House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and House Republicans are pushing reckless cuts that would take America’s economy back half a century. Their “cuts only” approach to deficit reduction would force painful cuts in effective human needs programs such as SNAP/food stamps and Head Start while leaving tax breaks for hedge fund managers, corporate jet owners, and oil companies off the table. But how would such an approach affect Speaker Boehner’s own constituents in Ohio’s 8th congressional district?

When telling stories, it’s not the facts that we learn that make us believe; it’s finding the connection between their values and experiences to our own that make stories and narratives that much more powerful.

At a critical juncture in the deficit reduction talks, the leaders of prominent national religious, civil rights, charitable, economic research, and low-income advocacy organizations are calling on Executive and Congressional leadership to honor the precedent set by previous deficit reduction negotiations that have reduced the deficit without increasing poverty.

As they move forward in the debates, policymakers should not forget that the budget is a moral document, a reflection of our greatest priorities and highest values. Spending caps, proposals to block grant Medicaid and food stamps, and balanced budget amendments would leave vulnerable families and children to fend for themselves.

Cutting child poverty in half sounds like a magician’s trick, or some miracle of rapid economic growth. But Britain has used standard policy tools to reduce its child-poverty rate by more than half since 1994 and has effectively defended this progress against the pressures of the Great Recession.

RICHMOND, Va. - Tough times call for even tougher measures, and one Virginia organization is working with a national campaign called “Half in Ten” to cut poverty rates in half over ten years.

Half in Ten, the campaign to cut poverty in half in ten years, in partnership with the Coalition on Human Needs (CHN), which heads up the “SAVE for All” coalition, have launched the “Stories” website. Together they “are collecting videos and written testimony from affected individuals from across the country that highlight the ways that federal programs successfully build shared prosperity and what cuts to these programs would mean for families, communities and businesses across the country.”

Any day now Governor of Texas Rick Perry is expected to sign into law a bill that would require pregnant women to have a sonogram and to hear a physician describe the fetus before they are allowed to have an abortion. A similar bill is waiting to be signed in Florida.

For Jack Frech, director of the Athens County Department of Job and Family Services in Appalachian Ohio, the fact that Congress and statehouses across the country are pushing budgets that would further cut assistance for poor people is downright frightening. “I’ve been doing this work for thirty years, and this is the worst I’ve seen it by far,” says Frech. “And when I say the worst, I mean the absolute worst.”

Members of the statewide organizing team for A Minnesota Without Poverty, as well as the board, wrote letters of appreciation and support to Gov. Mark Dayton in support of a balanced and fair approach to addressing the budget deficit and funding basic public services. The letters also expressed a willingness to do one’s own part in order to solve the budget deficit and support for the Legislative Commission to End Poverty’s recommendations to end poverty in Minnesota.