Child Poverty in the US

Bob Herbert wrote Meek in the Land of the Plutocrats about how the government has largely ignored the poor.

"You won’t hear about it in the presidential race. Barack Obama can barely bring himself to say the word "poor." And Mitt Romney was famously dismissive about even the deepest concentrations of poverty. “I’m not concerned about the very poor,” he said. “We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it.” He later described his comment as a “misstatement.” Fifty million Americans are poor and another 50 million have been characterized as “near poor,” which means they can feel the awful flames of poverty licking at their heels. That’s almost a third of the entire U.S. population."

Valerie Jarrett of the White House’s Office of Public Engagement replied, The White House defends its anti-poverty agenda. She lists a lot of things Obama has done (Head Start, child care assistance, child nutrition programs, school aid, Pell Grants, education tax credits, CHIP, etc.) and also things Republicans have blocked (voting to cut SNAP by 20%, and Medicaid by a third).

Both are right. Melissa Harris-Perry had Herbert on today and put up this graph:



Really, Unicef says we're second worst of developed nations regarding child poverty at just over 23%. I didn't hear Obama or Romney talking about that.