John Edwards for President: ARCHIVAL MIRROR-Building One America with Healthy Families and Communities

Building One America with Healthy Families and Communities

"Families are where we learn our values and get the strength to succeed in the world. But families need communities to hold them together. Building One America where everyone has a fair shot at a better life requires that we all take responsibility for strengthening our families and our communities."
– John Edwards

The final day of John Edwards' Road to One America tour reaches the Appalachian areas of Wise, Virginia, and Whitesburg and Prestonsburg, Kentucky. The tour is intended to shine a light on places and people struggling with poverty and highlight solutions to restore economic fairness building on the principles of work, opportunity, and families. Today, Edwards announced a plan to strengthen low-income families with proposals for family literacy and nurse home visits. The new initiatives build on his plans to strengthen families by discouraging teen pregnancy, cutting the tax penalty on marriage that still hits too many low-income families and expecting young men to take responsibility for their children while making it easier for them to support them. Today's stops also allow Edwards to describe his agenda for rural areas and people with disabilities.

Today's Stops on the Road to One America

Wise, Virginia, is a rural coal town facing many of the challenges confronting rural communities across America, including poor access to health care. Nationwide, nine million rural Americans are uninsured, and over the past 25 years, 470 rural hospitals have closed. The Remote Area Medical (RAM) Volunteer Corps provides essential health services to people in remote areas who cannot otherwise afford it. RAM stops in Wise each year, serving over 1,200 volunteers helped over 7,000 people from the surrounding counties with all types of medical, dental and optical needs. In Wise and neighboring counties, nearly a third of working-age adults report having a disability. Nationally, working-age Americans with moderate disabilities are almost 30 percent more likely to live in poverty, and those with significant disabilities are more than twice as likely to live in poverty. The Junction Center for Independent Living is part of a nationwide network of non-residential, grassroots organizations designed and operated by individuals with disabilities. The Junction Center aims to maximize the leadership, empowerment, independence, and economic self-sufficiency of individuals with disabilities in rural Virginia. [Winbush and Crichlow, 2005; Carsey Institute, 2006; USDA, 2004; Census Bureau, 2007]

Whitesburg, Kentucky, is home to the Center for Rural Strategies and to Appalshop, a non-profit arts and education center. The town, like many in the rural America, struggles to create economic opportunities to keep its young people from leaving. The region has 3.5 high school drop-outs for every four-year college graduates, one of the highest ratios in the nation. Appalshop's Appalachian Media Institute Program offers arts internships where young people learn to produce broadcast narratives of the challenges facing youth in Appalachia. [Beale, 2004]

Prestonburg, Kentucky, known as "the star city of Eastern Kentucky," is the county seat of Floyd County and among the poorest 2 percent of counties in the United States. In 1968, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy concluded his tour of the impoverished regions of Southeastern Kentucky with a speech at the Floyd County Courthouse. Today, groups like the Prestonsburg Renaissance committee meet regularly to encourage economic development in the area and preserve its unique and rich culture. Local leaders place great hope in the potential economic benefit of producing renewable energies like biofuels. [U.S. Census Bureau, 2007; Kentucky Rural Energy Consortium, undated]

John Edwards' Plan to Support Healthy Families and Communities

Families are where we learn our values and the difference between right and wrong. In communities across America, families aren't getting the support they need. Hundreds of thousands of teenagers have children they aren't ready to raise. Today, from the Road to One America, John Edwards outlined his agenda to end poverty and create One America where healthy families and communities realize their fullest potential.

Home Visits for New Parents: Home visits improve prenatal health and the quality of caregiving after birth. John Edwards will invest in home visits by registered nurses to low-income new parents, providing matching grants to states to serve 50,000 families. Multiple visits from nurses, with manageable caseloads, to families living at up to twice the poverty line will start during pregnancy and continue through each child's second year. Children receiving nurse visits are cognitively more advanced than their non-visited peers, have fewer behavioral problems, and are less likely to be abused or neglected. [American Academy of Pediatrics 2004; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 2006; Nurse Family Partnership 2006]
Investing in Family Literacy: Thirty million American adults have very limited literacy skills and the children of functionally illiterate parents are twice as likely to be illiterate themselves. Family literacy programs address the educational needs of both parents and children by enhancing the language skills of adults and providing age appropriate instruction to accelerate the cognitive development of children. President Bush has drastically cut funding for family literacy. John Edwards will restore funding and give family literacy programs the support they deserve. [National Center for Family Literacy, Undated; National Even Start Association, 2007]

Building on Edwards' Agenda to Promote Strong, Responsible Families

On the Road to One America, John Edwards outlined his agenda to end poverty and create One America where everyone has the opportunity to live up to their potential, no matter where they come from or the color of their skin. Today's new policy announcement complements Edwards' existing policies to promote strong, responsible families:

Encourage and Reward Responsibility from Fathers: Welfare reform required mothers to work and helps them find jobs, but it failed to reach low-income fathers. Edwards will require more fathers to help support their children and, in return, help them find work. He will reverse budget cuts in child support enforcement to increase collections by more than $8 billion over the next decade and ensure that payments benefit children.
Reduce the Marriage Penalty for Struggling Families: Marriage is the foundation for strong, economically secure families, but the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income workers penalizes married couples by up to $3,000. Edwards will cut the EITC marriage penalty, reducing taxes for 3 million couples by about $400 a year. [CBPP, 2006]
Triple the EITC for Adults without Children: Working adults without children are the only Americans living in poverty who pay income and payroll taxes, amounting to more than $800 a year. Moreover, the EITC largely overlooks single men, who receive less than 2 percent of EITC benefits. Edwards will triple the maximum EITC for single adults. [CBPP, 2000 and 2006]
Fight Teen Pregnancy: Edwards believes we can build on recent partial success in reducing teen pregnancy. The U.S. still has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world. Edwards called for more support for struggling young people and investments in programs that help them beat the odds.