick up on the point that you just made. you're working now, correct? >> yes, i am. >> your husband is working. >> yes. >> but your combined income still is not sufficient to provide a living wage for the

family, is that correct? >> that's correct. yes. >> what would happen and while you're working now you're also receiving some nutrition benefits. >> yes. >> what would happen to your family, what would be the impact on you and your children if you were to lose that food and nutrition benefits? >> it would be an even bigger struggle because now the money -- i am already struggling enough to pay the rent, pay the bills that are coming in, water, gas, electric finance i lose my food stamps and that's money that's taken away from my bills and from my children to go out and buy food. you know, like i said before, i don't know how much more i can say it. no one who lives in poverty wants to stay on government assistance programs. we want to be independent. we want to work hard. and believe in the american dream that if i work every day, get up at 7:00 one the morning and my husband gets up and we

work. that we'll have the same jobs benefits, wages, paid sick leave as everyone else. that is the most important thing that is to us. so, you know, a lot of people say oh, well, you know, they don't need food stamps and, you know, it's not working, and oh, this person is abusing the program this, that and a third. there's a lot of different programs we can talk about that have been abused that have been passed through and they are not being held accountable. >> well, i thank you for that testimony and i think your testimony demonstrates why it's so important to have somebody before this committee who is currently struggling with these questions and what the impact of some of the proposed cuts would have. miss reynolds, if i could ask you and thank you for the good work catholic charity does around the country and in fort worth, texas. you mentioned in your testimony that the larger share of your

federal funding i believe comes in refugee assistance area and i would like to take this opportunity just to ask you for a status report of your efforts on refugee assistance since we're currently facing this crisis at the border, and i do want to just read for the benefit of the committee a statement, you know, made by national catholic charities just a little earlier. one year ago today the senate pass ad comprehensive immigration reform bill moving our nation closer to an improved immigration process. unfortunately, not had a chance to vote on that bill here in the house. we hope at one point to have that opportunity. in the meantime we do have this crisis on the border. could you talk about catholic charities view of this issue? i noticed that your chapter had sent out alerts to all the members of the texas congressional delegation urging

them to increase refugee assistance which would be part of the president's emergency supplemental request. just share with this committee what you're doing, and your views since you're here, you're from texas and in the middle of this issue. >> great. thank you for that question. our heart goes out to the kids on the border because the kids, we've had the opportunity to work with have shared some of the most bill stories you ever heard. we had a 7-year-old girl staying with us in our shelter recently who talked about how her neighborhood friends would appear, would go missing and appear dead on her door step with their organs missing. the accounts they are giving us what they experience in south america is quite daunting. our organization has been a long time provider of refugee resettlement since the vietnam war. because of that we were approached by the united states conference of bishops here at

the federal government about 18 months ago to start using our shelter, 40ur bed shelter for some of these children. we began about 18 months ago working with eight beds which usually a kid stays about two or three weeks with us. and then we were approached again and we've increased beds and june 30th of this year we increased our beds to 32 beds for these kids, actually converting some catholic charities office space into beds so we're able to do our part. really with 32 beds, we'll indicate about 400 kids will come through this next year who are kids on the border. our main goal in this is to make sure those kids are taken care of. many have been trafficked. their journey has been amazing. recently we had a 3-year-old girl. i have a 2 1/2 daughter and i can't imagine her crossing the street without me there. the journey these kids have been on has been a tragedy. it's been a blessing for our agency to step up and help.

>> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> i want to commend you for continuing this series on the war on poverty and what works and what doesn't work and i want to thank all the witnesses for sharing your personal story about how we move in the right direction. i think there's a common theme, if we listen and that is that if you worked with one individual in poverty you worked with one individual in poverty. and that all folks need to be treated with an individualized regiment. that's where the case management comes in, miss reynolds. i was really impressed and i thought your testimony was remarkably compelling. i want to drill down a little bit if we may on the -- you separate out categories of poverty. chronic poverty, situational poverty, generational poverty. can you talk a little bit about what the percentages are? do you have a percentage of breakdown where people fit in those because they differ in how

