About 44 million in U.S. lived below poverty line in 2009, census data show

By Carol Morello

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, September 16, 2010; 11:22 PM

In the second year of a brutal recession, the ranks of the American poor soared to their highest level in half a century and millions more are barely avoiding falling below the poverty line, the Census Bureau reported Thursday.

About 44 million Americans - one in seven - lived last year in homes in which the income was below the poverty level, which is about $22,000 for a family of four. That is the largest number of people since the census began tracking poverty 51 years ago.

The snapshot captured by the census for 2009, the first year of the Obama presidency, shows an America in the throes of economic upheaval.

Since 2007, the year before the recession kicked into gear, the country has almost 4 million fewer wage-earners. There are more children growing up poor. And for the first time since the government began tracking health insurance in 1987, the number of people who have health coverage declined, as people lost jobs with health benefits or employers stopped offering it.

With midterm elections less than two months away, the statistics bare the reality fueling much of the anger toward Washington.

In the Washington region, Virginia's poverty rate rose the most, to 10.5 percent from 8.6 percent. Maryland's edged up half a percentage point to 9 percent. The District's rate was the highest, but it declined from 18 percent to 17 percent.

Although the recession's impact was broad-based, there were disparities among groups. The official poverty rate increased for all races and ethnicities except Asians, who continued to have the highest median household income. More working-age adults lived in poverty, while the number of poor people 65 or older fell, largely as a result of increases in Social Security payments.

More than 51 million Americans lack health insurance, the census reported, and a greater-than-ever percentage of those who do have insurance are getting it from the government.

Scholars, nonprofit groups that work with the poor and President Obama all expressed concern about the gloomy picture.

Obama said the numbers could have been much worse were it not for government assistance.

"Because of the Recovery Act and many other programs providing tax relief and income support to a majority of working families - and especially those most in need - millions of Americans were kept out of poverty last year," he said in a statement.

Many conservatives, however, laid the blame on government programs that don't work.

"We're spending more money fighting poverty than ever before, yet poverty is up," said Michael D. Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "Clearly, we're doing something wrong."

Along with a rise in the number of people living in poverty, the census reported a decrease in the number of people who are living just above poverty level, suggesting that many of those just slightly above poverty slipped over the edge in the previous year.

Food banks and shelters around the country say they are seeing former donors asking for help.

Dale City resident Jamie Imler is one. She used to give money to charity and make quilts for homeless shelters. But since she began treatment for breast cancer last year, she has been too weak to work at either of the two jobs she held, one in a restaurant and one for a recruitment agency. Her income has dropped from $2,000 a month to less than $700 - not enough to cover her rent - and she has been coming for the past six months to a food pantry in Prince William County called Action Through Service.

"Things were good," she said. "I was a single mom, raised my son and needed food stamps."

"And now I'm here," she added.

While the number of the country's poorest people is higher than in any other recorded period, the rate is not without precedent. The last time it was this high was 1994. And in the early 1960s, it was over 20 percent.

Despite the jump in poverty, median income did not go down for those who still had jobs. Men working full time saw their median earnings rise 2 percent, to $47,000, while the median wage of women rose about the same amount, to a little over $36,000.

The median household income declined a little, to just under $50,000. But household income is down 4.2 percent since the recession began and 5 percent from its peak of more than $52,000 in 1999. Black households fared particularly poorly, as incomes dropped 4.4 percent compared with 1.6 percent for white households.

"We always have a situation where some population groups have higher poverty rates than others," said Margaret Simms, who directs the Low Income Working Families Project at the Urban Institute. "During recessions, we see who bears the brunt in hard times in the kinds of numbers we see today."

The statistics have quickly become fodder for a debate on the proper role of government in combating economic downturns.

"It's a strong indication that there is not enough focus on growth and investment in job production," said Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio state treasurer who is a fellow at the Family Research Council.

