Congressman Paul Ryan recently said that Republicans “don’t have a full-fledged” plan to fight poverty “because we 
need to do more listening to people who are in the trenches fighting poverty.”
He had the perfect opportunity to do just that at a recent House Budget Committee hearing, “War on Poverty: A Progress Report,” which he chaired. California Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee requested that Chairman Ryan allow Tianna Gaines-Turner—a mother and anti-poverty activist who has struggled with poverty and homelessness—to testify.
But Chairman Ryan balked.
But Nation.com columnist Greg Kaufmann didn't. He published parts of her written testimony that Ryan invited her to submit. Usually written testimony might as well be buried deep in the furthest reaches of a coal mine, but Kaufmann didn't let that happen. Here's part of it. He has a link to Gaines-Turner's entire text.
Before laying out her recommendations for fighting poverty, Gaines-Turner writes that she doesn’t want the proverbial “hand out” or “hand up.” What she and people in her community are looking for is a “hand in.”
Include us. If you want to find solutions to the issues that people face while living in poverty, people actually living in poverty need to be part of the discussion when decisions are being made. If you do not have an understanding of the struggles, how can you try to solve them…? We are the real experts. We know American policies first hand.
Gaines-Turner then offers six major recommendations: creating a bipartisan task force on poverty representing urban, rural, and suburban districts, and including people who live in poverty; investing in good jobs with good pay, so that working people are able to get off of public assistance; protecting and strengthening SNAP, which prevents more costly emergency room visits; investing in affordable housing; supporting access to healthcare and promoting asset building, so that families can “build their own safety net” and aren’t “kicked off [public assistance] for just having a little more than nothing.”
http://www.thenation.com/blog/175674/week-poverty-expert-testimony-tianna-gaines-turner#
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