You seem to have remarkable difficulty following a thread.
I have changed the thread back and have cut the crap you posted since
nothing in it was in any way relevant.
Poverty in the U.S. climbs for third year
Brian Knowlton/IHT IHT
Friday, August 27, 2004
WASHINGTON The U.S. poverty rate and the number of Americans without
health
insurance rose
last year, each for the third consecutive year, the Census Bureau reported
Thursday. The
figures, which the administration released a month earlier than usual,
quickly became the
focus of a partisan debate.
"Under George Bush's watch," said Senator John Kerry, referring to the new
data,
"America's families are falling further behind." The report said that the
number of
Americans in poverty rose from 12.1 percent in 2002 to 12.5 percent a year
later, totaling
35.8 million people, and that the number of uninsured Americans rose
during
the same
period by 1.4 million, to 45 million, or 15.6 percent of the population.
Median household income remained basically flat, at $43,318 when adjusted
for inflation,
ending a two-year decline.
The numbers were not unexpected, and do not reflect the economic growth of
the past
several months, which has created hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Dan Weinberg, a Census Bureau analyst, said that the data was typical for
a
post-recession
economy, but that the numbers of the uninsured reflected continued
uncertainty over
employment. Employers, who have cited the high costs of providing health
insurance as a
reason to hire conservatively, are also offering less generous benefit
plans.
The poverty rate was the highest since 1998, when it reached 12.7 percent.
The Census
Bureau places the poverty threshold for a family of four at $18,810.
The Census Bureau noted that while the overall poverty rate was up from
2002, it remained
below the average of the 1980s and 1990s.
Still, the new data comes amid a close election campaign in which debate
over economic
health and fairness loom large.
For campaign advisers to Kerry, who have been striving to turn attention
away from a
bitter controversy over his Vietnam War record and toward the economic
issues, the new
numbers were a welcome gift. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, wasted no time
seizing on the
Census report as evidence to bolster his critiques of administration
economic and health
care policies.
The new figures mean that "five million Americans over five years have
lost
their health
insurance," Kerry told an audience of supporters and undecided voters in
Anoka, Minnesota.
"About 45 million Americans go to bed every night worried."
A Kerry campaign statement called on Bush to debate the senator "once a
week
between now
and the end of the campaign, so that the issues that really matter to the
American people
- like the number of uninsured and people living in poverty - can be front
and center in
this election."
The debate proposal was of a sort often made by presidential challengers,
but rarely
agreed to by incumbents, who are generally thought to have more to lose in
debates. For
now, the candidates are expected to have three debates, on Sept. 30, Oct.
8
and Oct. 13.
Bush, giving a fairly standard stump speech Thursday during an appearance
in
Las Cruces,
New Mexico, did not specifically address the Census numbers.
"We have more to do to make this economy stronger," he said, mentioning,
as
he often does,
the economic shocks of recent years, from recession to terrorist attacks
and
corporate
scandals. The president, as he also does, credited American workers and
entrepreneurs, as
well as his own "well-timed tax cuts," for moving the country beyond the
worst economic
woes.
But there was immediate dispute over the Census report.
Some Republicans noted that even as the number of uninsured Americans grew
by 1.4 million,
the number of insured did as well, by 1 million. Bush's health and human
services
secretary, Tommy Thompson, said that Bush was working to reduce health
insurance costs to
businesses.
Some Democrats saw political manipulation in the fact that the
administration issued the
new numbers a month before their usual release in late September. But
Louis
Kincannon, the
Census director and a Bush appointee, said that the earlier release was
intended to
coordinate better with other reports. It came, he said, without "influence
or pressure"
from the Bush campaign.
International Herald Tribune
Copyright © 2004 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
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