The poverty figures released by the Census Bureau this week have shocked some and spurred others on to greater rationalizations and spin.
Mother Jones:
It's no secret that the economy is in rough shape—but the latest poverty figures released by the Census Bureau on Tuesday are nonetheless shocking. The overall poverty rate has reached a record high and the number of people living in deep poverty—that is, below 50 percent of the poverty level, or $11,000 for a family of four—is the highest its been since 1975....
Median income has sunk lower than it was almost 15 years ago. The number of people living without health insurance is up slightly. The number of kids under the age of six living in extreme poverty is up to nearly 12 percent. The recession has been especially hard on women and people of color. The extreme poverty rate for women is more than 6 percent, the highest recorded in 22 years, and the poverty rate for black women is up a percentage point from 2009, to more than 25 percent.
Not to worry, says The Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector (the "intellectual godfather" of the 1996 welfare reform legislation) in a new report. In it he argues that liberals are exaggerating and misusing the labels 'poor' and 'poverty' for political gain. People aren't really poor, he says, until they're hungry, stunted from malnutrition, cold, sick, naked, on foot, chronically instead of only occasionally food insecure, and homeless or living in overcrowded and decrepit tenements or trailers.
If you think I'm joking, read the report. Those aren't his words, but that's the essence of what he's arguing.
All I can say is that all those people living on less than $11,000 for a family of four who Rector and the Heritage Foundation suggest are able to afford houses, air conditioning, microwaves, two or more vehicles, cable or satellite TV, a VCR, at least one DVD player, two or more computers, Xbox or PlayStation, Internet, a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV, and a digital video recorder system like TiVo must be the awesomest budgeters in the universe.
Clearly, the problem with the poor, according to Robert Rector and the Heritage Foundation, is that they just aren't poor enough.
Yet.
I'm sure the Republicans will have a remedy for that after 2012 though.