to solve them, obviously. >> yeah. i don't. i would say our arranges, this is more anecdotal. we see a third, a third, a third. we have a large housing program funded by hud and those seniors are low-income. many have extended disabilities, mental health issues and we need provide them a place to live. those are folks in chronic poverty. they are not in many cases able to get swrobs but we do involve them with volunteer work in the commune and those sorts of things. we see a fair number in situational poverty. >> the success rate varies significantly between those three different categories i would expect. >> i want does. success looks different. for those in situational and generational poverty success would look like out of poverty. those in chronic poverty it's more about ensuring they live with dignity. that's how we distinguish that. those in chronic and situational

poverty that's one of the big reasons we're launching our poverty pilot is to study that a lot more and understand that a lot more and look at length of time. >> what the incentives -- can you talk a little bit about the incentives in the current system that either support moving towards case management system or not that seems to make i want less likely success in getting an individual out of poverty? >> i would say the things that really help us move a client out of poverty is that case manager working on the clients, working on a service plan after assessing them after a series of assets that we believe families need to possess to move out of poverty. setting goals both short term so they can have quick win, medium term and long term with that four prong strategy. >> does that -- how does that compare to the standard federal program of anti-poverty. >> a lot of -- there's so many

federal programs that are anti-poverty. it would be difficult to talk about that generally. you have public assistance programs which are usually more about output, number of people on it, number of people getting those services. you have some programs, like the refugee programs that are a very good model that's about getting to a point of self-sufficiency and no longer being able to depend on that. everything else is in between. it can be shelter beds. things like helping children thrive. who variety of things. >> miss tiller i'm impressed with america works and your focus on work. i wonder if you would relate that to the '96 we -- welfare reform act. >> the work requirement is important because it allows organizations like america, two provide that individualized

assistance to an individual. to hear what they want to do employment wise while addressing case management issues we've discussed here today. i think the work requirement is important for anybody who is deemed eligible to work and that's where comes in where they're screening people to ensure that they're enjibl to work. then we're looking at folks who are receiving, say, social security disability who for their whole lives have been told that they can't work but they actually want to and it's about matching them to an appropriate position and we've done that successfully for at least about the past seven years with our social security beneficiaries. so i think, again, that individualized approach, which is becoming a common theme, is so important because it allows us the opportunity to hear what this individual is going through. whereas they might not be heard to the caliber that they expect when they go to apply for the benefits or when they go to recertify for the benefits. >> is your program -- do you think your program is scalable nationwide? >> absolutely. >> we could build it up and have

greater success? thank you. >> thank you. >> there's no doubt in my mind, mr. chairman, that if we put miss turner and miss tiller and miss reynolds in a room together to address the theme of these meetings that we've been having in here that the three of you, regardless of your difference of opinions -- and there is some common factors -- would come up with a better solution than we could. let's get straight right now. it's clear the two parties want to do something about this problem, neither party is privy

to virtue on this. but we have widely different ideas about what direction we should go. i hear many times t"the culture of poverty." you better examen the culture of the congress, because the culture of poverty means that there is an essential part of poverty which will continue inevitab inevitably. on the other hand, i've heard how do we help folks become self-you have? that's an interesting term "self-sufficient." well, how do children three, four, five years old living in poverty become self-sufficient? how do seniors in their later years, how do the infirm, the

mentally challenged, how do the chronically unemployed? i've got self-sufficient coming out of my ears and it doesn't do what you three people do day in and day out. so thank you for what each of you do. according to not my analysis, public analysis, the budget that this house of representatives voted on finds 69% of the budget cuts -- which is $3.3 trillion over the forthcoming years, it cuts it for programs for people with low or moderate incomes. so you can pontiff case all you want, let's deal with the reality of what we have to deal with. i listened to you very, very carefully about what you needed and what catholic charities --

i'm very familiar with catholic charities, the great job you do all over the countries, not just in fort worth. those cuts are vital -- vital for us to understand -- in medicaid, "culture of poverty." snap program, you know what the snap program is all of you? you deal with it day in and day out. the social services block grant which provides states with funding for meals on wheels programs. incidental programs, you know? who the heck needs to eat. and child care for low-income workers. and it includes $125 billion in cuts for pell grants which gives low-income students the ability to break the cycle of poverty. "culture of poverty." we'll hear this. now, look, we're always going to have poor people and we always will have poor people. that should not be our incentive to try to do something about the

