Poverty Rate and Income Stagnate as Conservatives Attack the Safety Net

http://www.thenation.com/blog/176214/poverty-rate-and-income-stagnate-conservatives-attack-safety-net#

Exactly five years since the onset of the financial crisis, income data released this morning by the Census Bureau indicates that the spike in poverty triggered by the recession has become the status quo. Middle-class incomes are stagnant, too.  

The numbers come as House Republicans move to kick as many as 4 million Americans off food stamps by cutting $40 billion from the program. In their budget proposals, conservatives are also proposing to maintain the deep sequestration reductions that have cut tens of thousands of young children out of Head Start, as well as childcare assistance, Meals On Wheels for seniors, unemployment benefits, and housing assistance.

More than 46 million Americans lived in poverty last year, representing 15 percent of the population. For three years now there have been more Americans in poverty than at any other point since the Census Bureau began collecting data in 1959, and the poverty rate is hovering at its highest level since 1997. While many economists had hoped to see a small decrease in the poverty rate, the only statistically significant change was the additional 300,000 elderly Americans who fell below the poverty line.

ask yourself who says they want to help and has and is inspite of obstruction and denial to American citizens, then as who says they want to help but do nothing but deny and obstruct, you don't need a whiteboard just your own common sense.

The numbers show that poverty grips women and children particularly fiercely. More than a fifth of all children live in poverty; one in three poor Americans are children. Inequality across race persists, too, with more than a quarter of black and Hispanic Americans living in poverty, compared to just 9.7 percent of whites.

President Obama acknowledged as much in his speech on Monday. "The trends that have taken hold over the past few decades of a winner-take-all economy…have been made worse by the recession," he said, and went on to make the case that "what happens up on Capitol Hill" during the current budget showdown is critical to reversing the slide.

Instead of pursuing policies to promote employment and wage increases at the bottom and middle, however, Congress is poised to enact fiscal policies that hit the vulnerable even harder. The proposed Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program cutbacks are particularly outrageous, but even President Obama's budget proposal includes a change to the way inflation is calculated that would amount to both a benefit cut and a tax increase for seniors.

The tax reforms coming together in the Senate Finance Committee will likely include a lower corporate tax rate, without doing much for poor and middle-class families. It seems unlikely that Congress will lift the sequester anytime soon, which means continued reductions in the social safety net.

The Census figures show that such spending is more essential than ever, as it is these programs rather than the uptick in the economy keeping heads above water. According to the Census, 1.7 million people avoided poverty last year thanks to unemployment insurance.

Although neither SNAP benefits nor the Earned Income Tax Credit are counted in the poverty rate, the two programs lifted a combined 9.5 million out of poverty in 2012. And though the full effects of the Affordable Care Act haven't yet been felt, the level of uninsured Americans continued to fall last year, and the number of uninsured children reached an historic low.

note those affected the most is that coincidence or planned disenfranchising?  also again who is really fighting to correct this purposely denied imbalance, and who has repeatedly tried to take away and deny the same, while "reaching out" to you?

as to anything rising it's the nature of the beast we all know that yearly things go up for many reasons population increase cost of providing service , manufacturing materials the only thing that does not go up is the COLA for those who receive SS, or Pensions and the poor.  we take a cut they take a raise.