On Tuesday, at a House Budget Committee hearing entitled “Poverty in America: Economic Realities of Struggling Families,” 10 Republican congressmen participated—all men, all white. A few of them shared their own stories of rising from poverty, including Ohio's Bill Johnson, who said he was born on a mule farm with no indoor plumbing. His family went to the store once a month “to get sugar and salt—if we had the money to do it. Everything else came from the sweat of our brow and the toil of our hands.” His mother worked “three or four jobs.” His father was an alcoholic, he said, so they moved a lot—wherever his mother could find work—and Johnson attended 13 schools in 12 years.
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