Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Struggling to get by

President Bush claims "Americans have more money in their pocket," but just the opposite is true, as the number of people in poverty continues to grow.

Three years into this nation's economic recovery, not many people are actually recovering. A new U.S. Census Bureau report reveals stagnant wages, lost benefits and more people in poverty. Yet President Bush continues to describe the economy as strong and even claimed last month that "Americans have more money in their pocket."

On this Labor Day, it's not clear which divide is deeper - the one between the rich and the poor or between the political rhetoric and the painful reality.

The census news for 2004 is sobering:

--Increasing poverty. The number of people in poverty continues to grow, from 32.9-million in 2001 to 37-million last year. The number of working people who live in poverty also grew last year by 563,000.

--Declining wages. Overall household incomes failed to rise for the fifth straight year. Income for full-time male workers dropped 2.3 percent last year and income for female workers dropped 1 percent. In fact, only one segment of the nation's households saw their income grow: the top 5 percent of all incomes.

--Disappearing benefits. The number of people with no health insurance increased to 45.8-million last year. One in five workers were uninsured.

The Bush administration's denial seems more calculated by the day. Commerce Department economics chief Elizabeth Anderson tried to deflect the grim Census Bureau numbers, telling the New York Times the poverty rate "is the last, lonely trailing indicator of the business cycle." Yet, as the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports, the poverty rate is far from the only "trailing indicator." Further, the poverty rate is still a full percentage point higher than it was in 2001 - contrary to the trend of any previously documented economic recovery.

This blind spot has helped lead Congress to an agenda that is alien to the economic realities. It's how lawmakers can lavish more tax breaks on wealthy estates, investors and taxpayers in upper-income brackets; how they can leave the federal minimum wage untouched for the eighth consecutive year; how they simultaneously cut programs for the poor.

The "trailing indicator" the Bush administration so patiently awaits is a measure of real people in real pain in an economic recovery that has largely excluded them. These are people who are losing ground, and they include working families who can't get health care for their children or whose incomes are so low they qualify for food stamps. These are people who find that their 40-hour workweeks simply aren't enough. On this Labor Day, they do not have more money in their pocket.

[Last modified September 5, 2005, 01:15:10]