On the recordSeptember 14, 2011
yesterday the Census Bureau released information about poverty, income, and health insurance in our country, and the news was, in short, devastating. The number of people in poverty is at an all-time high. Income gains over the last decade have been totally wiped out. Americans are struggling more than ever before. I am appalled by these facts and I know my colleagues are too. Today I wish to talk about these numbers, but I wish to talk about what we can do about them and about where our country's priorities must be and how we have to focus on rebuilding the middle class in light of the new census numbers. Yesterday we learned that 46.2 million people in America were poor last year. That is more than 15 percent of Americans. Let me remind my colleagues what this means. The poverty line for a family of four with two adults and two children is $22,000--just slightly over $22,000 a year. Can anyone here in this body--and we all know what we make; every Senator, every Congressman, except leadership who get paid a little bit more, makes $174,000 a year. If we think to ourselves: Could we and our spouses and two children live on $22,000 a year, $425 a week? But, beyond that, we also learned that deep poverty; that is, families with incomes less than half the poverty line, is also at the highest rate on record. More than 20 million Americans lived in deep poverty last year. That is just over $11,000 a year for a family of four. That is almost mind-boggling.…
