Poverty expert accuses Clinton of 'hyping' child hunger in U.S. (OneNewsNow.com)

Poverty expert accuses Clinton of 'hyping' child hunger in U.S.

Jim Brown - OneNewsNow - 2/29/2008 6:00:00 AM

Messy baby A leading national authority on poverty says the so-called anti-poverty proposals unveiled yesterday by Hillary Clinton are part of a "tired" liberal agenda that would further expand the welfare state.

Senator Clinton (D-New York) says the goal of her plan is to cut child poverty in half over the next 12 years by implementing universal pre-kindergarten programs and allowing children to begin the Head Start program earlier. Under her estimated $6-billion-a-year proposal, school breakfast programs would be universal in low-income neighborhoods and schools would be barred from serving junk food.

Robert Rector, senior research fellow on welfare and family issues at the Heritage Foundation, says Clinton refuses to even acknowledge the two primary causes of child poverty -- out-of-wedlock births, and parents living on welfare instead of working. "What she wants to do is combat poverty by putting the responsibility on the U.S. taxpayer, who already spends about $450 billion a year fighting poverty," says Rector, "while [at the same time] specifically avoiding the issue of changing the behaviors that are the cause of poverty."

The researcher cites statistics indicating that more than a third (38 percent) of children born in the U.S. are born outside of marriage, without a father in the home; and among blacks, that jumps to 69 percent, he adds. "That is the overwhelming single, strongest cause of poverty," he states. "And [most of] those out-of-wedlock births occur among the least educated white, black, and Hispanic women in the United States."

Rector contends Clinton is responding to largely hyped issues -- for example, hunger among U.S. children. "[Typically] maybe one child in 200 will miss even a single meal during the course of a month because of a lack of resources in a family," he maintains.

According to Rector, both poor and middle-class children on average have a high "consumption of proteins, vitamins, and minerals ... and you can't tell the difference between [those classes of children]."

Rector says the left wing's largely cultivated notion that there is widespread hunger among children in the U.S. is simply not true. In fact, he says, poor children have a problem with eating too much food, just like Americans in general.