Reply #88: Congress treats DC like their personal slave state - highest poverty + taxed w/no representation

[nashville_brook]

http://news.change.org/stories/our-national-embarrassment-washington-dc

Our National Embarrassment, Washington, D.C.

Some disheartening news from the DC Fiscal Policy Institute: An estimated 11,000 additional D.C. residents fell into poverty last year, representing the largest year-over-year increase in the number of poor Washingtonians since 1995.

According to a report released by the Institute last week, the poverty rate in the District rose from 16.9 percent in 2008 to a staggering 18.9 percent in 2009. That means some 106,500 people were living below the federal poverty line ($21,800 for a family of four in 2009). It also puts D.C. among the very poorest states in the nation, surpassed only by Mississippi when compared to 2008 data.

The report ties this increase to the District's rising unemployment rate, which hit 11.9 percent by the end of 2009, and food stamp caseloads, which were on average 16 percent higher last year than they were in 2008. Although hard data is not yet available for 2010, the report predicts that both unemployment and food stamp caseload rates will go up this year, meaning that poverty rates will probably increase as well. (Hopefully President Obama, just blocks away at the White House, was thinking of his neighbors when he signed a jobs bill in March.)

Unfortunately, this terrible news is not surprising, as our nation's capital has been plagued by poverty for decades. In D.C., fully one-third of residents are low-income, meaning they live below twice the federal poverty line; the child poverty rate is an astounding 32 percent, compared to the national average of 18 percent; income inequality is greater than in almost any other major U.S. city; and one-fifth of working residents make less than $11 per hour.