Ron Haskins, a head of the Brookings Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution, said government programs do not have enough money to make up for the decline among private and employer-provided health care. "Is the government going to pick it up?" he said. "That means bigger government, bigger expenses, more taxes."

This summer, a proposal to extend jobless benefits to the long-term unemployed came under attack by Republicans, who objected to more spending that would add to the soaring deficit. The measure eventually passed.

Some of those who have struggled to find work are making their way to Good Shepherd Alliance, a food pantry in Loudoun County, which is one of the country's wealthiest jurisdictions.

Vickie Koth, executive director, said she has grown accustomed to hearing clients say, almost as if dazed by their dizzying descent, that they used to volunteer at nonprofits like hers. The downturn will end some day, she noted, and hard times should be remembered.

"A lot of the community is really seeing this issue for the first time," she said. ". . . Once this turns around, I hope that people will remember what we went through so that our communities will be more open to serving those around us who are in need."

Staff writers Jennifer Buske and Caitlin Gibson contributed

It’s Official: Healthcare Reform is Dead

by Shamus Cooke

Global Research, August 18, 2009

The “transparent government” that President Obama guaranteed during his electoral campaign has become yet another broken promise. On August 14th, the Huffington Post revealed a memo containing details of “the deal” that Obama cut with health care mega-corporations in secret White House meetings. And although the White House denies the authenticity of the memo, the details are consistent with earlier reports from other national media outlets.

The White House deal essentially reduces some of the more egregious health care corporation swindling — estimated to save $80 billion over ten years — while Obama shamelessly promised that other irrational vehicles for health care mega-profits will remain untouched: any congressional health care plan will not attempt to negotiate for cheaper drugs, nor import them from other countries, Medicare will not be altered in a way that affects health care corporations’ profits.

Creating new laws by backroom dealing with giant corporations is of course bad for democracy. Unfortunately, Obama had few other options, since he refused beforehand to directly confront the health care industry’s power. He was thus reduced to bargaining with these entities, leaving any leverage at the door. The health care companies fully understood this and exploited the situation to the fullest.

The competing health care bills in Congress reflect this dynamic, since Congressmen have been similarly awed — and bought — by the health care industry. The different health care bills all agree that health care should be “mandated” — like the car insurance you’re required to buy (if you can afford it). All the bills also agree that Medicare payments to hospitals and other providers — many directly affecting the most vulnerable — will be cut drastically, leading to “…savings [that] would pay nearly 40 percent of the [health care] bills’ cost.” (The New York Times, August 9, 2009). They’re giving health care with the left hand and taking it with the right.

One disagreement between the competing plans was the highly controversial “public option.” This was what the health care corporations hated most, since it was a way to directly take power out of their hands. Again, the White House backed off, “signal[ing] Sunday that it was willing to compromise and would consider a proposal for a nonprofit health cooperative being developed in the Senate.” (New York Times, August 16, 2009). The “cooperative” idea is widely considered by health care advocates to be useless.

Such sellouts were the inevitable result of intensified health care industry bribery (so-called “lobbying”), which Business Week claims to be “… a record $133 million…in the second quarter of 2009 alone…” (August 6, 2009). The same article — appropriately named The Health Insurers Have Already Won — examines the health care lobby’s successes and notes that no matter what health care bill emerges from Congress, the “insurance industry will emerge more profitable.”

The same article also reveals — unsurprisingly — that health care corporations were responsible for destroying the public health care option, while “also achieving a secondary aim of constraining the new benefits that will become available to tens of millions of people who are currently uninsured. That will make the new customers more lucrative to the industry.” This simply means that the taxpayer money that will be used to subsidize any health care plan will go straight towards health care company profits, while providing the same shoddy care they’ve always provided.

Heads they win, tails we lose.

The health care industry is so pleased with the deal they’ve struck with Obama, they’re willing to put up $150 million toward an advertising campaign to insure the deal’s passage.

