About This Episode

Child Tax Credit Series Bonus Content Congressman Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) has made it his mission to end childhood hunger. As part of Add Passion and Stir's series covering the expansions to the Child Tax Credit, we spoke with McGovern about his advocacy for legislation that addresses the root causes of hunger and poverty in America. Elected in 1996, the year the Child Tax Credit was created, McGovern has seen all variations of the credit from inside Congress. For him, the expansion of the Child Tax Credit to provide benefits to an additional 39 million households is a critical component of a cross-governmental strategy to end poverty. McGovern says, “This [bill] is about our values. These are people’s lives…The reason why this investment is so significant is because we have underinvested in people for decades.” In this full interview with McGovern, we hear how he is working with leaders in and out of government to finally make the conversation about hunger something that we address head on. “Hunger is a political condition. We have the food, resources, knowledge, infrastructure; we have everything to end it but we haven’t had the political will,” McGovern concludes.