Steve Cohen: “I thank the gentleman for yielding. I am pleased to join you because this is such an important topic and a topic that I…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. I am pleased to join you because this is such an important topic and a topic that I have been talking about for a long time. The income inequality in our country has grown and grown, and the tax cuts of Donald Trump, which I voted against, contributed to it greatly--tax cuts that gave the wealthy much more money, corporations and individuals, and did not help the poor and didn't really help the middle class much. My district is in Memphis, Shelby County and Tipton County, just north of Memphis. Because of that, I am no stranger to high levels of poverty and inequality. According to the 2023 Poverty Fact Sheet by the University of Memphis, 21.4 percent of Memphians live in poverty. The overall poverty rate for Black and Latino Memphians is almost double that of White and Caucasian residents; roughly 27 percent for Black and Latino residents, compared to 10 percent of Whites. The child poverty rate is 32.7, a number that has been declining in recent years due to the child tax credits, but still far too high, and we don't know how much the child tax credits will be available to people this coming year. In 2022, the child poverty rate in African-American and Latino communities was three times that of White families, 30 percent to 10. What hope does that give young African-American and Latino children? The root causes of poverty often come down to access and opportunity.…”