- Utah Republican focused on community-based solutions to poverty, and self-sufficiency with help from non-profits rather than traditional government-funded welfare expansion.
- Lawmakers like Rep. Mike Kennedy and Rep. Tyler Clancy drew on their personal experiences as to why they think poverty is fixable.
- The "benefits cliff" was identified as a structural problem in existing safety net programs, where recipients lose benefits when earning slightly more income.
What is a conservative approach to fixing poverty?
Republican leaders in Utah explored answers to that question at the annual Know Poverty Summit.
Speakers at Wednesday’s summit in Provo said people struggling with poverty should connect with community organizations like Circles and Community Action, which help people become employed, with the goal of eventual self-sufficiency.
3rd Congressional District Rep. Mike Kennedy; state Rep. Tyler Clancy, R-Provo; Provo mayoral candidate Marsha Judkins, and many poverty-focused, nonprofit workers attended the summit.
Kennedy draws from his low-income childhood in Michigan
Kennedy said hard and consistent work is what pulled him out of his humble beginnings in Michigan.
Kennedy was 13 years old when his dad left his mom and their seven children. He said his family relied on welfare programs from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and free lunch at public school.
He recalled, “I’ve been working for 44 years, since I was 12. I’m 56 now.”
“As I went through college and medical school and law school, I’ve worked the whole time trying to pave my way forward. That hard work ethic is something that we can expect as best they can,” he said.
Kennedy has a medical degree from Michigan State University and a law degree from Brigham Young University. He maintains a family medical practice in Utah.
“I look at poverty like I look at a disease,” Kennedy continued. “These are things that are fixable. They’re treatable, and it’s us working together that allows us to be able to do that,” he said, referencing community events like the Know Poverty Summit.
Lifting people out of poverty takes more than government spending
Poverty has little to do with money in and money out, and much more to do with opportunities, Clancy said during his remarks.
Education, public safety, financial literacy and work ethic do far more for pulling people out of poverty than government benefits do, he said.
Clancy referenced the “benefits cliff,” which discourages low-income people from pursuing raises. As a person’s income grows, they can lose access to federal benefits, making it less beneficial to earn more.
The benefits cliff is a “structural force at play within our social safety net that actually disincentivizes work and disincentivizes opportunity,” Clancy said.
“We should not be pointing the finger at these families who are working really hard and are on the safety net,” Clancy told the Deseret News. “We should be pointing our finger at the government to say, we’ve got to fix these programs and make sure they actually work for the families who need them.”
When Tristen Thomas, a Circles graduate and member of the Community Action board of trustees, got a dollar raise at work, she was suddenly ineligible for Medicaid and lost $600 per month in government benefits.
She told the Deseret News the following months were “very scary” financially, and she wasn’t sure at first if it was worth it. But the one thing Thomas always did was “show up and work hard.”
She kept moving forward, is now entirely self-sufficient and said she is very proud of how far she has come.
“There’s nothing more patriotic than listening to her (Thomas) speak about the challenges that she’s overcome and the success that she’s seen,” Clancy told the Deseret News.
Poverty can be a mental battle
Cody Martensen, Circle’s coordinator for Utah and Wasatch Valley, spoke about his own battle with addiction and poverty.
“I remember every single month, choosing which bills I was going to pay and which ones I could put off for another month,” he said. One day as he was watching his two boys, he realized he needed to make serious changes.
Martensen signed up for various classes aimed at self-sufficiency and is now living 200% above the poverty line.
“Poverty is kind of a mindset, and it gets so comfortable and so normal,” he said.
How can lawmakers reinvigorate the American dream
Some federal policy, including benefit cliffs, make it difficult for low-income individuals and families to want to move toward self-sufficiency and gain upward mobility.
Meanwhile, some conservatives have “struggled to acknowledge poverty,” Clancy said, “because we care deeply about the American dream, and because we support capitalism.”
“Poverty challenges the narrative that capitalism works,” he said.
But conservative policymakers have the chance to lead out on addressing poverty in new ways, Clancy told the Deseret News. It should involve “talking about social capital, talking about strong families, talking about things like the success sequence and relationships and the importance of community,” he said.
The “success sequence” is a set of behaviors — graduating from high school, getting a job and getting married before having kids — that have been showed to keep a person out of poverty.
Clancy also referenced Opportunity Zones, sponsored by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., in Trump’s 2017 tax cuts legislation.
The poverty simulation
After a morning of speakers, summit attendees were invited to participate in a poverty simulation, meant to show how hard it can be for people living in poverty to make ends meet.
Participants had an hour, with 15-minute increments representing one week, to pay all their bills, go to work, buy food and prescriptions and more.
A surprising number of people ended up in pretend-jail when things in their lives went awry.
