DATE: Sunday, November 23, 1997             TAG: 9711220007

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J5   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   83 lines

WALK-A-MILE WILL POVERTY EXPERIMENT CHANGE POLICY?

I'm not sure whether to blame the organically grown vegetables or the block of New Zealand cheddar. But I walked out of my favorite natural foods store last week with $48 less in the checkbook and two scant bags of groceries more for the larder.

If I were to ``Walk-A-Mile,'' my family of four would be facing beans-and-rice and rice-and-beans morning, noon and night for the last week or two of the month.

That's because in one flighty outing I blew more than one-tenth of the $408 monthly allowance we'd get if we were living on food stamps.

This month 83 Virginia policymakers, including Lt. Gov. Don Beyer, Attorney General-elect Mark Earley and Commissioner of Social Services Clarence Carter, are getting a taste of what it's like to be poor in Virginia. Literally.

More power to them. They've committed themselves and/or their families to live on a food stamp allowance for the month. That's $122 for one person, $224 for two, $321 for three, or - in Earley's case - $735 for eight. Governor-elect Jim Gilmore is conspicuous by his absence.

Think the exercise will be a snap? Just ask Del. Donald McEachin, who acknowledged right up front that subsistence dining was too much to expect of his 2-, 4- and 8-year-old daughters.

Just as the children of poverty didn't ask for their raw deal, so his children ``didn't ask to be born to a state legislator,'' noted the Richmond attorney. ``How do you tell a 2-year-old that she can't go to McDonald's''?

(Take a note, Earley clan. If you can sell mom and dad on this line of thinking, it might earn you a bonus Big Mac.)

Midway into his first day on the beat, the hefty, 6-foot-5-inch delegate was already having to do some recalculating. For breakfast, he'd run up a $3.47 tab for bacon, hash browns and o.j. Figuring on a 30-day month, that left him 60 cents for lunch and dinner.

``I guess I'm going to be doing some brownbagging,'' he admitted. But for both meals?

(Maybe CSX, the transportation giant that just sent Beyer and Gilmore and their families to the Greenbrier resort for an all-expenses-paid, post-election wind-down, could offer a similar deal to help the Walk-A-Mile participants to stretch those food-stamp dollars.)

I'd be willing to bet it will be the rare policymaker who doesn't tiptoe into the kitchen at midnight and wolf down a lingering helping of Breyer's vanilla. And I expect a fair number will arrange to eat Thanksgiving dinner with the relatives.

I'd also be willing to bet that the officials who've signed up for the Walk-A-Mile project are the ones who're already sensitive to what they'll find: that being poor is a tough-at-best, abysmal-at-worst condition in this society.

It's too bad the exercise can't be mandated for the ignorant.

For them, I'd propose another challenge: living for a year at the poverty level. Based on 1996 figures, that would be $12,641 for one adult and two children; $15,911 for my family; and $25,816 for the Earleys and their six offspring.

I'd further suggest that those policy-setters who are hopelessly addicted to their Infinitis and Rolexes be allowed to skip the self-sacrifice if they agree to support, or at least reflect deeply on, a couple of important pieces of legislation facing the 1998 Assembly:

A state Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor.

Participation in a new federal program to cover the medical expenses of the children of low-income, working families.

The Earned Income Tax Credit would bolster the working poor by pushing their incomes upward toward the poverty level. As proposed, the tax credit would be $329 (or 10 percent of the federal earned-income allowance) for a family of four with a threshold income of $8,225. The family would pay $1 in tax.

The allowance would gradually decline to a $40 discount on the $411 in state income taxes paid if the same size family earned $19,000.

To my mind, this is a stellar investment at a time when the nation is making a huge push to replace welfare with work.

So is a new federal program that will pay about two-thirds of the cost of providing Medicaid health coverage for children whose families earn up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level. The state should seriously consider picking up its share of the cost.

State lawmakers heard last week that Virginia may have about $1.1 billion in unattached revenue during the next biennium. While we all look forward to driving to the bank with our car tax refunds, we ought to remember to Walk-A-Mile along the way.

MEMO: Ms. Edds is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.

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