Congress holds 3 hearings on child poverty in first 3 months of 2020
In the past six weeks, the House of Representatives has made child poverty a clear priority. Hearings have been called by the Oversight, Appropriations, and Ways & Means committees with clear momentum towards the goal of ending child poverty in the United States. Below, you will find videos from each of these hearings and links to the written testimony of the witnesses (where available).
On February 5 and 6, 2020, the Committee on Oversight and Reform conducted an in-depth, two-day series of hearings held by four of its subcommittees to examine the negative effects of regulations proposed by the Trump Administration relating to children. This unique and extensive series of hearings assessed the detrimental impact of the Administration’s actions on child poverty, housing, hunger, and health.
The first of these hearings was held by Government Operations Subcommittee Chairman Gerry Connolly and included testimony from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; Rep. Carol Miller; Sister Simone Campbell Executive Director of Network Lobby; Indi Dutta Gupta, Co-Executive Director, Center on Poverty at Georgetown Law; Amy Jo Hutchison, Organizer at Healthy Kids and Families Coalition, West Virginia; and Rob Smith, Advisory Board Member at Legacy Republican Alliance.
The full hearing video is below, but Amy Jo Hutchinson’s opening statement received quite a bit of attention, garnering millions of views on Buzzfeed, AJ+, and was called the “Truth Bomb of the Week.”
On March 3, House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro held a hearing titled “Reducing Child Poverty” which included testimony from Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Brandeis University; Douglas Besharov, Professor at University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy; Cheryl Brunson from the Brookland Manor Tenants’ Association and the DC Poor People’s Campaign; Autumn Burke, Assemblywoman, 62nd Assembly District on the California State Assembly; Kathryn Edin, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University; Irwin Garfinkel, Professor of Contemporary Urban Problems at Columbia University; and Matt Weidinger, Rowe Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
On March 11, House Ways and Means Worker and Family Support Subcommittee Chairman Danny K. Davis (D-IL) held a hearing titled “Combatting Child Poverty in America” which included testimony from Ron Haskins, Senior Fellow and Cabot Family Chair in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution (who replaced Dolores Acevedo-García when she was unable to travel to the hearing); Dr. Marsha Raulerson, Pediatrician in Brewton, Alabama; Joy Bivens, Agency Director, Department of Job and Family Services in Franklin County, Ohio; and Angela Rachidi, Rowe Scholar for Poverty Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Worker and Family Support Subcommittee Hearing on Combatting Child Poverty in America