WASHINGTON — Three Oregonians who were featured in the HBO documentary “American Winter” about struggling families in the economic downturn told their stories on Capitol Hill Thursday.

“We are the working poor. We are people who get up every day and try to pay our share,” said Dierdre Melson, a 42-year-old mother of four from Portland. “Despite our efforts, we’re sinking.”

Filmmakers Joe and Harry Gantz found their subjects among the callers to the 2-1-1 social services hotline in Portland, largely working families looking for a little financial help. The film profiled eight Oregon families and premiered on HBO in March.

Since then, strangers have stopped the film’s subjects in public, said Melson and Pamela Thatcher, 28, a former preschool teacher from Tualatin. Sometimes the strangers offer words of encouragement, and sometimes they thank Melson and Thatcher for sharing their stories, because it made them realize that there are other families going through similar financial hardship.

Because of the stigma attached to using government services, many struggling families are ashamed to tell friends and families.

Along with John Cox, 53, of Newberg, Melson and Thatcher traveled to Washington to tell their stories to the members of the Senate Subcommittee on Economic Policy. In each case, one misfortune triggered an economic setback that required some government assistance.

Melson described how she had landed her dream job drawing blood samples as a phlebotomist when the company went under, putting 1,500 people out of work. It took her two years to find another job.

In the meantime, she went on food stamps and housing assistance, collecting and selling scrap metal and her own blood to help feed her children.

Melson now works for 211, making $13.52 an hour. Even though this is above minimum wage — $8.95 an hour in Oregon, $7.25 an hour being the national minimum — Melson still has trouble making ends meet.

“When I was rehired, it took forever to dig myself out of debt,” she said. “It’s just not a living wage; it’s not enough for me to support my four kids.”

Melson described the Catch-22 facing her son, a talented wrestler who wants to go to college, and many other working class high school students. Because less grant money is available, more students are taking out loans to pay for college. Unless they land a high-paying job right out of college, the debt can be crippling. If they don’t go to college, they have less of a chance to work their way out of poverty via the jobs available to a high school graduate.

“I know that his prospects are limited if he doesn’t further his education,” she said.

Her own kids know that she was a good student, yet 20 years later she’s still paying off her own loans, she said.

Presiding over his first hearing as subcommittee chair, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said he was concerned that the cost of education was reducing the aspirations of young people.

Getting a good job after college shouldn’t be like winning the lottery, he said. “That can’t be the message that a prosperous nation is based on.”

Collectively, young Americans owe $1 trillion in student loan debt, added Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Without Congressional action, the interest rate on federal student loans will double on July 1, from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, which would make the situation even worse, she said.

Thatcher taught for nine years before leaving to start a family. She and her husband, who had always worked and had a good-paying job, had put money away, but within three months of the birth of their second child, her husband lost his job in the fall of 2011.

The decision to reach out for financial help was incredibly hard, but Thatcher knew she had to take care of her young children.

“I was a mom in survival mode, and I knew I would do anything to take care of my two babies,” she said.

Thatcher used to think that life was easy for families who depended on government programs to survive, with no work and free food. Now she understands that middle class families like hers can be only a few steps away from poverty. She is grateful for the help she received.

Cox described how he wasn’t initially concerned when he was laid off from his $60,000-a-year job as a cost accountant. In 30 years, he had never gone more than a week without a job, he said. He had worked his way through college, including jobs as a commercial fisherman in Alaska and sweeping volcanic ash out of parking lots with a push broom after Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980.

“I was raised to work hard. Work hard, and you’ll have no worries. If you get an education, you’ll never have to worry about getting a job ever again,” he said.

Cox, who has a 12-year-old son with Down syndrome, quickly exhausted $35,000 in savings, then cashed out his 401(k) retirement plan to stay current on his mortgage. Five years later, he is on the verge of losing the house he bought 12 years ago. He wanted the house to provide financial security for his son, Geral, he said.

Merkley noted that many Americans’ wealth is concentrated in their homes, and when the housing market crashed, median net worth fell from $126,000 in 2007 to $77,000 in 2010. One in four American homeowners owes more on their mortgage than their house is worth, he said.

“We should measure success in this country not by the (gross domestic product) or the Dow (Jones industrial average), but by the success of our families,” he said.