From the "gosh, you don't say" file. How in the world could anyone in Congress or the White House not see this? When polls show anger across the US, it's because such an obvious problem has been ignored. Caving to the crazies in the GOP was not viewed positively by anyone outside of White House advisers. The latest tone is good to hear but we're going to need a lot more of it and then some action if we're going to see this ugly result turned around.
Poverty rates increased in almost all U.S. states and the District of Columbia over the course of the economic recession, with the worst spike in the South, according to a congressional report released on Monday.
In the South the number of people living below the poverty threshold grew by 3.3 million, the Joint Economic Committee found, comparing U.S. Census data from 2007 with the decennial statistics recently released. The South also still has the highest poverty rate, at 16.9 percent.
The number below the poverty line grew by 2.4 million people in the West and 1.6 million in the Midwest. In the Northeast, the ranks of the poor rose by 912,000 in those three years.
