Poverty in America

 

"Missing in action," Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said of Congress' record on poverty.

It has been a topic of discussion among Washington lawmakers in fleeting moments. Language about making poverty a national priority found its way into the Democratic Party platform last year and into President Barack Obama's State of the Union address in February. Democrats tucked a line into their budget proposals this year calling for a strategy to cut poverty in half in 10 years.

Yet the issue has all but disappeared from the legislative agenda in Congress as lawmakers focus squarely on deficit reduction. Obama, too, has been largely silent on the issue, and has even proposed cutting Social Security -- a key tool for combating poverty. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a leading voice for the poor in the Senate, has fumed that Obama is caving to Republicans on the issue at the expense of "millions of working people, seniors, disabled veterans, those who have lost a loved one in combat, and women."

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The statistics are staggering. According to the Census Bureau, the nation's poverty rate is at its highest level in decades. More than 46 million people -- one in seven Americans -- are living below the poverty line, 16.4 million of them children. Another 30 million Americans are just a lost job or serious illness away from joining them. And in the last six years alone, more than 20 million people have joined the ranks of those relying on food stamps to get by.

Meanwhile, the rich are only getting richer. Income inequality in the United States is greater now than at any time since 1929. It has gotten so severe that, according to a report by the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, low-earning workers in the United States are actually worse off than low-earning workers in all but seven similarly developed countries.

Given these figures, it is "unfathomable" that poverty is not "at the top of everybody's priority list," Fudge told The Huffington Post.

Many economists agree that the most effective thing Congress has done for poor people in recent years was pass the stimulus package in 2009. It was one of the first bills Obama signed into law as president, and it included substantial benefits for the poor, including an expansion of the child tax credit and new funds for child care, job training and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, the nation's principal welfare program.

The package is credited with saving or creating 2.5 million jobs, growing the economy by up to 3.8 percent and keeping the unemployment rate from hitting 12 percent. As bad as things are now, they could have been much worse, economists say.

Given the subpar unemployment rate -- it's been hovering just below 8 percent for months -- and the worsening conditions for the poor, some say the obvious response from Congress should be another stimulus.

"It would be one thing if this were happening and there wasn't something we could do," said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at EPI. "The thing that makes this tragic and sick is that Congress could do a stimulus bill and bring the unemployment rate down relatively quickly, and they're choosing not to."

Shierholz acknowledged that the idea of Congress passing a stimulus "sounds ridiculous" given that lawmakers are banging the drum on austerity right now. But the economics are clear.

"The increase in the poverty rate that we've seen since 2007, we could bring that down if we wanted to," she said. "It is crisis number one. But with this Congress right now, it's just a question of trying to keep them from doing harm. We're actually implementing austerity policies right now, which is absolutely wrongheaded."     Read more…