This December, Congress has some important decisions to make — decisions that will have a significant impact on the number of people experiencing poverty in the United States. If Congress does nothing, Unemployment Insurance and payroll tax cuts will expire at the end of the month.

It is rare that Congress is faced with a decision that would almost immediately save a large number of Americans from needlessly experiencing poverty. Analysis from the venerable Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that extending the payroll tax cut will help keep 1.1 million Americans — low-income workers and their families — out of poverty.

Congress also has a chance to help people who are currently unemployed from falling into poverty.  Last year at this time, Congress and President Obama extended Unemployment Insurance for 12 months, a move that kept more than 3 million Americans out of poverty.   The extension of Unemployment Insurance that was passed last December will expire at the end of this month.   If Unemployment Insurance is not extended, many struggling unemployed people may lose their Unemployment benefits before finding new jobs.  Unemployment rates are still high and many unemployed people have been searching for work for a very long time. In fact, research from the Pew Economic Policy Group shows that more than half of the long-term unemployed have been looking for employment for more than 12 months.

Not only do Unemployment Insurance and the Payroll Tax cut help to keep struggling people out of poverty, they also provide a much-needed stimulus to our economy.

Your Congressional representatives should hear from you on this important issue.  Our friends at Network: A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby have an easy-to-use form that allows you to send a message to your representatives.

Why are unemployment benefits still necessary?

The economy has been improving, but unemployed people are still struggling.  The national employment rate is 9.6%.  California’s uneployment rate is even higher than the national average, at 12.2%.  Nationwide, there is currently only one available job for every five unemployed workers.   Unemployed Americans are looking for work, but our labor market remains extremely tight, and unemployment benefits are the only lifeline available to these families until the economy improves.

Here at St. Anthony’s, we’ve seen a steady increase in people using our Tenderloin Technology Lab to find employment, and we’ve seen an increase in the number of seniors, families, and recently unemployed people in need of free meals, free clothing, or groceries from our food pantry.  We are happy to serve those in need, but we are also committed to speaking out to our lawmakers to tell them about the importance of maintaining our social safety net so that millions of Americans don’t needlessly fall into deep poverty during these difficult economic times.

Now is not the time to abandon unemployed Americans.

Tomorrow, November 16, 2010 is the national day of action on unemployment benefits.  Congress needs to hear from you!

The National Employment Law Project has a toll free number for people to call their Senators (California’s Senators are Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein) on Tuesday November 16.  The number is: 1-866-606-1189.   You can be connected automatically through their website, here.

The California Employment Development Department reports that as of June 22, 2010, there are 205,000 Californians who are in danger of running out of Unemployment Insurance benefits or who have already received their last check.

Not only do we need to advocate for the extension of Unemployment Insurance, medical care, and affordable housing funding, we have to tell Congress not to pay for these programs by cutting other vital services, like anti-hunger programs!  (One of the ideas floating through the Senate last week was to pay for the Unemployment Insurance extension by cutting $9.5 billion from the Food Stamp program!)  It’s unbelievable to me that the Senate would consider making this type of “Sophie’s Choice”, but I guess I feel that way because I work here at St. Anthony’s, where we take a holistic approach to helping people through rough times by offering free meals, employment assistance, medical care, free clothing, and more.

The Senate is expected to take up H.R. 4213 again after the Fourth of July recess.  Once again, we have the opportunity to tell our Senators that we need to take action to promote the common good and help our struggling friends, neighbors, and community members.

Our friends at NETWORK: A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby have an email form here that makes it easy to contact your Senators and ask them to support H.R. 4213.

According to the California Economic Development Department, San Francisco County currently has a 9.6% unemployment rate, with 43,500 people unemployed.  Help support them and other low-income members of our community by contacting our Senators and urging them to support the following items in H.R. 4213:

Our friends at Network: A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby have an easy-to-use customizable email form at their website.

The U.S. Senate is currently working on a jobs bill that will assist unemployed workers nationwide by extending emergency Unemployment benefits and COBRA health insurance subsidies.  Tomorrow, March 9, 2010, the Senate is scheduled to vote on an amendment to the jobs bill, the Murray/Kerry amendment, that would extend TANF ECF funding for an additional six months (until March 0f 2011).

