A reminder of Conn.’s hungry children

There are some unpleasant images from the pandemic that we should allow to linger. Yes, memories of masks and empty supermarket shelves won’t soon be forgotten. Those were direct fallout from COVID-19. But there are other issues that COVID did not cause, though it did reveal them.

The scope of how many Connecticut residents live paycheck to paycheck has not been a secret to social service agencies. United Way put a name to it more than seven years ago: ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed).

Acronyms don’t tell the story as vividly as the image of people waiting in long lines for food. There were a lot of lines during those early days of COVID-19. Some were for COVID tests, but far too many were to feed children.

The need hasn’t gone away, it’s just returned behind closed doors. And while COVID slowly diminished, there has been a lot of ancillary fallout.

The new ALICE report says some 125,000 children in the state didn’t have enough to eat when schools welcomed back students last September.

ALICE defines a threshold. People in the group earn enough income to surpass the federal poverty level, but still can’t make ends meet. So those supermarket cashiers ringing up groceries again and again can’t afford to pay for their own.

Not long before COVID arrived, data from 2019 placed about 305,000 children in the state as living in households below the threshold. United Way and its peers have been trying to stem that tide for a long time, but it apparently got worse in these last two years.

United Way of Southwest Connecticut Chief Executive Officer Dina SearsGraves pointed to a recurring phrase voiced by families in those food lines: “We’ve never done this before.” Others don’t know life any other way.

The data cites jarring details: 72 percent of Black children and 67 percent of Hispanic children in Connecticut are below the threshold.

Connecticut United Way is pitching four policy priorities to lawmakers during this brief session:

Maintain the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit at 41.5 percent (it was at 30 percent). Federal pandemic relief funds are being used to raise it to that level for 2020 and 2021, but it’s only temporary.

Establish a child tax credit in Connecticut for lowand middle-income families. It would achieve on a state level what Congress could not.

Eliminate limits for Temporary Family Assistance that require eligible families to have less than $3,000 in savings and a car worth no more than $9,500.

Update eligibility standards for Temporary Family Assistance and

The new ALICE report says some 125,000 children in the state didn’t have enough to eat when schools welcomed back students last September.

Husky C.

The child tax credit made it out of committee, but faces obstacles from treasury rules as a result of federal pandemic relief funding.

The American Rescue Plan Act can’t become an obstacle. Connecticut needs to look to the future, even if it can’t deliver the likes of tax credit relief immediately.

If lawmakers have one goal this session, it should be to make those lines shorter.