This servitude to the health care corporations has strongly emboldened the rightwing, who are using the Democrat’s obvious corruption to stir up hysteria and fanaticism through media and town halls. The rightwing attacks have driven many liberals to defend the Democrats, who deserve zero pity, let alone support.

The Republicans are placing safe bets that the Democrats will achieve absolutely nothing progressive in health care — a gamble that will payoff tremendously in the next elections. The Republicans are also using the situation to massively propagandize against “socialism,” a word wrongly attributed to any health care bill in Congress. The purpose, however, is to steer people away from any substitute to capitalism, a system that millions of Americans rightfully see as broken as health care.

The rightwing is also using the health care crisis to again focus its guns on immigrants. Instead of the giant health care corporations being responsible for the health care crisis, society’s most vulnerable are painted as the culprits. The Wall Street journal complained that health care costs are being driven up due to “half of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. don't have health insurance”. (August 15, 2009)

Of course the 6 million undocumented immigrants who lack health insurance have plenty of company: there are at least 47 million U.S. citizens without health insurance, a number that is growing drastically as unemployment skyrockets.

The same Wall Street journal article implies that anyone seeking emergency room help should be turned away unless they show proof of citizenship. Leaving aside the obvious moral issues of denying a human being emergency room medical treatment, another issue remains: millions of working and poor people do not have any “proof of citizenship,” and would also be denied lifesaving emergency health care.

The Wall Street Journal would never focus on the fact that a large number of African Americans likewise use the emergency room for their primary source of medical treatment, since such a statement would be obviously racist, while racism against immigrants is widely accepted. Whipping up racist hysteria, however, is a tactic that is being employed on a broader basis as people rightfully blame mega-corporations for the economic crisis.

Another issue blamed on immigrants is Medicare’s economic woes, while the real perpetrators — the health care corporations — escape responsibility. Every time Medicare is used to purchase overpriced medications, the pharmaceutical companies rake in huge profits. Medicare must also pay for over priced medical procedures, pricey hospital stays, etc. In fact, Medicare Part D was specially inserted by the Bush administration to drive up profits for the health care industry. In Part D’s first six months, profits for pharmaceutical companies went up $8 billion, according to the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform. Part of Obama’s deal with the health care industry says that Part D will remain untouched.

This fiscal ransacking of Medicare is being used as a reason to dump the program in its entirety, something that the Democrat’s “health care plan” will be the first step towards achieving. (The most profitable parts will likely remain intact.)

Medicare must not only be saved, but extended to everybody. This obvious solution to America’s health care disaster is “too radical” for Democrats and Republicans alike. Indeed, under the current system far too many of society’s resources are being used towards the profits of the health care industry, bank bailouts, and foreign wars for such truly universal health care to exist.

To create health care for all, the socially-precious health care industry must be completely taken out of the hands of the mega-corporations who’ve ruined the lives of millions of people — indeed directly responsible for the deaths of a staggering number of lives — while helping bankrupt federal and state governments.

In an earlier article we wrote: “If Obama’s health care plan leaves in place the same greedy shareholders and CEO’s of the health care mega-corporations, while funneling them billions of taxpayer money, very little is likely to change. Likewise, if every American has health insurance, but insurance companies benefit from not paying for expensive surgeries or medications, or drug companies continue to benefit from having monopolies over medications, millions of people will continue to suffer.” ( March, 9, 2009, The Emerging Health Care Sellout).

Obstacles to change must be removed, not bargained with or pandered to. The health care industry — like the big banks — is exerting a stranglehold over society that the Democrats and Republicans are unwilling to break, and indeed profit from. This cowardice will hopefully shed light on an old truth for millions of people: the Democrats — like the Republicans — are a party of big business and cannot be anything different. Workers must make a decisive break with the Democrats and politically organize themselves independently, so that another hope-wielding politician doesn’t waste our time with promises of change while delivering health care profits, bank bailouts and wars.