September 2006

State Treasurer Judy Barr Topinka, the Republican candidate for governor of Illinois, recently announced her position and plans for Medicaid. Among Treasurer Topinka’s ideas for the Medicaid program is to ask the federal government to change the funding of the program from open-ended matching funds to a flat block grant. A Medicaid block grant is unwise, risky, unnecessary, and ultimately a recipe for less health care in Illinois. Treasurer Topinka should reconsider her support of this strategy.

As elected officials, members of Congress are obligated to represent every individual in their district or state, regardless of income. Sadly, judging by their voting records, some members ignore their responsibilities to serve their poorest constituents. The Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law insists that legislators seek to represent every citizen fairly. For this reason, we've created the State of Poverty: 2006 Congressional Midterm Report. We must hold members of Congress accountable to represent the needs of the poorest among us.

[Editor’s Note: For a week last month, Shriver Center volunteers Janine Fletcher, Andrew Hammond, Jami Schlafer, and Rebecca Marchiel were on the Habitat for Humanity’s St. Bernard Project in New Orleans.] During the first week of August, we worked in New Orleans with Habitat for Humanity’s St. Bernard Recovery Project. Hurricane Katrina wrought heavy structural damage on 100 percent of the residential and commercial units of St. Bernard Parish, located southeast of New Orleans.

The increase in child poverty in the Midwest since 2000 by 29 percent, compared to 12 percent for the entire United States, is largely due to macroeconomic trends rather than family characteristics such as parent’s employment status, level of education, or nativity, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty in a report entitled “The New Poor” released last month. The Midwest accounts for nearly half of the increase nationwide.

Branching Out, a new video release from the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, shows the real-life story of high school students running bank branches in their schools. Those branches are the Curie Branch of Park Federal Savings Bank at Curie Metro High School in Chicago and the Cardinal Branch of Mitchell Bank at South Division High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.