day of action against poverty and the assault against the poor

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http://www.nationofchange.org/day-action-against-poverty-and-assault-against-poor-1359564608



An effort to move the fight against poverty to the top of the national agenda begins today, led by the Half in 10 campaign and the Coalition for Human Needs. The major campaign goal is to persuade President Obama to talk about poverty and its solutions in his State of the Union address February 12. It is also an opportunity to tell conservatives in Congress and the states to focus on fighting poverty and stop fighting the poor.

The heart of the #TalkPoverty campaign is a social media campaign that is designed to build public demand for paying more attention to the needs of the nearly 50 million people living in poverty in the United States. These are the people whose struggle to support themselves will be directly affected by the federal budget sequester that is scheduled to go into effect March 1 unless Congress and the Obama administration agrees on a budget. The sequester will force an average 5 percent cut in most federal spending programs.

While Social Security will be shielded, a broad swath of programs that help low-income people survive and climb out of poverty will be affected. They include nutrition assistance for children and their mothers, child care, housing, home energy, homeless aid, and education and training programs Medicare would be also be cut by $11.2 billion.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities recently released a fact sheet on what the sequester cuts would do to housing assistance and community development programs. If the sequester goes into effect, according to the fact sheet, 2.1 million people around the country would lose housing assistance. In many cases, losing this housing assistance will mean households will become homeless.

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