As a friend of mine on Wall Street noted, Bush mentioned an important issue, in passing, at the United Nations yesterday:
“Because we believe in human dignity, America and many nations have changed the way we fight poverty….”
If you define “change the way” to mean “stop paying attention to it here at home,” then I guess Bush was telling the truth.
Census data released today show that the number and percentage of Americans living below the poverty line increased for the third consecutive year in 2003….
Since 2000 — the last year before unemployment began to rise — the number of people in poverty has risen by 4.3 million, median income has fallen by $1,535, after adjustment for inflation, and the number of people with no health insurance has increased by 5.2 million.
The increase in poverty was concentrated among children. The poverty rate among children under 18 jumped from 16.7 percent to 17.6 percent between 2002 and 2003, and the number of poor children rose by 733,000, to 12.9 million. This rise accounted for a majority of the increase of 1.3 million in the overall number of poor people, which climbed from 34.6 million in 2002 to 35.9 million in 2003. More than one in every three poor people in 2003 were children.
If these are the results of Bush’s “fight” against poverty, I’d say he’s loosing the fight badly.