By Katrina vanden Heuvel
When the government released
new U.S. Census data on poverty last week, our warp-speed news cycle paid too little attention to what these numbers tell us -- and what the government could do to tackle this moral, economic and political crisis.
It's clear that the Great Recession battered those on the bottom most heavily, adding 6 million people to the ranks of the officially poor, defined as just $22,000 in annual income for a family of four. Forty-four million Americans -- one in seven citizens -- are now
living below the poverty line, more than at any time since the Census Bureau began tracking poverty 51 years ago. Shamefully, that figure includes one in five children,
more than one in four African Americans or Latinos, and over 51 percent of female-headed families with children under 6.
<...>
Half in Ten, a coalition working to cut poverty by half in 10 years, is pushing Congress to renew the
TANF Emergency Fund, which is set to expire on Thursday. Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia have used the program to provide 250,000 low-income and long-term unemployed workers with subsidized jobs. The coalition is also pushing to make the Obama administration's
Recovery Act reforms to the child tax credit and the earned-income tax credit permanent. These progressive policies keep families from falling into poverty and reduce long-term costs such as crime, public benefits and lost consumption. Estimates of
costs associated with childhood poverty run at $500 billion annually, or 4 percent of gross domestic product.
And then there are the Bush tax cuts for those making over $250,000 a year, a centerpiece of the GOP's just-released "Pledge to America." Edelman says that it's difficult to see how we can help the 44 million Americans living in poverty today without that revenue.
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