Poverty in John Boehner's District

The Nation Magazine has a blog and recently there was a posting by Greg Kaufman describing the poverty that exists in Boehner's district.  The poverty rate is 14%.  The woman, Tina Osso, who has run The Shared Harvest Food Pantry for forty years has tried many times to contact Boehner.  He neither responds or accepts her invitations to visit.  She has worked tirelessly to get Boehner to recognize these problems.  She has written to him and explained how the proposed budget cuts will hurt his people but still gets no response.
Kaufman reports, "Indeed in 2009, childhood poverty rose over six points in the Boehner district to reach 19.1 percent, or 29,173 kids. Overall, 14 percent of Boehner’s constituents live below the federal poverty line of $22,400 per year for a family of four. Shared Harvest’s work has more than doubled—it distributed approximately 7 million pounds of food in 2007, and 16 million pounds in 2010."
This is not the only problem.  There are 152,000 people in this district who are struggling to make ends meet and hunger is a major problem.  The food bank is only in a few of the schools but serves 2100 children each week.
Why, you might wonder, do I think this story is important.  With these visible problems in Boehner's own district he is in favor of cutting the food stamp program and other programs that help the poor.  It is one more reason that points to the fact that those in Congress do not care about the people they serve.  As I mentioned in my last post neither Republicans or Democrats listen to anyone but the big corporations and wealthy who give them money for their campaigns.
Osso says this about the budget cuts. “It’s not just the cuts to the programs that we manage. It’s the overall meanness of this budget that targets the most vulnerable populations in our country—the weakest and the ones with the smallest voice,” she says.
I do  not understand how anyone can not listen to pleas like this and call them selves Christians.  Jesus believed in taking care of the least of these my brothers.  If we follow him how can we allow babies and young children to go to bed hungry and old people to get $20.00 worth of food  a month.
I shake my head in disbelief and weep for those who are so in need.