Vote for Democrats. We have no choice, really.

[ProSense]

6. Yeah,

"Vote for Democrats. You have no choice, really."

...if you're desperate for a reason:

<...>

We still have over 30 million Americans who cannot see a doctor when they are sick. According to this Harvard study, adjusting for gender, race, smoking, weight, and just about everything else that you can think of, in any given year, the uninsured are 40% more likely to die than the insured are. That results in 44,789 additional deaths in America each year. All of which are avoidable.

This is more than twice the number of homicides in America.

It is more than ten times the number of deaths on 9/11. And it happens every year.

Do you think that we should solve this problem? I do.

And the Democratic Party does. Which is why we passed health care reform. And why we brought the wrath of lobbyists and their sewer money down on our heads in the last election – over $65 million by the Chamber of Commerce and Karl Rove’s “American Crossroads” alone.

I see one party taking on the special interests and enacting laws to keep Americans alive, and assure that you can see a doctor when you are sick. Like in every other industrialized country in the world.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/1/20/937697/-What-I-Didnt-Hear

CQ: Obama's Winning Streak On Hill Unprecedented
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122436116



The reason the 111th Congress is considered one of the most productive ever is because they got things done. Add the policy achievements and it has been a damn good Presidency.

Food Stamps Reduced The Poverty Rate By Nearly 8 Percent In 2009, As GOP Tries To Gut The Program

By Travis Waldron

Congressional Republicans have targeted the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps, for budget cuts, and have attempted to paint it as a program rife with fraud and abuse that is on an unsustainable path. While their argument ignores a host of facts, including that food stamp fraud is at an all-time low, it also ignores the economic benefits that the program brings to millions of low-income families.

According to a new study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food stamps substantially reduced the poverty rate in 2009, the last year data is available, the New York Times reports:

The food stamp program…reduced the poverty rate by nearly 8 percent in 2009, the most recent year included in the study, a significant impact for a social program whose effects often go unnoticed by policy makers. [...]

The study, which examined nine years of data, tried to measure the program’s effects on people whose incomes remained below the poverty threshold. The program lifted the average poor person’s income up about six percent closer to the line over the length of the study, making poverty less severe. When the benefits were included in the income of families with children, the result was that children below the threshold moved about 11 percent closer to the line.

The USDA study aligns closely with a similar one released by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which found that food stamps reduced the number of Americans living in extreme poverty in 2011 from 1.46 million to just over 800,000. SNAP’s effects on children are even bigger — the program cut the number living in extreme poverty by half, according to CBPP.

- more -

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/10/461337/food-stamps-reduce-poverty/

The benefits increases via the stimulus expire next year.

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The Recovery Act’s increase in SNAP benefits has eased hardship and boosted the economy. SNAP has not only expanded dramatically to meet rising need during the recession, but has also delivered more than $26 billion (between April 2009 and September 2011) in additional SNAP benefits under the Recovery Act. The Recovery Act provided a temporary, 13.6 percent boost in the maximum SNAP benefit beginning in federal fiscal year 2009. Congress enacted this provision as a fast and effective economic stimulus measure to help push against the rising tide of hardship for low-income Americans. The increase is phasing down and is scheduled to end entirely on October 31, 2013.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3239

Obama administration issues report on homelessness in 2011; awards $1.5 billion to local programs
http://www.democraticunderground.com/100249786

http://www.feedthefuture.gov/

16 million: number of Americans who become eligible for Medicaid under the health care law
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002531684

Obamacare will save Medicare $200 billion by 2016
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002599800

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/03/barack-obamas-had-pretty-damn-good-presidency
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002530308

Obama 2012!