TANF ECF supports struggling California workers and their families with subsidized employment, basic cash assistance, and work supports.   California gets an 80% match from the federal government on all TANF ECF programs.  At a time when California is experiencing unprecedented budget deficits, TANF ECF has served as a lifeline for struggling Californians and for the state’s economy.

If you’d like to let your Senators know how you feel about extending the TANF ECF, visit The Center for Law and Social Policy’s website.  They have an action alert here that gives you information about the TANF ECF and connects you to the U.S. Senate’s website, where you can contact your Senators.

If you’re interested in knowing how the TANF ECF has helped California so far, check out this report from The California Budget Project.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, California had a 12.4 % unemployment rate in December 2009.  That means that there are currently 2,254,381 unemployed people in our state.  Around 150,000 of them stand to lose their unemployment benefits and nearly 1 million stand to lose their COBRA health insurance subsidies at the end of this month.

As California Healthline reported in December, the average COBRA premium is $1,107 a month in California, about $720 of which is covered by the federal subsidy.  The average unemployment compensation benefit in California amounts to $1,349 per month.

Our friends at NETWORK: A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby have a nifty form on their website that makes it easy to advocate for an extension to Unemployment benefits and COBRA subsidies.  Visit NETWORK’s website to find out more.

An estimated 154,000 people in California will exhaust their Unemployment benefits by the end of 2009.  California has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, at 11.9%.  HR 3548 would provide 14 additional weeks of benefits to jobless workers in all 50 states. Those in states like California, with high unemployment rates (a three-month average rate of at least 8.5%) would get another six weeks of benefits, for a total of 20 weeks.

Christine Owens, the Executive Director of the National Employment Law Project, says:

By extending benefits 14 weeks to every state, and an additional 6 weeks to those states hit hardest by the recession, this legislation is an essential component to economic recovery and could not come at a better time.

Go to Network’s Web Site to find out more.

“I plan on spending the money to renew my driver’s license and maybe get a few things after I move into a place.” Said Gabe, one of the 35 participants who were paid today.

Program participants from St. Anthony’s flyered at Bay Bridge entrances in the days leading up to the closure and redirected traffic over Labor Day weekend. Many participants have been actively seeking work for months.

Years ago, when I helped coordinate the adult religious education class in my church, we had to deal every year with the question of theodicy. Why does God let bad things happen to good people? Who is bad enough to deserve death by starvation, plague, earthquake, tsunami?

It’s an old and difficult question. But it gets a lot easier when you eliminate the long list of “natural” disasters that are caused or made much worse by the conscious decisions of human beings.

Examine the list of famines caused by war: burning of fields, mining of rice paddies, troops fighting in large open spaces where the crops are grown.  Study the plagues caused by the intentional contamination of a people’s water supply to force surrender in war or the unconscious contamination by people upstream who have no choice about what they put into the water for the people downstream because they have no other means of washing and dumping. The knowledge and resources exist, but the political will does not.

Earthquakes, of course, are natural. But the disaster is often man made. In Afghanistan, poor neighborhoods were devastated while wealthier neighborhoods incurred very little damage because buildings in poor neighborhoods were flimsy while buildings in other neighborhoods were earthquake resistant.

As Frankie and Laurel point out, it’s not the disease, it’s not even lack of healthcare; it’s lack of access to healthcare.

The United States suffers from the disease of poverty. In our business, we often see the causes of poverty listed as “lack of job skills, lack of work history, physical disability, mental illness, alcoholism and addiction.”

But these are not the causes of poverty. The causes of poverty are lack of job training, lack of job mentorship, lack of accommodation and training for people with disabilities, lack of residential recovery programs, lack of services and supportive housing for people with mental illness, lack of affordable housing for the underemployed.

Why don’t we have enough of these things? Is it because we can’t afford them? In the United States? In CALIFORNIA? As a homeless activist I used to know said, “This is not a poor country. Someone is making a decision.”

We need to re-examine that decision. We need new priorities.