US Census Bureau Data: Bush Policies Victimize Children and Working Families

Low and middle income families have lost ground in what the Census Bureau called an uneven economic recovery. Only persons of retirement age or those in the very highest income brackets made gains. Everyone else lost ground during Bush's so-called "recovery". The Census Bureau called "unprecedented" the increase in poverty for working American households.

The new Census figures are disappointing for the fifth year of an economic recovery -- showing a significant decline in poverty for people over 65 but no significant decline in poverty for children or adults aged 18 to 64, and only a modest improvement in median income. In 2006, the poverty rate remained higher, and median income for non-elderly households remained $1,300 lower, than in 2001, when the last recession hit bottom. It is virtually unprecedented for poverty to be higher and the income of working-age households lower in the fifth year of a recovery than in the last year of the previous recession.

--New Census Bureau Data on Income and Health Insurance, Robert Greenstein, Executive Director, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

In the same report: "...the number of Americans without health insurance increased 2.2 million in 2006". The number of uninsured children now exceeds 600,000. Recent progress in this area stalled in 2005, reversed in 2006 --the year Bush cut funding for State Children’s Health Insurance Program. This is an ongoing story and the worst is yet to come.

This is particularly noteworthy because the President has vowed to veto legislation that the House and Senate passed (in different versions) that would resume progress in this area and shrink the number of uninsured children by 3 to 4 million. In addition, on August 17, the Administration unveiled a controversial new policy that would force many states to cut back their SCHIP programs, forcing up to several hundred thousand more children into the ranks of the uninsured. Today’s sobering data on the rising number of uninsured children should prompt the President to rethink his positions on children’s health insurance.

--New Census Bureau Data on Income and Health Insurance, Robert Greenstein, Executive Director, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

In a related development, it must be noted that some two years on, tens of thousands are still homeless in Katrina's wake. You remember Katrina! Katrina dramatized the fact that George W. Bush cares nothing for the people of the US. His primary concern is how best to make $billions$ for his crooked cronies by exporting what the US exports best: death, human misery, destruction.

Tomorrow marks the two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and still there are tens of thousands of families without homes. 30,000 families are scattered across the country in FEMA apartments, 13,000 are in trailers, and hardly any of the 77,000 rental units destroyed in New Orleans have been rebuilt. To share some of these people's stories, we have put together a short film, "When the Saints Go Marching In."

Katrina: Two Years On, Robert Greenwald

During the making of this video, we heard the heartbreaking stories of good people unable to return home. We have heard the story of the Aguilar family who lost their home to the storm and only received $4,000 in payments from their insurance company. We have met Mr. Washington, an 87-year-old man and former carpenter, who owned three homes prior to the storm. He is still living in a FEMA trailer today. And we?ve met Julie, who could have returned to her job and normal life, if the government had opened up the public housing units that she had lived in prior to the storm.

--Brave New Foundation

The numbers had been predicted. They are just what we might have expected from a man like Bush, so utterly lacking empathy, humanity, compassion. Bush is no cowboy. He's a carpet bagger, a spoiled frat boy who never grew up, never had to, never did an honest day's work for an honest dime.

Allen Spinney sings a Merle Haggard Classic

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