mess that's existing out there. and with children and the infirm and with those people that are mentally being challenged, miss turner? >> yes. >> let me ask you this question because i only have a bit of time. your children receive health coverage through the chip program, correct? >> no, my children receive medical through medical assistance program for philadelphia. >> could you explain how that work? >> my children receive medical through the department of public welfare so they receive keystone first. >> and what would happen if we ever cut that program and you couldn't be able to do that? >> what would happen is that my three children who suffer all from medical disabilities, i have three children with seizure disorder, my twins take life-sustaining medication twice a day. all three of my children have asthma who take medication everyday. >> i want to thank the three of you for testifying today. but please try to help us change

the culture in the congress of the united states. and we hope we listen to all three of you. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> i thank the chair, i also thank the witnesses for their testimony. this is the fifth hearing we've had on this and related subjects. i've learned a lot and it's no different today. you know, i believe from hearing all the testimony that one of the foundational reasons that government welfare programs can never and will be able to match the kind of services that you provide to the community is lack of relationship. government program cannot love. government program from that can't demand an expectation. it can't break the cycle necessarily. and i want to talk about that a little bit. ms. gaines-turner, if i understood your testimony correctly, we want to break that

cycle, everyone wants to break that cycle, you want to break that cycle. but we don't want to get off these programs necessarily. i understand the cliff and there's ways to soften it, perhaps, but if i understand you right, if we were to increase by 300%, 400%, 500%, all of these programs and get more money into the pockets of people by definition they would then be out of poverty and that would be a good thing or a bad thing? >> i wouldn't be a good thing if they were out of poverty and if they were moved out of poverty in the right way. don't push them out of poverty. what i mean by pushing them out of poverty is having these programs that you put in order and then you cut them. >> no, i understand that's the cliff. >> that's the cliff. >> so just take my theoretical example. to increase these programs by 500% people would be out of poverty and that would be a good thing? >> yes, the programs work, yes,

it would be good to move them out of poverty. >> but the cycle of dependency would certainly still be there which you also still don't like. >> the what? >> the cycle of dependency, you wouldn't be independent. >> i'm independent now on the program. >> you're independent on this program? >> yes, i consider myself to be very independent. i work just as hard as anybody in this room. and i'm very independent so i'm -- >> i'm not challenging whether -- >> i know. >> you say you're independent but you're here testifying that you have to have these programs and you need these programs. >> no. i didn't say i had to have these programs. what i said was these programs work to help people who are in struggling situations. if a person loses their job and they become unemployed -- >> that's not your situation. how about yours? >> okay, my situation is that i have been -- >> what is your job? >> right now i work with young children at a recreation center. my job is to make sure that they are doing their home work after school programs, making sure that the building is taken care

of, that is my job. my husband works at a -- >> and what's your pay? >> my pay is $10.88 an hour. >> your husband i saw from your written testimony works at a grocery store and that's full time as well? >> yes. my job is full time, but my job is also limited. i'm a seasonal employee so i work for six months with my job. >> and is that by choice so you can spend more time with your kids in the other six months? have you tried to get other employment? >> i've tried to find a lot of employment but due to health issues and things like that i haven't been able to find adequate jobs with full time -- >> i also saw on your testimony you're a ward leader in philadelphia's inner city. is that a paid position? >> no, it's not, it's volunteer. >> is that a partisan politician? >> i'm a ward leader for the 23rd ward. so i go outand make sure people understand the importance to vote? >> as a member of the republican party or democratic party? >> i'm a democrat, sir. >> but it's volunteer. i've known a precinct

committeeman one time. >> yes, volunteer. >> with the minute i have left i want to switch gears a little bit and talk about the work opportunity tax credit. miss tiller, miss reynolds, will r the two of you familiar with this? a lot of folks come to my office and say it's a good thing, it's effective in helping people -- incentivizing employers to hire low income people or folks that might have been -- that are an ex-felon or something like that and they get a credit for hiring and then training and keeping them on the job. it seems to me like a good thing then there's others that say "not so good." so i wanted to get your impressions of the program. let's start with you miss tiller, is it complementary to the work you do in training folks? is it a better incentive? >> we make sure if america works that we inform all of our participants, all of the individuals, about the work opportunity tax credit and i've heard both sides as well. with the ex-offenders that i work with consistently, there's